Travel chaos
My sympathies to anyone caught up in the travel chaos. The newspapers and talkback radio here have been full of heart-wrenching stories of antipodeans, Brits and others heading to Australia and New Zealand who have been stuck in Europe.
The teacher hoping to come home for the first time in three years to see her sick elderly father, who can only get a seat on a flight that leaves on 29 December, and has to be back in Britain for the first week in January.
The Kiwi student interviewed over Skype on New Zealand television who, again, had not been home for many years and had been saving up for years to make the trip home.
One of my New Year's resolutions is not to use that dog-eared phrase "the tyranny of distance", but it must feel very real to those stranded so far from home with Christmas fast approaching - even if the true culprits are the tyranny of foul weather and the tyranny of my homeland's inability, now annual, to adequately cope with it.
Chronic travel disruption has become as much a fixture of the British winter as the Queen's speech, the midnight chimes of Big Ben, the Pools Panel and George Michael. One would have thought we could do better.
No doubt there are many English cricket fans hoping to get to Melbourne for the Boxing Day test, whose thoughts right now are on stationary aircraft rather than open-top buses.*
Believe me, I feel your pain and at least some of your frustration. My parents were hit by the first wave of Heathrow cancellations on Saturday night and are now scheduled to arrive here on Christmas morning itself.
As I write, more family members are heading to Heathrow in the hope of boarding a flight. To deploy another distance-related cliché, the world is getting smaller, what with the ease of mobile telephony, Twitter, Skype and Facebook (just ask Shane Warne). But it is still not an adequate substitute for face-time.
From a deadlocked election to a drawn Aussie Rules grand final, this has been Australia's year of equivocation. Yet for many air travellers it will also be remembered as the year of cancellation, whether caused by a billowing ash cloud, the grounding of Qantas's fleet of A380s or the present yuletide turmoil.
If it is any consolation - and I suspect that it won't be - the weather here has been decidedly iffy, too. Some parts of south-east Australia have looked a little like parts of south-east England these past few days, with the unusual and unseasonal sight of towns and landscape covered in snow.
This, of course, is supposed to be the height of the southern summer, and the start of the bushfire season, but the Snowy Mountains received snowfalls of 10cm, as did the alpine region in Victoria's winter ski-fields.
Elsewhere, Canberra has just experienced its wettest spring in 25 years, crops in New South Wales have been devastated by flooding, and in the Western Australian town of Carnarvon a police helicopter had to rescue 19 people from the roof of a local pub because of rising flood waters.
So my best wishes and sympathies to anyone who has suffered the misfortune of being stranded. And to Sarah, Rod, Ellie, Katie, Milly and Rory, if, by chance, you are reading this, then I hope it is off a computer screen in Bangkok.
* Australian cricket had its Mark Twain moment in Perth. Reports of its death, etc, etc. Certainly, English fans finally got to see what Australian supporters have witnessed for the past couple of southern summers: the ability of an in-form Mitchell Johnson to bamboozle even the finest batsman with full throttle swing. So bring on Melbourne, the original home of that coveted terracotta urn - another thing, much to the consternation of the Aussies, that will remain grounded in London.
I'm 
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