Here's our contibution - which is not a patch on everyones here. But.....there is a story.....
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We got our tree today (xmas eve) from a well known DIY shop locally) for the princely sum of 10p. It was not a deliberate wait until the 11th hour, nor was it a way of avoiding the £25.00 for a tree 2 weeks ago. Our house isn't the tidiest so I had been nagging OH & son to sort thier stuff out before we got any tree.
Now, it has to be said that I am a fan of big trees. And I mean BIG. The home alone kind of big (and yes, it was home alone on the telly as well). But this tree was all the shop had and at 10p, quite the bargain.
Many years ago, when I worked at the council and we were first married, I wanted a really good artificial tree. So I worked loads of overtime one year in th run up to xmas and went to a shop and purchsed a very expensive very very good artificial tree which was 8ft tall and had thee most beautiful shape. I loved the tree. It was perfect.
Then a few years later, the council moaned that it didn't have any money to buy a tree for it's reception. So I kindly offered them my artificial tree. I even came in at a weekend and dressed it. It looked really nice. But that xmas, I had a bad back and instead of going back to work after xmas, I was signed off for a week.
In it's urge to clear the reception and avoid public complaints about having decorations up after 12th night, in my absence, the council got some irk to take down my tree and pack it away. Which I thought was nice, when I came back from my bad back. Until I looked at my tree and what was 'left of it'. In the irks haste to dismantle the tree, the thug who took my tree down just yanked every single branch out of it's plastic retainer, breaking every single branch and rendering the tree useless.
I was furious and what made it worse was that the council made no attempt to compensate me for destroying my tree - which cost over £200. My faith in people was quite damaged by that incident and my trust in my employer at that time was quite shattered.
So we lost the artificial and from that point, I have never found an artificial that was quite as magnificent or as real as the one I had. So we get real trees when there is room. And this years, it's a bit of a pitiful affair - and not a patch on the magnificent trrees you all have.