It's All A Question Of Timelines

Anyone who uses Facebook and/or Twitter will know about timelines and how messages and comments appear in a timely fashion so that you can go to where you left off the night/day/week/month before, or just jump in at the top and say 'sod it' to all the vital social messages sent to you by people you have never met before and you'd run a mile from if you were ever asked to meet.

But life, even here in sunny Buttonwood Bay, has timelines too and although I pretty much ignore most of them, being that I'm retired an' all, some events just can't be ignored. In no particular order the ones still outstanding this year are, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the park's Golf Cart Parade.

Yes you read that right......the golf cart parade.

Every year, a couple of weeks before Christmas, a lot of the residents here put time and effort into decorating their golf carts and then at 6pm on the day, drive around the park in convoy to the cheers and applause of the rest of us who stand out to watch this colourful and often very inventive spectacle. Admittedly things get thrown but those tend to be candies from the cart occupants to the open handed (and teeth missing) spectators along the route.

Some of those candies may have soft centres but their shells can crack a tooth at 20 paces even when thrown by an arthritic arm.

Now remember that almost every residence here, and that's about 960 units, has a golf cart to get their elderly occupants from place to place in this large park. But although the potential for a huge convoy is there, usually only about 20 or so take part.

And this event isn't confined to this park or this part of the world. Oh deary me no. Judging from the searches made on my blog at this time of year (as I've posted a few times about previous parades here), the residents of similar parks the length and breadth of this fine country are beavering away as we speak, creating their own mobile masterpieces and are seeking a little help from looking at my photos. I'm not sure how much they'll get as taking photos in the darkness of moving objects, albeit slow moving objects, is not my forte.

Anyway the 2010 Buttonwood Bay Decorated Golf Cart Christmas Parade (or BBDGCCP as I like to call it) will be upon us in a few weeks and no doubt another blog post will follow shortly thereafter. This momentous and not to be missed event takes place between the slightly lesser dates of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yes I know there are other events but I don't have to be PC and mention them....my blog, my rules.

So to get in the mood for all this AND as all the stores in the western world seem to have been displaying festive decorations for some time now, we felt the pressure to put up our Christmas tree a bit early this season. The rule has always been "not till Thankis Geeving be gone and Friday of the Black is hereth, shalt the tree of ornaments and other shiny dangly bittees be foisted upon the hoose dwellers.....forsooth."

Or some such words. I may have misquoted the rule. Verrily.

So this afternoon I did my bit and erected the tree which has been lying dormant for a few years as we never had room for it in our previous place here. Now that we have room aplenty (despite the imminent arrival of a 50" (make sure I got that right this time)) plasma telle), and corners to spare, the tree now stands tall and proud, dripping silently with little bits of tinsel from the last time it saw the light of day.

After Thanksgiving, Debby will throw herself into a favourite task by decorating the tree with sets of twinkling lights (twinkling via the power of electricity) and hanging up all the special ornaments collected and lovingly stored over the past decades. I know she'll be a happy bunny as decorating the 2ft tree that sat on top of the telle in our previous place was just not the same. One decent sized Piglet ornament and it was done !

So here, along with a virtual drum roll, is said tree and reet grand it looks too.

YES IT DOES !!!!


It'll look better when it's lit up.....like a Christmas tree !