So look, somebody stole my Christmas presents. That’s as good a prompt for reflection as any at the close of one year and the opening of another. I didn’t tell anyone at the time. It would really be far too much of a festive conversation killer on the video call home to Ireland.
Plus, I could think of no way to say it that wouldn’t make me sound like a whiny baby, but I’m telling you now because I’m not above knocking a column out of it. I figure that here in the Sisyphean depths of January, as we all crawl resentfully on stiff joints toward pay-day, it might elicit a chuckle of Schadenfreude from the darker recesses in us all.
There are doubtless a few people reading this who might consider it for the best that a columnist for The Irish Times have their Christmas presents stolen. A matter of public policy even. Isn’t it good enough for them, and such. Such people wouldn’t be entirely wrong – we’re arguably prone to a lack of perfect humility at times. The universe may simply be restoring balance by arranging to have someone pilfer my Notions Christmas-tree-scented candle and my cartoon print of a fat guy sitting on a bench with the caption “I hate human beings”.
I had to try not to chuckle myself, to be honest, having woken up on Christmas morning to find my husband in the kitchen, visibly upset that someone had stolen the Lego Mona Lisa he bought for me to assemble during my week off. “I stored the gifts I got you downstairs so you wouldn’t find them,” he said. “Somebody broke in and took them.” In fairness, I would have felt absolutely dreadful in his position, but was also conscious that if somebody stealing your fancy bits and pieces at Christmas is the worst of your problems, you’re doing fine overall.
Somebody broke in and stole our Christmas gifts – but I felt a sense of gratitude
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Here in Canberra, one of the things you’ll struggle to comprehend as an Irish person upon first renting a property (apart from the fact that a dishwasher is considered standard rather than an indulgent luxury for out-of-touch idiots) is that apartments come with storage. Lots of it.
Newish buildings have underground parking and each apartment has its own storage cage next to its parking space beneath the building. You padlock your cage, which is like a tiny shed with a wire mesh roof, and store larger items in there (like the huge, empty suitcases you used when you emigrated, or your artificial Christmas tree) which aren’t very tempting to steal, but would be cumbersome to keep in your apartment – your apartment which also, incidentally, has a lot of storage. Because cupboards and wardrobes are also not seen as the sole remit of oligarchs and leaders of industry, despite their being considered along the lines of a Fabergé egg by Dublin landlords.
Much about Australian life remains alien to me.
No doubt any Australian reading this will think that only a chump would store Christmas gifts in a storage cage overnight, and they’d have a point. Still, it’s easy to relax and feel more trusting here. Canberra is not a big shrieking city like London. It has none of the gritty bustle of Dublin. For someone who has lived in those cities, Canberra feels both very quiet and pretty safe, despite a growing and visibly intensifying homelessness problem that is mirrored in every western city.
For the most part, you don’t walk about with the sense that someone might imminently chloroform you and harvest your kidneys. Although you will frequently come across people with addiction issues, many of whom are clearly not mentally well, and who are sort of ignored by the city as though rendering them invisible constitutes a form of compassion.
[ After years living in Ireland, everything in Australia feels suspiciously easyOpens in new window ]
Someone had come in with bolt cutters on Christmas Eve, like the Grinch himself, and torn through the locker (along with six other lockers), throwing said empty suitcases and other sundries out on to the ground as they searched, presumably, for whatever they could resell on Facebook marketplace. We found the voucher himself had bought me for the local indoor plant shop here in Canberra strewn on the ground nearby, a short distance from the koala-festooned Christmas card it had been carefully placed in.
The plant shop, incidentally, is called The Green Vine and is very much worth a visit if you find yourself in the city. It’s a peaceful haven for – mostly, let’s be honest – girls and women who like to grow things and have a crush on the squashy-faced French bulldog, Rocky, who belongs to the owner and accepts callers – ie lets strangers rapturously pet him while giving him compliments.
I was delighted to find the discarded voucher, if a bit sad at the thief’s evident contempt for a nice aspidistra.
It might have been one of those experiences, as an immigrant, that makes you feel less welcome in a new country, but it didn’t. Even as we picked our mostly valueless property up off the car park floor, I still marvelled at the fact that you get storage. At how good things are, really, that this was the worst problem I had after waking on a belting hot summer Christmas morning.
I hoped that the thief needed my fancy bits and pieces more than I did, because stealing people’s gifts on Christmas Eve is, let’s be frank, an unequivocally sh**e thing to do. I hoped that it was sheer desperation that led them to it rather than callous disregard, though of course enough of one can generate the other.
We begin a new year here in Australia without the scent of Notions Christmas trees in the apartment, but with a sense of gratitude, nonetheless. Not quite to the thief, because I’m really not that magnanimous, but for the reminder of how lucky we are (and, crucially, how much storage comes as standard).
