It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Funny how it takes over the whole month, isn't it? Tonight I am off to a Christmas quiz at the pub, and have therefore been instructed to find out all the names of Santa's reindeer (did you know only one of them is a girl?), how many of what was given on each of the Twelve Days of Christmas, which film White Christmas came from (originally, that is) and all the rest of it. Feels like cheating to gen up like this, but we have a title to defend.

The Christmas tree(s) have gone up in my house. The reason there's more than one is simple: Pepper. Because she is basically The Destroyer Of All Things, we figured it wouldn't be a good idea to let her in the same room as the tree, and none of us could really face shutting her out of the living room all month. So the big tree now goes in the hall, which isn't a very large space, and therefore occasionally passers-by get assaulted by random baubles.



Last year Mum bought a 3ft pink tree, which my brother refused to have in the sitting room because it was 'too gay', so which now sits in the piano room window, from where it can be seen halfway down the street. People--okay, women--keep telling us how much they love the pink tree with its feather lights.

This year, it was decided (by my mother, who is in charge of these things) that all presents would be wrapped in black and gold. She decided this because Tesco were selling 3ft black trees. Sounds macabre, but it's actually quite pretty with lights and presents underneath it. This goes on the chest in the sitting room, where the Demon Puppy (hopefully) can't reach it.


Unfortunately, there's no way of doing things without getting the kittens involved. They helped me to decorate the tree...

...and now they're helping rearrange the presents and any baubles or beads they don't like. Such helpful creatures, kittens.



Jack's even been helping me wrap presents. Shh, don't tell him, but inside that bag is his present: a motorised aquarium. Yes, that was my mother's work too. Honest.