It’s Slade time again

It’s Slade time again

It’s that time of year again. There are those for whom it has no significance at all, and there are others for whom it has a deep meaning, and of course there are many who fall between.

For myself, it is a time of reflection on the year, for being with family, if possible, and for doing that strange thing where we take a tree from a cold forest, bring it into a warm house, then complain when it drops its needles and dies.

Of course, there is that in between period where we adorn the tree with twinkling lights, and shiny, dangly things. That’s when we find out cats absolutely adore shiny, dangly things and do not understand that actions can have consequences.

Suffice to say, having moved to the Middle-East just under three years ago, I no longer go axe in hand in search of a small tree in a large forest; firstly, there are no forests in Bahrain, and secondly, a palm tree doesn’t look quite the same. I should own up here and confess I have always gone in search of trees with wallet in hand…but what a good excuse for a serial killer (must put that in a book.)

For our first Christmas in Bahrain, we splashed out on a realistic looking, artificial tree (at least that’s what it said on the box.) When we got it home our first impression was there had been a mistake and this was the tree destined for London; the annual gift from Norway. Okay, perhaps it’s not quite that big, but an eight-foot tall tree is quite a large one to have in a house. Still, the rooms are big so it’s not too bad.

Now we get to the part where it gets strange. Today we put up the tree and adorned it with snow-covered pine cones, (it snowed in Saudi last week so it’s not too big a stretch of the imagination) silver balls and stars, and the odd angel or two.

As I went upstairs to get changed, my wife asked me to bring down the final two decorations that for some reason were on her dressing table – a round thing (her words,) and a camel. Yes… a camel. Not a real one, I hasten to add; we haven’t got around to buying one of those…yet.

But now I know for sure we are in the Middle-East when we hang a camel on the tree.