sawtell.org.au

I admit I'm not doing well at the plan of packing the holidays full of exciting activities, and even worse at blogging every day or two about it. Keeping up with all the nothing I'm doing is hard work.

Tuesday was spent catching up on videos which just happened to be on my computer's hard drive. I've no idea how they got there but thank heavens they did. The alternative is two-hour marathons of Malcolm in the Middle, the Simpsons, or Two and a Half Men. Ever get the feeling that broadcast television is just gloating at us? "We really, really, really don't care about you.

I haven't heard sleigh bells, but the cash registers up and down First Avenue have been ringing. Not being the most observant person, I don't normally notice the holiday tourist traffic beyond surprise at a lot more unfamiliar faces on my way to the post office.

Oh my everything. Not at all well, or entirely clear on what I've been doing for the last 48 hours. I'll try to work backwards.

Allison's parents are up here for a couple of days, arriving late yesterday after long periods spent completely stationary in appalling traffic. For that matter, I've never seen Sawtell so busy. There's a permanent line of parked cars up to our house from the First Avenue shops.

Looking for a place to eat, we found an hour-long queue to the bistro counter at the pub, and presumably another hour or two before orders found their way to the plate stage. With pretty much every place in the street either packed to overflowing, mind-bendingly noisy, cardiac-arrestingly expensive, or some combination of the above, we settled on the RSL.

RSL clubs benefit tremendously from lowered expectations. If they're anything less than repellently ugly, noisy, and populated entirely by unfortunate souls who look more like patients than members, you're pleasantly surprised. By this standard, the Sawtell RSL club is rather fine; the sort of place you'd be embarrassed, but not quite ashamed, to take your in-laws for dinner.

As much as we say we don't celebrate Christmas, you wouldn't know it by looking in our fridge at the moment. Looking at our diet over the last few days, the only clue that we are a pair of die-hard Scrooges is absence of a salad with radishes and green and red pickled onions. On Thursday we went down to Urunga to pick up the prawns and oysters we ordered from Lindsay's Oyster Barn for the Christmas lunch we technically don't do.

So because what was our holiday money is now my dentist's money - not that I'm bitter - we're holidaying at home over the festive season. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to blog about what we do to fill in the time, to showcase everything that Sawtell and environs has to offer the modern, dynamic, recreation-seeking couple.

On Thursday, as we marked the end of the year's work with a wee drinkie at the Sawtell Hotel, we drew up a list of things we could do over the next fortnight. In no particular order: