Moving so many times for life or work, I’ve accumulated artificial Christmas trees from each new city or country I’ve lived in over the last ten years. This has resulted in three trees - one spikey white from Bristol, one bushy white from Madrid and one vintagey silver from Hong Kong, a shipping container of sentimental decorations and last year the creation of a new tradition of putting up one tree on the first of each month starting in September. I’m embarrassing.

This year, however, I was back to working 16 hour days setting up my vintage and style shop and selling my cat books, so the September deadline melted like snow on George Michael’s burning bonnet (my car) and the trail to the decorations went cold.

Vintage boho nativity brass camel train sold in my new shop and on it way to a new home.

By October I was getting twitchy, for a few reasons. 1, Really, seriously, where are the decorations? 2, We are all going to drown in a sea of plastic Knick-knacks and I am a professional environmentalist and 3, It’s October the 1st and I’m a month late for Christmas.

By October the 5th, I absolutely could not justify buying any more landfill tat, so I pacified myself with a pledge not to buy any more decorations, except this one Tabby cat from Dunelm - it’s wool, that’s ok, I think, oh god.

October the 6th, I went back into the cupboard under the stairs, which is basically Brexit, and tried to negotiate with the minister for understairs cupboards to give me all the trees and baubles that I was convinced were mine, that I had put there nine months ago and that I was entitled to. Came out hot, sweaty and irritable, got the trees, but lost my balls.

October the 8th, snuck back into the cupboard at night and stole Begonia’s scratching sleigh by stealth when everyone on the cupboard committee was asleep, or in the bar.

October the 9th, did a smash and grab and robbed the garland off the wheels of the security guard’s shopping trolley.

October the 10th, felt a hollow victory that I’d got Christmas, but lost the trimmings and put one bare tree up in splendid isolation in the front room that no one goes in, shoved the other two behind the sofa and closed the door.

October the 26th arrived in minutes and with it the invention of a new tradition. I had bought a Christmas cactus last year in bloom and thought it was dead after the flowers dropped off. It had just sat there on the kitchen window sill, exactly the same, week after week, until two weeks ago when I noticed tiny buds had appeared and any day now the flowers were going to burst. I decided the day they do will be the day I put the decorations up. That’s now this years tradition. If we’re both still alive next year, we’ll see it through.

When the Christmas Cactus blooms the Christmas trees go up. One year old proverb.

November the 8th crept upon me and I was losing my grasp on festive dreams, when on the way to the supermarket I walked into a Christmas miracle. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I saw in a sea of tinsel and second hand tree decorations a tiny face looking up at me. It was a little vintage cat head baubles loose and rolling around a shopping trolley outside a charity shop. I felt the long forgotten rush of real emotion. Then I found the empty box, filled with manger straw and compartments for the kittens. Of course I realised this meant there were more stray cat baubles and I stepped through the mists of an outer body experience to rescue the whole litter.

A whole litter of vintage Past Times Christmas cat baubles rescued - inc a guinea pig.

Digging deeper and deeper I found all the heads, one by one. I just kept digging and digging and finding head after head! THE THRILL. It’s like the universe knows I can’t find my decorations and it’s guiding me towards the Divine light of the celestial Christmas cat sanctuary. Fired up, I got on my hands and knees in my f’ocelot coat under the charity shop shopping trolley in the gutter (sings) in the ghetto. Looking for, praying for, two lost tiny cat ears. I found the box lid and one tiny cat ear on the ground, but it was above a drain unfortunately, so the last ear must have slipped through. Anyway, everyone loves a one eared cat.

This should have marked the launch of the Christmas Cactus Treemagedon, but the demands of a new eBay business marched on, so I stayed on on my knees, not looking for tiny cat ears, just grafting.

By November 25th I’d acquired a virus, a three day face-changing headache, a pain in the neck, the hairhurts, deadlines, no daylight and still missing decorations. Went to the Doctors (Bonardos) where they upped my dosage and prescribed me another Christmas tree. Or as my mate Spike called it “a pharma-tree”.

It was a mystery green one this time and even though it was ex-shop display, I was convinced there was a body in the box too, as the weight of it was murderous and I had to drag it backwards across the car park in the rain. I felt like the culprit in a Columbo episode and by the time he called at my house I’d be in a long chiffon gown holding a martini. Never mind, one day they’ll be dragging my dead body backwards into the boot of a Mazda and all the charity shop cat balls and truffle finds will go back to where they came from.

Recycled jungle toys on a Christmas tree.JPG

So, by November 28th, I had it all. First the cat balls, now the pharmatree, I found my lost decorations in the cellar (I haven’t got a cellar) and It could not have happened to a better person. And wait, it gets even better. Those old plastic toy tigers I’d been gradually collecting from the car boot sales and had wedged in the draw since summer waiting for a project suddenly found their next purpose in life, along with all the gold tone vintage brooches I had been hoovering up at flea markets, boot fairs, eBay job lots and charity shops. they form the most perfect tree decorations!

The green pharmatree is the perfect jungle home to rescued wildcats, giraffes and stray kangaroos. The fluffy white Madrid tree houses the Wan Chai red lanterns, a menagerie of exotic felt critters and a culturally confusing festive Pocahontas. The spiky white Bristol tree rehomed the vintage cat baubles and leggy peacocks, and finally the silver Hong Kong bedroom tree is now bares the fruit of months of gold tone brooch harvesting, where every night I go to bed feeling like Elizabeth Taylor and every morning I pick a brooch for the day fresh from the branch.

Not only do they look fabulous thank you very much, almost all of it is recycled, rehomed, reused, reloved. It’s like living in a Channel 5 Hallmark movie in my house, I can hear the kooky piccolo music as I bake cookies for the county fair and save the world.