Now ... back to the topic in hand!... Well, when I was a small child in Glasgow, just a few years after the war ended, I seem to recollect my mum buying a REAL tree at a shop in Maryhill Road on Christmas Eve. Then, after my dad came home from work, he would put it in a big tub situated in the space surrounding the large bay window of our red sandstone tenement flat in North Kelvinside. I always remember him deftly twisting the slender flex of the fairy lights round each of the branches. The lights themselves, of course, were "home made", in that, he'd rustled up two sets of different sized aircraft bulbs from the munitions factory where he was employed as an electrician/scientific instrument maker, and painted them in several colours. Invariably, the larger set adorned the pelmet above the window frames.
Nowadays, however, I make do with a small fibre optic tree, which I'll probably retrieve from the attic approximately a week beforehand. A lot less hassle - and no needles to bother sweeping up - yet nothing can compare with those Christmases of my dim and distant childhood.
