Festive bus ticket
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.
I was tempted to come over all bah humbug this year and only give house room to decorations made from used bus tickets and / or parsnip peelings. But then housemate L asked in a small voice if we had any tinsel or if she should go and buy her own and I caved pretty quickly and hauled the box of shiny things out of the loft.
Then she asked if I knew of anywhere within walking distance selling Christmas trees. Tell you what, I said, I'll pick one up when I go to buy some firewood.
And so it was that yesterday, being a lady of leisure on Tuesdays at the moment, I tootled off to Bagley Wood Sawmill.
I adore Bagley Wood Sawmill. It smells fresh and damp and woody, and rugged men in padded shirts and fingerless gloves appear to tip barrowfuls of logs into the back of your car and advise on axe wielding techniques. You glimpse a parallel universe where you live in a cabin with one of them, wearing padded shirts and fingerless gloves too, spending your days making tea over a roaring fire in a big cast iron kettle before striding with a wolfhound through ancient woodlands. Well I do, anyway.
Do you have any small-ish trees, I said. Well, that depends on what you call small, said the rugged woodsman. They're two pounds a foot.
We walked over to an enormous heap of trees and he pulled two out that were about five feet. Um, I'll have that one, I said, pointing. That was an easy decision, he said, most people take ages. Well, I said, to be fair, it's not for me. I'm going away for Christmas. Wish I was, he said. But the wife wouldn't hear of it.
I suddenly realised that he probably didn't live in a cabin in the woods. He probably lives in a semi in Abingdon. But never mind. We chatted a while longer about rampant consumerism.
Where do these trees come from? I asked him as I was writing out the cheque. Oh, we grow them just over there, he said.
I never knew that. Genuine Oxfordshire Christmas trees from sustainably managed woodland. That makes me feel a lot better.
joella
2 comments:
If you bought a nice plastic Christmas tree, you could keep it up in the loft for the rest of the year.
That way, you wouldn't have to keep using petrol to go and fetch a new one every year.
Much more environmentally heart warming. :-)
Ex-housemate S and I used to have a plastic tree when we lived in our bungalow on top of a storage building. I thought it had a certain kitsch quality. But M wouldn't have it in the house. He won't let me have a big light up Santa on the roof either.
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