We put the Christmas tree up today. We were able to find the stand in the garage, and it appeared not to have sprung a leak since last year. Neither of these things can be taken as given. We got the tree upright in its pot, tightened the screws, and I cut away the netting tube it travelled home in, which was oddly reminiscent of unwrapping deliveries of plants from Italy. I gave it some water, and we left it until the afternoon to shake itself out, and so that I could decorate it while listening to the Radio 5 film programme.
I love the smell that comes off a newly brought-in Norway spruce. The needle-fast Nordmann fir is all very well, but it doesn't smell like a Christmas tree should. No, Picea abies is the thing, if you are buying one at a garden centre where there's a choice. The fact that it starts shedding leaves on the floor the second it gets into the house is besides the point.
I read an article in the newspaper about how choosing and installing a real Christmas tree is better for you than getting an artificial one, because they represent Nature and contact with Nature helps you withstand stress better than if you are in an entirely man-made environment. I'd like to know more about the experimental methodology before taking that proposition at face value. Did they randomly assign people with different types of tree? Otherwise it might be that the self-selecting group who like living for a fortnight with a piece of sawn-off vegetation dropping needles all over their carpet are naturally more chilled than the tidy souls who choose plastic trees.
The tree seemed quite small when we bought it, compared to the Ents we've become used to, but looked large enough once it was in the house. I can just reach the top while standing on a chair to attach the lights and the angel, whatever height that makes it, say eight feet or so, and it's got no more than six inches of headroom when standing as far in front of the window as its width dictates that it has to. It absorbed both sets of lights (which worked as well) and most of the existing decorations, and now looks very festive, except that a couple of bulbs need changing. I found the spare bulbs, which were actually in a box with the decorations if you can believe that, and like a coward have left the Systems Administrator to switch them over. I have visions that if I do it I'll remove the old bulbs and the string will then never work again.
The SA did suggest we could get a tree for the study as well, since the main tree would not be so large this year. I wasn't utterly convinced, having a more realistic idea of how much Christmas trees cost from normal shops, and thinking that needles on the carpet were one thing but in the bookcases quite another, so made a counter suggestion that we could put some twigs from the wood in a bucket and hang baubles on those for free. We removed a large hazel branch that was slated for the chop anyway because it was crowding a magnolia, and selected a couple of stems. The idea of a bucket was substituted with a terracotta pot, and I wedged the stems in with some cobbles borrowed from the garden for the duration. The SA got a string of white LEDs a couple of days ago in B&Q, where they were the last box on sale and massively discounted since Christmas is over at B&Q. With a week to go they are already dismantling their Christmas displays and replacing them with something else. No matter, one string of lights was all we needed. I couldn't fit all 240 lights in the twigs, but wrapped the surplus around the base of the pot, where they hide the plastic bag it's standing on. I've a fancy to use them after Christmas in the conservatory.
The SA leaves tree decorations to me, and indeed interior decoration in general, on the grounds that I have stronger feelings about how it should be done. This a very good system and I recommend it to all couples. The SA's role is to say that it's very nice when it's finished, whatever it is, just as the SA remembers to say Good haircut when I return home from the hairdresser. The SA's verdict on the twigs were that they were very modern. I'm not entirely sure if they are, or more late 1970s disco, especially when they're set to twinkly mode. Either way I like them, they make the study look vaguely decorated for the festive season, for evenings when we don't feel like trying to crank the sitting room up to operating temperature.
No comments:
Post a Comment