farewell tree

The Christmas tree has finally departed, in a hail of needles.  Twelfth Night may not be for a couple of days, but it felt as though Christmas were over, and having a dead and rapidly balding Picea abies in the sitting room seemed silly.  I packed the decorations into their boxes, the strange hanged cat and giraffe angel from the long defunct Shaker Shop, the bulk baubles bought in a long plastic tube from B&Q, the middle market ones from John Lewis, the lustrous, red, pointed glass danglers bought many years ago from Heals, and the large glass balls from Cracow which came back on my lap as hand luggage in a white cardboard container like a patisserie box.  The stuffed gingham stars from the Warner Textile Archive Christmas fair, and the heavy metal tree and star from Ikea that are so difficult to see that one or the other is always being retrieved from the tree after it has gone on its last trip to the compost area for shredding, all have disappeared back into the spare bedroom wardrobe for another year.

I am always wistful to see the tree go, when I think how pleased I was with it at the beginning when it first went up, and the Systems Administrator always has to remind me that I would not like it so much if it were a permanent feature.  Which was not an option anyway, not with a fresh shower of leaves dropping off each time you touched it, but it's true.  Christmas trees, like feasts, depend for their effect on the long gaps in between when there isn't one.

The cards went in to three piles, a small pile of those requiring replies, or containing vital details like changes of address written in them, a larger heap to be recycled, and an intermediate pile of glittery ones.  I'm not sure whether you are supposed to put glitter in the paper recycling, or if it counts as a contaminant.

The rest of the world is almost back to normal as well.  On Friday afternoon Radio 5 Live broadcast two hours of the film review programme instead of wall to wall sport, which was a step in the right direction, but with stand-in presenters (although I've noticed that in radio parlance temporary hosts always sit in) instead of Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode.  This morning they had Pienaar's politics with John Pienaar himself, and not Mariella Frostrup or Nikki Bedi covering for him, but not much actual politics because parliament isn't sitting and the politicians are all still mostly on holiday. The second half of the programme was given over to pundits making their political predictions for 2015, and there is one thing you can say about predictions, which is that they are generally wide of the mark.

So that's Christmas and the New Year all tidied away for another year.  In the kitchen there are half a dozen medjool dates left, half a packet of marzipan, and a wedge of brie that is still as solid as when I bought it before Christmas.  The Brussel sprout stalk has gone on the compost heap.  One or possibly two chocolates are still lurking in their box, but everything else is finished, eaten, and the washing up done.  Tomorrow I might declare my cold officially over and totter into the New Year, only four days late.