December goes with cream: the mango files, and Christmas

I had a nice couple of weeks staying with my family-out-of-law this month. It was interesting to experience the lead-up to Christmas in someone else's house, and the way all this pressure and anticipation of family arriving and wanting your normal existence to go on while planning for a celebration kind of.. affects the dynamics of a house and of a bunch of people.
One thing I noticed early on: what happens with the politics of mangoes up here (in Brisbane)?

Some families have traditions of gifting mangoes to each other when part of the family lives in north Queensland, and those mangoes stay in the family. A friend of mine felt proud ownership of and looked forward to eating a couple of mangoes cheap at the fruit shop when price had since gone up. The friend's housemate, from Darwin, would have put mango in everything if it were feasible and paid us to get a box of them from the markets.

During my two weeks surrounded by the things (there were three boxes ripening outside the room where I slept), I learned to like them plain, though accompanying other things is still my preference.

Christmas may or may not get a post. We shall see you soon, though...