These Days

Via Wishful Thinking

After three days of temperatures topping 35 degrees, we are back in Sydney which in contrast, is currently covered in a fine, misty rain with temperatures barely touching 20. It’s a shock to the system. Summer has been truly magical and the sudden cold snap has made me all the more reluctant to let go of these hot, lazy days. I have just devoured the latest issue of my favourite mag (Country Style) and read a little excerpt by Hilary Burden that I have cut out and stuck on my fridge. An Ode to an Australian Summer if you will…

Just be lizard-lazy in January. The month lets you: go with it. With Christmas frenzy put away, these are the days to slop into holidays, live more at the beach, plan only picnics, sprawl in the shade of a tree on cool grass, whip clouds into shapes with just your imagination. Slow down.

            Tune in to what David Malouf calls “the insect-simmer of grass”.

January is when a sense of Australia comes into its own. We play. Relax. Read books. Go to festivals. Find our nature by lingering. Being ourselves. It’s a month we dream of all year. We close our eyes and see striped-towels on white sand; cool beads of sea clinging to warmed-up skin; ice cream rivers dripping down chins; toes unfurling into thongs… It’s okay to be messy, eat with your fingers.

Bodies arc into the crests of waves, get cupped into hammocks. Here in Tasmania, twilight lasts so long it almost butts up to next morning’s dawn. Resting makes sense of the day when it lasts this long.

Now’s not the time to think too hard or else the innocence of a new year will be lost. This month is a route to reliving childhoods when life seemed simpler, less full of rules or plans. When the hay’s away, take off. Get to the shack, go camping, make the most of the only month of the year that’s school-free; the month when life can teach us. Be a lizard. Joyous January.

Words by Hilary Burden, author of A Story of Seven Summers. Published in Country Style, January 2015