We’re on the countdown to our first tree since Christmas 2008. It’s coming…

Well, really we’re going to get it rather than it coming to us spontaneously. I know I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy novels of late but I do think the idea of a tree just whizzing here on its own is a bit far-fetched. The base is out of the loft, the ribbons are bought, the lights are waiting to go and it’s now only a matter of time.

Given this massive step away from bah-humbug I’m more than a bit obsessed by trees and hence I’m dead unimpressed with Plymouth’s efforts – I photographed the one in Armada Way last week and this is the one in Drake’s Circus. Of course anyone who doesn’t know Plymouth’s history now has a pretty good grasp of one of its defining moments from the clues of “Armada” and “Drake”. It does feel slightly jingoistic to me but there you go. I digress. The “tree” in this shot shouldn’t be here because I took it from inside the centre and of course you can be dragged from the centre, pummelled to the ground, tarred and feathered for taking a photo in what is now considered to be the privately owned space of the shopping mall. But don’t get me going on the privatisation of our city centres or we’ll be here all night.

Still, it’s a tree of sorts and although our tree will be a real tree in the respect that it’ll be a biological entity, it won’t fulfil one of the key Christmas tree criteria – it won’t be inside. That’s all part of the ritual of course. It’s the depth of winter so to remind us of the outside and warmer, happier times, we chop down a tree and bring it inside. Because we want to do this when all sensible trees are bare of leaves, we do it with evergreens.

For me a much more important event at this time of year is the fact that we’ve only got ten more days to go before the nights start drawing out. The chickens are starting to get the redness back in their combs so we’ll have our first eggs of the new season very soon. I am 1/3 of the way through my course and I’ve not ballsed it up enough to have been thrown out yet. All of these are cause for celebration…roll on 25th December...