Christmas in July

I’m not entirely sure of the reasoning behind it, but it seems to be somewhat of a tradition in Australia to celebrate Christmas twice a year. I assume it has something to do with the fact that Christmas on December 25th is in high summer and is therefore usually a boiling hot day, whereas in Europe it is celebrated in the middle of winter and so, to redress the balance and have a ‘cold Christmas’ the Aussies like to do the whole thing again in July, which is their winter. In Mackay, however, it is not in the slightest bit cold, not even chilly, except possibly at night. And so at the Gordon White library we celebrated Christmas in July with, yes you guessed it, a massive big feast with all the Christmas trimmings. Del co-ordinated the event which was executed like clockwork, with vegetables and puddings provided by various members of the team. We ate in two sittings at lunch time, so as to provide an uninterrupted service for our customers :-) The meat-eaters had chicken and boiled ham, while I had a delicious nut roast that Del had cooked specially for me. This was accompanied by roast potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans and lashings of gravy. For pudding we had a choice of syrup dumplings, trifle, or sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce; but why choose one when you can have all three?! It was a lovely day and really just yet another excuse to eat lots of nice food and have a good chat with your work colleagues. It’s a really good idea, with none of the usual stress, worry and financial meltdown associated with Christmas in December. I think I should import this idea into Britain!


Earlier in the day we had our full staff meeting and this month we heard the nominations for the Nancy Award. This is a really lovely idea that Mackay libraries have invented, the aim of which is to ask members of the team to nominate their colleagues for the award which is designed to honour the 'quiet achiever', that is the person who gets on with their work with minimum fuss and fanfare, and who is a real asset to the team. The award is named after Nancy Pearl, the famous American librarian, and the award itself is a Nancy the Librarian action figure - with added shushing action! It's really nice to hear everyone reading out their nominations and thanking their colleagues for a job well done. I nominated Troy who works at one of our smaller branches, in Sarina. I have been working with Troy quite a bit recently because their library is getting a bit of a facelift and I have been going down to help weed their collection. Troy is great fun and is always smiling. Since working with her we have built up a great rapport. I was thrilled when Troy actually won the award, and it also coincided with her anniversary for 25 years with the library service. Well done Troy - you deserved it!