It's hard work looking this good ...

Way back in the dim dark recesses of time when we first hooked up, the MOTH was responsible for bringing home a Christmas tree at the appropriate time each year. And for the first seven years he did a fantastic job, providing specimens of splendour that regaled us with their glorious symmetry and pungent pine needle odour ...

Unfortunately, around about year eight, such glorious specimens were nowhere to be found, and we ended up with a rather sorry spectacle, complete with drooping pine needles, and a bare patch we had to turn to the wall.

There is a point to this. The point being that, about two weeks after the eighth Christmas, I found the perfect tree on sale at a local department store ... eight feet of dark green, bushy, symmetrical artificial gloriousness.

The MOTH bids me inform you at this point that it doesn't smell. "But look !!!" I say ... "Just look !!! It's symmetrical !!! And the right shape !!! AND it has over 1,000 tips for extra bushiness !!!"

However, "over 1,000 tips" is an awful lot when one has to individually position them for just the right amount of bushiness and symmetry !!!

Which is why the MOTH doesn't help. He says it serves me right.