We knew it was coming; it was inevitable. Most likely this isn't the first sign, but it's the first one I've noticed this year. It's only the first week of October. There are still (almost) three months to go but they're already out there, emerging from the darkness to which they had been consigned for the last few months, just as this one is.

Christmas Decorations!

They may look harmless, but soon our senses will be assaulted once again by the unbridled horror of Bing Blankin' Crosby singing about white Christmases in our 40 degree (Celsius, for you Americans) heat, and the repeated, repeated tale of Rudolph the Bleeping Red Nosed Reindeer. Candy canes and Christmas trees will adorn every corner, bright and shiny balls will hang from every branch, and corpulent jolly gentlemen will be Ho-Ho-Hoing under them for months on end!!!!

Does anyone know a good cave in an ocean-facing cliff far away from shopping malls that I can lock myself up in until, oh, say, the middle of January?

Humbugging through no snow
In a Mitsu, not a sleigh
From manufactured cheer I go,
I must get away!
A Christmas photoshoot's the thing,
To escape this awful fright,
A Canberra hotel I must ring,
For a 4 star Christmas night!

Oh shooting dells, carillon bells,
and sheep farms on the way,
Or anything that is not Bing
Nor Rudolph on the Hume Highway!

2 hour spells the Tom Tom tells
"You should now take a break,
But do not fear, there's no Christmas cheer
on Burley Griffin Lake!"