I’ve decided to make this photo into our Christmas card for 2011. It was taken just about 12 months ago, when the cottage was snow-bound for some weeks. (Click here for other photos of that month).

The much-treasured Santa bulb is one of four that Jane and I discovered decades ago in Miami Beach, of all places, in a little store a few blocks away from Ocean Drive.  This was, of course, years before the Beach became all swish and tarted up and the likes of Gianni Versace moved in. In those days the art deco hotels around the Drive were peeling and neglected, and you would be practically on your own if you walked past them, exciting great interest in the little old (mainly Jewish) ladies who spent their declining days seated on aluminum chairs on the hotel porches staring out to sea.

How come these hotels hadn’t simply been pulled down and replaced? After all, not many buildings in prime locales have survived from the 30s and 40s.  The thing is that it was simply easier for developers to buy up virgin seafront land farther north up the coast than go to the trouble of arranging demolition.  If you head up Collins Avenue you get a potted history of hotel styles from the 1950s and onwards, notably the Fontainebleau (pronounced ‘Fountain Blue’) from 1954 which featured in the opening shots of Goldfinger ten years later, and where Shirley Eaton ended up covered in gold and very much dead.  (Click for the opening scene with its amazing aerial shot, ending up at the hotel pool).

I won’t be heading to Miami Beach any time soon, however.  I went to Miami every year, usually for Christmas, while my mother was alive, but I haven’t been there since the memorial service held at the lovely home where she ended her days.

In fact, when I think of Miami Beach at all, it is before it was taken over by the ‘beautiful people’,  when you could park on Collins Avenue and stroll around looking at the buildings not the poseurs.  And when there were still little shops where you could buy Santa bulbs, and other beautiful Christmas decorations, not tourist trash.

                                                          Happy Christmas, everyone.