Only 3 doors left...

Today - albeit belatedly - my Mum, my brother and I went to get our Christmas tree. This is always an activity which inspires me to feel Christmassy, and indeed it did - although this year, it seemed somewhat less glamorous.

The atmosphere at the forestry (where we went to get our centerpiece of festive verdure) felt like that of at a Nazi concentration camp shortly before it was to be overrun by the Americans. Resembling more of a barren compound than a place for purveying that essential piece of Christmas kit, the perimeter fence was neatly trimmed with barbed wire. As we drove through the large iron gates, several forklift trucks were whizzing about as they carried several limp and muddy trees to a large central pile for burning. Indeed, I now smell of wood smoke as they had already started to dispatch with some of the more woebegone ones. In the middle, a man called out orders. For the unsold trees, it was too late.

This all felt rather sad, and as we trudged around the proliferation of Nordmann Firs, Siberian Spruces et al, it soon became clear that the best ones were long gone. Firstly, we picked up a rather squat one, it was too small and misshapen so we put it back. Then proceeded a considerable time of heaving up trees, in the process - picking one's fingers, realising the thing's foliage was horrifically misshapen, and then dropping it down again. In the end, our fingers randomly perforated, we settled for the first one.

All this goes to show: buy your tree early! If you do not heed this warning, you'll end up with what we got - the runt of the litter. Nevertheless, this runt was reduced to an amazing £5 pounds and at the moment, I have that feeling you must get when rescuing a stray dog from the cusp of being destroyed. All in all, not too bad a day though - only 3 more to go until the big one!