Everything is one big Christmas tree...

We are getting our Christmas tree next week...

You probably remember from previous years' diatribes that the husband has a penchant for a big one when it comes to a Norwegian spruce.  Big enough to warrant having all male children and the girls' partners on hand to lever the tree into a bucket of stones without wiping out the pictures on the walls or the downstairs loo. (One year this was inaccessible for two weeks.  Say no more).  But this year is different. 

For some unfathomable reason, the Tree Farm is insisting that we collect our tree next Thursday.  I expect that this is because when gone it will free up space for six normal trees, a five foot tall wicker reindeer, a whole shelf of Nativity scenes and a sledge (well, you never know).  But the problem is that on a Thursday afternoon, it will just be me and the husband wrestling the tree into the house.  With all of our children in gainful employment or cooped up in a university library, we are very thin on the ground where helpers are concerned and I have a dreadful image of the husband pinned to the staircase straddled by a 16' tree while I am crumpled up in the corner beside myself with laughter.

So he's going to look for some assistance.  He hasn't mentioned this to our neighbours as yet, in case they take to hiding behind the sofa every time he walks down their drive, but let's just assume that we actually manage to get the blasted thing off the trailer, into the house, and propped up in an almost vertical position in the well used and loved tree bucket.

Then what?

Well it needs decorating of course.  I can't be trusted with putting the lights on, so the husband will do this, after which I will stand 6' away and squint at the lights and move them to where there are any pools of darkness.  (All this will be done while he is having a lie down in a dark room having completely used up his whole week's energy supply in one and a half hours).

Decorating the tree is normally a family occasion, with some/all of the kids being around to help me place two suitcases' worth of baubles onto the tree.  This can take up to four hours to do.  Mind you, having said that, that particular year was when some bright spark decided that drinking was an excellent accompaniment to the hanging of fragile glass baubles on a prickly tree.  

But this year it's just me.  I reckon I might have the tree fully decorated by New Year's Eve, at which point, the husband will suggest...

'Time to take the tree down?'

This comment is followed about three hours later by 'Doesn't our hall look big without the tree on it?'

No my love, it's not that our hall is big, it's just that for three weeks of the year it turns into a small room housing a Triffid-like tree which takes no prisoners.

And I absolutely love it...


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