Heat

Out of the kitchen

THE heat permeates every corner of the house and I'm suddenly regretting ever agreeing to this.

It's two days to Christmas, not my favourite season at the best of times, the heat, the flies, the extended family...............

I'm trying my hardest not to melt in the inferno of this semi-air conditioned three-storey weatherboard house. AND I'm cooking ham and cakes for the large hungry horde which will descend on my oldest brother's house, the day after tomorrow.

Whoever decided that Christmas needs to be celebrated at all, let alone in summer, really needed their head examined. I'll be lucky if I don't end up a puddle on the wooden floor at this stage.

What I really should be doing is painting - mind you it's too hot for that too. But I want to hold an exhibition next year and I haven't got close to my target. Not that artists should ever, ever, ever set themselves targets. It never works.

I check the oven for the tenth time - let more heat out into my kitchen - move the biscuits around so they don't brown and go back to chopping up fruit and salad for later.

Thank god I didn't go all the way and decide to invite my three siblings, their partners, offspring and the parents and any of their siblings and family here. It's bad enough that my youngest brother has decided my nice five bedroom farm house with its pool, veggie garden and secluded location is a much better place to hunker down with his new lover then to head to our oldest brother or sister's house or heaven forbid - our parents unit by the ocean.

Our parents have always been supportive of Scott and his life choices - more than you'd expect an old cane farmer to be in all honesty. In fact I get the impression mum loves having a gay son. It's a bragging point down the local bowls club to the point that when he comes home mum loves to show him off -'this is my son - he's an actor and he's gay and this is his boyfriend". She's the coolest mum on the block - at least in her mind. To the rest of us - she's a lovely supportive if totally embarrassing human being who still continues to fuss over us even though we are all in our 30s and 40s (some with children of our own old enough to vote).

I stayed with my parents when I finally came home from OS (which is what my mum always calls anywhere not in Australia). "My oldest two have settled down and have great lives here on the Tweed - the youngest pair are gypsies - you know artistic souls - they're both OS at the moment" she has been prone to telling the "girls" down the bowlo, like we travel the world in a caravan as some sort of cosmic fortune tellers.

Spending three weeks with them while I waited for the contract to go through on this place and then painted, fixed it up and got enough furniture in to make it habitable was, to say the very least, interesting.

I'm not sure how I lasted living with them for 18 years - I didn't know any better at the time I suppose but now, as an adult, going back after living with all sorts of people and on my own, all over the world.......... it was a nice place to visit but well, you know the cliché.

Don't get me wrong - my parents are great but after two weeks of "why don't you go out and visit some friends" and then "you need to ring if you're going to be late" on the one rare occasion that I did actually catch up with the single friend from my childhood that a) still lives here and b) I have anything remotely in common with.

And then there was the "experimental cooking" or as dad calls it "the law according to Jamie" (Oliver) my mum's new messiah. When we were growing up it was - almost without fail - meat and three veg. But it seems we weren't the only ones who were bored shitless by the monotonousness of mashed potatoes, carrots, grey peas and the meat of choice. Now my mother has all these new found gadgets - a mezzaluna (thanks to her flirtation with Nigela), a paella pan (Rick Stein) and a ravioli stamper (thank you Mr Oliver). She is currently working her way, book and TV series by book and TV Series through the work of the Essex boy like a small child through a box of Lindor chocolates.

But of course just because Jamie is the Messiah - doesn't mean he knows everything (according to my mum) and so she "improves" on his recipes. Jamies Pukka Yellow Curry - with added brussel sprouts, best Italian sauce with olives, capers and pineapple?!? And of course anything and everything with avocado on the side (we grow them - well my dad and brother do, so mum feels obliged to add them to everything - and I mean EVERYTHING. I was the only kid on the block who had avocado on her Weetbix as a child I'm sure).

And then there's dad. Dad is retired and in his 70s but that doesn't stop the man getting up at 5am in the morning and whistling tunelessly for an hour as he gets breakfast and reads the paper (on-line, on his tablet after he's woken me up to help him access the right sites - "damn machines, I like my papers paper" (the fact that he's now reading the Guardian and the New York Post - neither of which ever found their way on to the front lawn of our house in Cane Ridge Road is here nor there). He then goes up to the farm to "help" my brother for several hours - leaving me in captivity with my mother. I bought a second-hand Toyota Rav Four pretty quickly after two days stuck with mum I can tell you.

But I survived and I love them - though just in small doses.

So I can see why my place is the most attractive for my spoilt baby-brother to crash for the Christmas holidays. I do have "plenty of room" - I have so much room he's bringing the boyfriend and another male friend (I'm not even going to ask - they can have the whole bottom (no puns please we're metrosexuals) floor. They are flying into Brisbane, the nearest capital city to our valley and just an hour up the motorway from my humble abode - though it's in an entirely different timezone (an hour behind) and state. But it was easier and cheaper for them to land there and then hire a car for the drive down and their eight-day stay at Castle Megan.

I just moved here about six weeks ago - I wanted somewhere close to my family but still a little isolated so I'm up on a ridge looking down over the ocean at the back of the house with views out to the Tweed Valley the other way. I needed space to paint and just to be away from people and I've always loved this house. I had been in New York for a year and several years in London before that.

I loved both places but all those people and all that processed food and homogenised men has got too much - I'd rather be on my own here than lonely and isolated on the other side of the world.

So here I am painting and "finding myself" again and well, sweltering.

I forgot what it was like to live somewhere hot. Not just hot either but humid, so humid that I swear you can actually see the air that you are breathing and it's heavy like breathing soup and oppressive and if we don't get rain soon I will collapse under it's weight.

I wipe my arm across my brow, I'm only wearing a skimpy light blue singlet top, no bra and the shortest cotton shorts I could manage and I'm still sweltering. For the past few hours I've been drinking a combination of coconut water, lime juice and pineapple juice (wishing I could put some tequila in it too) to try and keep hydrated but I'm still hot as Hades. I get myself some cold water and take a long sip as the alarm goes off on the oven.

Pulling the biscuits out of the inferno that stands in the middle of my kitchen makes the whole house smell divine - only problem is I now feel like I'm living in an oven and I'm making plans to immediately air-condition the house in 36 hours left before Christmas to prevent my death from heat exposure (the only air-conditioned area is my "workshop" where the boys are staying (because could you imagine stepping of a plane from snowy Europe to down-town Pottery Kiln New South Wales right - even I'm not that mean???) I go back to fantasising I'll get someone to come out today right?? They won't be busy?

Realising this plan is financially and physically impossible - particularly because I'd like it to happen right now as I prepare to vacuum the lounge room before my visitors arrive in an hour or two - I head for option two.

I turn on the tap in the kitchen sink and stick my whole head under it, letting the water cascade down over my face and back.

Pulling my strawberry blonde hair from its pony-tail prison I move away from the bench and shake my head dog-like under the giant ceiling fan that serves as the only way of cooling my open-planned lounge-kitchen area. It doesn't do a lot - but it's enough to revive me. I wrestle the vacuum out of the hall cupboard and plug it in before grabbing my iPod and attaching it to my waist. Slamming in the ear buds, I turn it up loud as I can and for the next 15 minutes I'm lost in iPod land completely oblivious to the world at large.

It's only when my vacuum-cleaner suddenly stops that I realise two things - my clever Tweed-born brother automatically adjusted his arrival time into NSW for me and so he was an hour ahead of what I suspected he'd be AND so, I was no longer alone in my loungeroom.