Aussie Jingle Bells
Vaguely based on the Colin Buchanan song of the same title. Double drabble.
Beckett sighed. A house full of Fowls, and a house full of McLeods, on the same day. Why had he agreed to this, again? Mum and Dad looking vaguely insulted at the plastic wineglasses, and, worse, Artemis looking outright insulted by them.
Someone's Uncle Bruce, whose he doesn't exactly know, got stuck into the good wine Beckett bought because no Fowl was going to drink wine that came in a box, and fell into the pool. Steve and Ern fished him out, and he seemed to be fine. Sam's drinking it too, but Beckett's fairly certain Sam appreciates the difference as much as he does.
The buffet table includes such delights as burnt sausages, beautifully roasted turkey (thank you, Juliet), slightly undercooked potato salad, Sam's homemade tabouleh, and the day before yesterday's coleslaw still in the supermarket tub (for which he suspects Bertie to be responsible).
Mitchell, Kath, Bea, Sam's daughter, Melissa's boyfriend's daughter, and more kids he can't place at all, are out on the lawn playing Frisbee with Kath's dads' Kelpie-cross-something, and Holly, Flora, Melissa and Bertie are hiding inside from the sun.
On the bright side, Sam and Juliet seem to be getting on well.
Charred barbecue, grog-in-a-box, supermarket coleslaw, plastic wineglasses and over-imbibers are all things that show up my family's functions, just to make it clear this is Aussie rural working-class unsophistication in general Beckett is being a snob about. Not that anyone's ever fallen in the pool, but that's because no member of my family has ever had one.