This year's tree

Only a couple more days until the tree has to come down and be thrown out. This year we need to make sure we ask the council to come and take it away. Last year's got put ouside in the garden and stayed there until the summer. It was taken over as a hiding place by Wookie, even after it had lost all its greenery. We finally chopped it up to make space for the barbecue. Wookie was very upset. This year I have kept the tree very simple - I never have tinsel, but this year I have stuck with just gold and glass. I was worried about how to get tree chocolates to fit in with the scheme (tree chocolates are a must, or Bex gets upset), but on a trip to Marylebone High Street discovered the perfect tree chocolate - can you tell which one it is?


They were pricier than usual, but as always, I go for the look of the thing. Luckily, they taste good.


It will be a shame to lose the tree, as it still looks great. The needles haven't dropped, and the branches are still springy and fresh.

I experimented for a few years with artificial trees (one year was the legendary "bottle-brush" version, and I had a huge white tree for a few years until it turned grey with dust which was impossible to clean off), but it seems that real trees, which look and smell so good, are actually more environmentally friendly than fake ones anyway, and don't take up valuable space in storage. The only difficulty is in getting the tree home. Bex did a fantastic job of bringing this year's tree home (single-handedly) on the bus. And then did the decorating, too! Tree chocolates were well-deserved.