Behind closed doors.....

I know that this looks like one of those dodgy cheap Christmas cards, but it's actually a decoration on my Christmas Tree.

Yesterday I sent my goodbye message to my colleagues at work. The thing about the travel industry is that it's like a family. I know that's a cliche and you hear it all the time, but the reason you hear it all the time is it's true.

I've had some lovely messages back from people, that means a lot as well. 

I've received some amazing goodbye messages in my time. Including one company I worked for where somebody sent a goodbye message saying 'I hate you all and you're all idiots'. Unfortunately, for that individual their new job didn't work out and 6 months later they were back asking for a job again. Needless to say....

I didn't have a need to send anything, but a positive message - I guess I should appreciate that that's the situation I'm in. I'm not going to lie though I did feel a bit emotional afterwards, it came out of the blue. So I made a snap decision to go one up from my Christmas lights and get the whole kit and kaboodle up.

We're really lucky in my house in that rather than a hole in the ceiling we've got 6 little steps up to our attic and a half door. It means it's really easy to store things - rather too easy actually. A few years ago we hired a skip and 'de spaded' the attic so the enormous quantity of clutter didn't come through the ceiling. That's when I discovered my husband had a secret box collecting problem. Literally hundreds of empty boxes. He even had a box from our new shower head and had put the old shower head in the box... just in case (he'll not be happy I told you that).

The only issue with the attic is that you can't stand up in it - I'm 5 foot and I have to hunch. This plays havoc on the back if you're up there for a long time. Which I was last night getting the decorations down.

So last night I put up everything but the trees and this morning I got up super early before work to put the trees up. Yes I said trees, we have 2 main trees one for me and one for my son. That means I can have my nice tasteful one and he can have one that looks as he wants it. This was particularly useful when he was younger and came back from nursery or school with a home made decoration made out of nappies with feathers on or a section of an eggbox with glitter on it.

This year I'm going to have a third tree. As I anticipate we can't do our normal Christmas Eve 'stuff' (curse you COVID) I've decided to go out and buy a last minute real tree (our other trees are fake ones). Then we can pretend we're in a cheesy Christmas film, put on our Christmas tops, drink mulled wine (excluding son), smile at each other and sing Christmas carols as we decorate.

Obviously it will be nothing like that. Son will not want to come off x-box and husband hates Christmas and will not want to take part. I'm confident I can do the mulled wine, carols and smiling a lot all on my own if necessary (the mulled wine will help).

So my tree is up (hence cheesy photo) and son can decorate his when he comes home tonight - if I can get him off x-box that is.

Looking at the photo of my tree it reminded me of school - you know when you used to purchase the back of 50 cards for £1 so you could give everybody in the class a card. I'd sit on my bed going through the designs sorting them into - good ones for my besties, medium cards for my b list etc. Then eventually you'd get to the really naff cards that had a photo of a bauble on them - you'd put them to one side for the people you hated or didn't really know at all.

As a result of this I'd always get mortally offended if I received a bauble card from somebody and to this day if I get a Christmas Card through (not that you get so many these days) and it's got a photo of a bauble on it, i'm left wondering why they went the effort of paying for a stamp.

Anyway, I'm going to hold off putting snowflakes on my windows (more about that in a later post) until after 17th November when I understand Diwali ends. I don't celebrate Diwali personally, but I know it's about to kick off and it's a big deal. Right now the lights outside my house have nothing specifically Christmassy about them. So if there is anybody around who is celebrating then they are appropriate. But once it's over I'm going big on the Christmas twists.

Anyway, that's me for today. If you are about to celebrate Diwali have a fantastic celebration.