Lili Marlene's Christmas tip for parents of teen and pre-teen kids - make an early Christmas gift of a new address book before the end of the school year, if your teen does not already have one. I like those address books and diaries that have the fancy gold edging (or silver seems to be the colour in fashion at the moment) and contain all manner of useless information, such as the telephone area code for Caracas and the metric conversion from pennyweights to grams. There's no such thing as too much information!

And here's another Christmas tip for edible gift-giving in Australia - give marzipan instead of boring old chocolates. Marzipan doesn't melt and the almond meal is good for the bowels.

And here's another Christmas tip for Australians living in new or decrepit suburbs - plan for the possibility that the power supply infrastructure will fail at some time during the Christmas break, especially if there is a heat wave or a storm.