again6 said:
Yes I would like to hear about this Killer Christmas Tree; not least because they're well known for being vicious bastards when roused.
You asked for it.. it's a lengthy ramble, but all true (if slightly hyperbolic at times)..
The tree.
.....nothing at all wrong with the old one, lovely artificial thing bought a few years ago, could only tell it was fake from about two feet away, didn't shed needles and on twelfth night could be folded up and re-consigned to the attic for an eleven month hibernation.
On Sunday, I braved the loft, avoided putting my foot between rafters this time, retrieved the box and depoisited same in the living room: box opened, I eagerly (relative term, that) started to tease the fused joints apart, twig by twig, branch by branch recreating the authentic look of..
"Throw it away. We're getting a real one this year."
"Eh?"
"Throw it away. It looks awful. Go and buy a tree." (this last delivered with an alarming finality).
Nearest shop selling trees? End of my road. About 150 yards. Nearest shop selling
real trees? A mile further on. Run by a chap called Roy. Ambled along, assayed the selection cunningly blocking the pavement outside the shop (great selling tactic, BTW, Roy: physically impede the progress of potential customers so they're forced to look at your wares), and made my selection. A six foot pine, deep jade in colour, scented like a Swedish forest in Autumn. £16.00.
"That one's taken." said Roy.
"Ah." said me. "Got another one, same sort of size?"
"Stacks of them mate. Follow me." he replied, giving no indication that this was the first of many inaccurate or indeed downright mendacious statements he was to make in the next five minutes.
"Can you deliver?" I asked.
"Oh yes." said Roy.
I emerged with an eight foot pine, lovingly wrapped in a big white fishnet stocking and £18.00 down on the deal.
"When will you bring it round?" I asked.
"Can't." said Roy. "Not that one, anyway. Too big. Now if you'd have bought a
six foot tree..."
"But you didn't have any left!"
"Should have come earlier."
My fault then. This left me with something of a brain teaser: being splendidly ecological and carless, how to transport an eight foot tree a mile along an urban pavement?
*****
It's remarkable, when stood at a bus stop with a large conifer, in December, how many people will actually ask you whether it's a Christmas tree. After a while, and lots of scope for experimentation, decided on "No, it's lost", which seemed to oddly satisfy most curiosities.
"Not with that, you can't." said the bus driver.
"Why not?" I asked, eyeing the empty bus bar two schoolkids shagging at the back.
"Safety hazard. What would happen in a crash?" he asked.
"Doubt if it would get hurt." Well, I thought that was a fair point.
*****
I watched the departing bus diminish into the gloom. OK, I thought, I walk this twice a day on average and a whole lot more, the tree isn't
that heavy...
There's three ways of carrying an eight foot tree (believe me, there are just three, having tested this to exhaustion). On your shoulder, Lumberjack style; under your arm, Mafiosi violin case style; or in a sort of diagonal bear hug. The first two have the disadvantage of having people's eyes out, snagging wing mirrors and aerials and jousting old ladies with Ben Hur tartan trolleys into the gutter; however, it makes carrying easy.
The third way is much more other-pedestrian friendly, but from the POV of the carrier not only obstructs an entire half of the field of vision (further bad news for the Ben Hur tartan shopping trolley brigade), but also brings a lot of tree into close proximity with your body. Most of the latter was fortunately clothed (not a given, necessarily, but that's another story) but my lower forearms, and the right hand side of my neck and face were pressed against a needly tree, albeit wrapped as earlier mentioned in a big white fishnet stocking. Needly and resiny. Resiny allergicy, as I discovered after about 800 yards (on inspection en route in a shop window I looked uncomfortably like Two Face from the Batman movies).
There is also a third disadvantage to this method of carriage. The aforementioned big white fishnet stocking starts to slip off. Wouldn't be a problem if you carry your eight foot pine trees in a diagonal bear hug
upside down: however, my renowned lack of forethought had prevailed once more. Now I had branches sticking into my right thigh every second step, plus a rather neat grappling hook effect every time I passed a lamp-post (or indeed. elderly lady with Ben Hur style tartan shopping trolley - oh, the points I accrued yesterday...)
As I turned the corner into my road, within sight of my house, by now sobbing gently to myself, my neighbour drew up alongside me in his Renault Fertility wagon. With a tree strapped to the roof rack.
"Alright Stu, want a lift along the road with that?"
*******
...of course, once you've got an eight foot conifer home, it's large white fishnet stocking by now covering the uppermost branches only and trailing down like an enormous bed-cap, then the most potentially lethal problem faces you.
Or faced me at least: some elementary geography. My front door isn't as wide as a tree. Also, owing to a wall mounted coat rack just behind it, the front door itself will only open to about 80 degrees. The front hall is quite small, only about 6 by 6 feet, and is cluttered with radiator, pictures, meter cupboard, coats, skateboards (will feature later, not in the manner you predict) and so on. Once inside, there is a stark choice: immediate 90 degree left turn to get into the living room, or go upstairs. As close as the tree and I had now become, I felt it was too early in our relationship to take it upstairs so opted for the living room.
Mentally opted for the living room. Physically was still stood outside, tree with nearly all branches now akimbo, rain gently cooling my semi-leprous complexion. Would clearly have to reverse into house and perform a complicated pirouette manoeuvre - nothing ventured, and all that, grabbed the needly trunk and tugged in the manner of the children’s tale involving a large turnip and assorted yokels. Fortunately the tree co-operated, and the small hallway now contained, in addition to the previous list, me in overcoat and hives, and an eight foot tree. And a small drift of needles (“Won’t shed!” said Roy, the mendacious tree-grocer not half an hour before).
Reached round tree, opened living room door – there was furniture between me and the destination spot, a patch of suspiciously clean carpet in the far corner, previously occupied by an armchair (now languishing in the bedroom, in the way). Of course between me and the furniture was the doorway, also cunningly smaller than the tree. In fact, between the doorway and me was the sodding tree. A swift semi-waltz and I backed into the living room: the tree attempted to follow me, having perhaps duckling like identified me as it’s mother but was thankfully impeded by the doorway – so it stood, leaning in and balefully shedding needles into the living room.
It’s quite a large lounge, but to compensate have a lot of furniture. Most of which was now in the way: the sofa, bigger than me (fortunate considering the amount of time I spend on it), would have to be upended, and another armchair transported into the kitchen through another narrow doorway: joy! skinned knuckles too!! just what I needed!
This done, having now removed my coat (stupid: reason hoving into view in a second) pulled the tree through the living room doorway (cue more needles), held the tree in close to me…and realised that my coat, heavy overthing that it is, had afforded at least part of me some protection from the thing. Now, in a sweat shirt and jeans, my entire body was vulnerable to it’s prickly intentions. I felt not unlike that bit in Tommy where the Acid Queen puts him in an iron maiden and the syringes all go in at the same time. Calamine Lotion shares would rise by the end of trading.
I’d already located the base, a manhole cover sized lump of cast iron in the spot where I intended to put the tree (or Bernard, as I’d deliriously begun to address it) and now attempted to tango with him that a-way, a sharp green carpet magically appearing in our wake, and we reached the spot, the base with it’s gaping maw awaiting the trunk…
and it was too big. The trunk was too wide, owing to knots and stumps at the bottom where branches had been removed (“That’ll fit! Don’t worry! Simple job to trim it down if needs be!” – Roy, you’d better have a good lawyer).
So, there I am. Attempting to cue lever a tree upright from the bottom whilst trying to guide said tree into an immovable object too small to accommodate it. On my chest, arms and thighs, the collected works of Tolstoy in vivid red Braille was rapidly materialising, and I was so far gone I had named a frigging tree “Bernard”. Bernard, perhaps sensing his intended fate, made a last, desperate bid for freedom, I leapt to my feet, as he fell onto me, and, needles falling down my back and in my hair I heroically wrestled him back to the vertical…
“That’s not a six foot tree. I asked for a six foot tree. That’s not a six foot tree.”
Oh crap, she’s been watching Taxi Driver again…
“I know, They didn’t have any six foot trees left” (or rather, by the time it had penetrated the foliage, “mwah mmungle mwuh monng”)
“Where did you go? B&Q?”
“ No, Roy’s Vegetation and Fraud emporium”
“Oh, yes, always what’s easiest with you, isn’t it?”
easiest?
“Well, I’m not helping you.” Exit stage left. And then, from the hall way “And do something about these needles.” Front door closed.
I looked at Bernard, and for a delirious second he looked at me. A real tree/man bonding moment. I leaned him to the side, and fetched my saw. A brief amputation later, involving lots of sawdust, needles, and colourful language, finally Bernard took pride of place, snugly in his stand.
*****
…. Having unravelled the lights with due care and attention, having screwed them up into a ball without any care or attention about eleven months ago and entombed them in an empty shortbread tin like a kidnap victim, for some reason they now just didn’t work. Flicked switch on and off, changed sockets, peered at wiring, pushed bulbs further in. Nada. Opened the shortbread tin to see if I’d kept the instruction leaflet – miraculously (and I use the word advisedly) it was there (I usually take a match to any set of instructions as soon as I open the box, just to dispel any later lingering doubts as to whether I saved them or not. Besides, it adds a splendid frisson to assembling flat pack furniture).
The instructions read (and I quote)
When lights is not up lighting!
– flying start there then –
be then look to light and see if crack or damage too
…okay….
and is check wire is faulty too
…no no, wire not faulty too..
then if not of above then one bulb or more have not working now
…oh good…
and then way to fix is take bulb and replace with spare that is work now
gee, thanks. My fault (would be anyway) for allowing the Scot in me to inform the purchase. £10 in Debenhams? Pah! Humbug! Give me £3.00 from…should have remembered, Roy’s Vegetation and Fraud Emporium (qv).
Sat on floor, flex coiled around me like a python, and took the spare bulb (despite having no realistic way of knowing whether it worked or not) and one by one removed each bulb in sequence, replaced it with the spare, flicked the switch, when nothing happened (as if it would) then moved on to the next one, having replaced the original suspect into it’s little green socket. As I approached the last bulb, the utter fatuousness of this activity had already made itself abundantly clear: these lights were not going to work. They were Kamikaze lights, like the WW2 Zeros, built just light and fast enough to go one way faster than the defending squadrons. Besides, who on Earth is cheap enough to believe that if you put a £3.00 string of lights of unidentified Far Eastern provenance into a cold loft for eleven months that they’ll work again upon retrieval?
Me. So I continued with the bulb replacement farrago to the bitter end, just out of spite.
Nothing. What about the
fuse? Ah. Fuse. Changed fuse. Flicked switch.
Light!!
For a nano-second, accompanied by a bang, and all the electrical equipment in the room juddering into abrupt silence and darkness.
Ah.
After brief sojourn in meter cupboard (remember the skateboard I mentioned earlier? Coming up shortly, in case you were concerned
) returned to tree and gentle consideration of my next move, accompanied by rabid scratching and swearing. Decided lights could wait. Baubles!
Opened bauble box. Two remained unbroken. Why so many casualties? The skateboard (you’re all intelligent people. You can fill in the gaps. Suffice to say the back of my head was now developing a lump too).
Tinsel? About three feet of it. Tatty. Assorted kitsch ornaments, ditto.
Right. Assayed self in mirror: scarlet and lumpy face, left hand appearing to swell alarmingly – briefly considered putting bag on head, big mitten and oversized cap on and seeing if I could get chased round St Pancras in black and white ( “I’m not an animal! I’m in adult education!”). Decided instead to brave crowds sans bag etc, and headed into town.
My local bus is one of
those - timetable says every twenty minutes, reality says when it bloody wants to, and in the last full shopping week before Christmas, when the local constabulary are telling everyone not to drive into town as there are too many cars there already, said buses tend to be fairly full (or utterly empty, bar two schoolkids in
flagrante delicto, as they are two minutes behind a bus packed with people, and will refuse boarding rights to people carrying such trifles as eight foot pine trees). So there I stood, in the drizzle behind a squadron of Ben Hur Tartan Shopping trolleys, waiting for the omnibus equivalent of the Flying Dutchman, whilst my co-queuees tried not to look directly at my complexion, lest they a) contract it or indeed b) turn to salt. Some may have been victims of my earlier joustings, but TBH they all look the same to me without foliage in the very immediate foreground.
For once that day (and it was just the once at that) God smiled upon me. I could get on the bus. Standing room only, short ride, so Walkman on, stare manfully into middle distance like those chaps who stand together in catalogues wearing underpants and vests, and behaving as if this was entirely normal. The walkman did to a degree mask the frequent juvenile comments along the lines of “Mummy, why has that man got a Halloween mask on?” and so on, and I eventually alighted, long coat swishing, like Dark Man into the crowding throng.
I strode, Moses like, parting the masses into Debenhams, found a hapless assistant in santa hat and lost expression and asked her where the tree decorations were, in my best, no-nonsense, don’t-look-at-my-face-in-pity-I-mean-business-and-am-in-a-hurry manner. I was not to be trifled with. I was the man in form, the man who got things done.
They were behind me.
I mumbled my gratitude and examined the vast range. I didn’t want blinking lights. I didn’t want lights that played music. I didn’t want lights that were every shade of hair colour Molly Sugden ever sported. I wanted lights that were small and white, and stayed on. In truth, I’d have robbed Blackpool Illuminations by now, but someone else wanted white lights that stayed on, and following my outrageous faux pas of buying a tree two feet too tall (Oh the shame of it! And the neighbours saw me!) I had to make amends somehow. I relocated my Santa-hatted oracle and beseeched of her the whereabouts of white lights that stayed on.
They too were right behind me. In a box, which was labelled “A box of Debenhams Small White Lights that Stay On, Stuart.” Alright then, I made that last bit up. £10. Excellent. Big box of baubles. Some candy canes. Various ornaments. Paid. Left. Got bus home (prosaic, this bit, but utterly uninteresting so keeping it simple).
Walked in to house, following momentary panic that had lost keys (always in the other pocket).
Tree no longer vertical. Tree now at twenty five degrees, roughly (sorry can’t be more precise than that, but theodolite is in hock again). Needles now infested every inch of carpet and sofa upon which it had capsized - the sofa being the only obstacle to it being supine upon the floor. The manhole-sized lump of cast iron was no match for Bernard.
I cunningly used existing picture hooks in the wall behind his intended location, and arranged guy-ropes to keep the wayward bugger in place - now festooned with lights and tinsel and red-foil wrapped confectionary and fragile splinter grenades sprayed silver, it stood like a sentry, in the corner, resolutely going nowhere. Almost worth the all the hassle.
Almost.
Reckoned without cat at 3.00 am. Not even our cat, but friend's cat, as he'd sensibly gone to the Black Forest for Christmas, with lots of trees all around where they belong, ie outside and in the ground.
If a tree falls in a room with no-one around, will it still make a sound?
Yes, particularly if there's a cat clinging to it like the giant kitten in The Goodies, and the resultant collapse takes a lump of plaster from the lounge wall with it, too.
The next year, I bought a good synthetic tree, just like the old one.
And the lights didn't work.
) who had a conspiricy theory about the renial unit of ST Marys' hospital in Portsmouth that took him from Robert Kilroy Silk, to Sinn Fien and beyond...And also about his (Not his own mind, his friend 'Phemie') DIY funeral and embalming. Only cost him £160.00.
