A Tale Of A Tree

Today was meant to be the day that Millbrooker Towers turned into a minor Forestry Commission site with the annual installation ceremony of the Christmas Tree. Here's one we made earlier (from 2004):I got up this morning at ridiculous o'clock, Tony-The-Taxi picked me up at the appointed hour and off we sped through the lanes of St John and into Plymouth for me to perform my day's professional ticket touting. The plan was to meet up with Mrs The Millbrooker from the bus at Antony and make our way to our usual supplier and thence furnish ourselves with one monstrous tree.

Here's another that we made earlier, with Mrs The Millbrooker in decorating mode (from 2005):I alighted from the 81C omnibus into a persistent stream of traditional Cornish weather and clambered into the pink object that we insist on referring to as our "car". We headed off towards Crafthole and the wee farm down one of its lanes which has had such a good selection of trees for the last few years.

Can you guess where this is heading yet? Here's another that we made earlier, complete with festive gathering (note Dong indulging his favourite hobby at the centre, and the ever tiny Shazzerooneypoos desperately jumping up and down to get into shot at the bottom left). This shot is of 2006 vintage:We found no signs pointing towards our favourite tree merchant which is, frankly, miles from anywhere. So we thought that in light of the godawful weather we'd just give it a miss and carry on home. But lo! As we passed the Tregantle junction, there was a sign "Christmas Trees for Sale" with an arrow directing us toward Millbrook. We thought we might as well keep going in case there was a new supplier in the vicinity. So we did carry on - all the way to Cremyll. But in vain hope did we travel afar.

Here's another we made earlier, this one dates from last year.

You'll have gathered by now (unless you're suffering from exceptional dimness) that we haven't got a tree yet. Otherwise I could've just taken a couple of pictures of the thing in its naked state and left it at that. Instead of which you've had to read through a ton of garbage about very little happening in the Millbrooker household.

Ah. No change there, then.