Prepared for the day, ready for the night.

To the market town for Christmas lights. Not a set to be found anywhere. The Christmas locust has swept through our little patch of France devouring every set of tree lights in existence. With Wilf in the back of the car hastily hurried off to the large town 40 minutes away and bought the last 3 sets in the new Auchan supermarket. €14 each ! A young woman sales assistant squirted me with 'male fragrance' as I was leaving. The poor girl must have been very bored or very desperate. Purchase a bottle of this and "you'll be prepared for the day - ready for the night" she said. As I was wearing a bobble hat and a shaggy jumper at the time this made me laugh out loud with genuine delight. I'll try the line on 'the font' and see what the reaction is.

Set up the Christmas crib on the half landing. Somehow we seem to have lost Joseph and acquired a little old lady instead. Maybe it was always like that and I'd simply never noticed before. There again perhaps it's some strange Biblical revisionism on the part of the Slovak crib maker who decided single handedly to write Joseph out of the plot. Curious.

Over lunchtime pizza turned on the televison to get the weather forecast. Instead I got the Wendy Williams show. I had never heard of Ms.Williams until this chance encounter. Now, here before our very eyes Wendy was interviewing Rachel, a full time Christmas tree decorator. Must be a seasonal job I thought but suspended my disbelief as the rara skirted Rachel told us the four golden rules of tree design :

1) Always use at least 100 lights per foot . A seven foot tree - at least seven hundred lights

2) Always start from the top

3) Choose a theme and stick to it

4) Stand back and view your work. Remember you're an artist !

Wilf looked at me. I looked at the half decorated tree. We then both looked at each other. " Blimey ! Shouldn't have started at the bottom" he seemed to say before we headed off for some touch rugby in the hall.