Day 62: Cheap Tricks

Today I struck the Christmas tree.  (Not in rage.  I didn't punch it, I just dismantled it.)  If you're going to do a tree, do it right, and get rid of it on Twelfth Night.  I know many people like to get shot of it on New Year's Day, but that's probably because they've had the bloody thing up since December 1st.  I hate the melancholy of seeing discarded trees lying on the street outside people's houses - a missed bauble hanging disconsolately, bedraggled shreds of tinsel still tangled in the branches.  It's all too Hans Christian Andersen for me to bear.  So I have to chop the tree up small enough to put in the recycling.  Which is good because I get to use a saw (once a year - come hell or high water...), and the sitting-room smells of freshly-cut pine, which is very invigorating, and invariably encourages me to wash the windows (once a year - come hell or high water...). 

As I remove the decorations, I am struck (not in rage - the tree doesn't punch me) by how different they look in the cold light of day.  On the tree, picked out by the lights, some of the decorations punch above their weight (not literally).  Years ago, when I was skint and starting from scratch with my first tree in North London, I bulk-bought some little square silver foil 'presents' from Woolworth's, and some glittery 'icicles' from a pound shop - loads of them, cheap as you like.  I still have them, although I've acquired some fancier glass baubles since - clear and iridescent like soap bubbles; a beautiful reddish-purple like a faded wine stain; old gold, and tarnished silver - expensively mellow.  In the daylight, they win hands down - but in the dark, the cheap ones come to the fore, glittering beguilingly under the fairy lights, and leaving the fancy ones looking mute and dull. 

I fell in love with the theatre at my first pantomime - Jack and the Beanstalk at the Marlowe in Canterbury.  Live music, dusty velvet tip-up seats, ice-cream, anticipation - almost too heady a brew for a six-year old.  And this was before the curtain went up.  When it did, I was entranced.  Everything was exaggerated - a turbo-charged version of reality.  Bigger, louder, shinier, funnier.  With singing and dancing.  A couple of years on, and I managed to wangle a backstage visit.  Up close the costumes looked very different - tawdry, tatty, cheap.  No glamour, and no magic.  Just some smelly polyester, lurex and velcro.  It was like the Wizard of Oz revealed, and I was disappointed.

Since then, I've come full circle.  Yes, I like the expensive decorations, but now I have a sneaking preference for the cheapies.  Shining under the lights like proper little troopers.