Seasonal Tree Hugging

This weekend has, frankly, been inordinately exciting. Yesterday, My First Christmas tree was purchased. Being a Christmas tree virgin, I was cannily warned by my brother-in-law that I must use all my worldly powers to avoid getting over excited, pointing out the first tree I see, jumping up and down, hands clapping, grin as wide as a bus and yelling "I'll take it".

Thus, I ended up walking around the dwindling collection of trees for some time, pulling at the needles (another tip from helpful brother-in-law), trying hard not to get over exciting and feeling like I might never find myself the perfect tree I was looking for.

But then...
Yes, then, I found the tree. The perfect tree. Much clapping of hands, jumping up and down and grinning like a lunatic occured. Erm... and then I had to get it home. Which was complicated. And heavy. But not done alone, thank goodness.

Carrying a Christmas tree home brings a whole new meaning to "hugging a tree" - as I discovered the best way of carrying the thing was infact to appear as if I was a twelve year old doing a slow dance at the school disco. As my arms started to tire, however, I had to turn the tree so that it was horizontal. And, much to the amusement of my "carrying" companion (yes - not much carrying going on there), my carrying degenerated into a sort of Laurel and Hardy type affair.

The tree being five feet and the pavement being three feet, with various lamp posts, parking signs and bins situated along it's length, it was bound to happen. As I made my way up the street, with little awareness of the space my tree was hogging, a comedy scene ensued, as I managed to clobber almost every single post and bin with the tree trunk, haul several bushes and small trees out out of people's landscaped front gardens with the other end and attempt to unwittingly gouge at the eyes of an innocent passer-by.

But there is little doubt it was all worth it, as I now have a beautiful tree sitting in the living room, waiting to be decorated (apparently you have to give it a day to let the branches drop...hmph).