Christmas Tree

So we finally caved in and bought a tree and though I'll admit it's no match for Darling Harbour's brightest tree in the southern hemisphere, it's odds-on favorite for crappest tree in Sydney so all's not lost.

The offending fibre-optic article is three feet tall, refuses to stand up and cost $20 (£8) in Coles Supermarket. It's also made in China, like almost everything else in this great southern land, especially everything in K-Mart.

Still, we have decorations; lovely Australiana decorations that we thought would seem poignant back in Warrington but just look a bit sad hanging up here; a platypus wearing a santa hat, a koala doing the same, and this bauble that I got in David Jones a few weeks ago. We had two others but Ella pulled the tree down two minutes after we put it up and smashed those ones to pieces.

Ella loves the tree. Actually, I secretly love it as well - three feet tall, no heaving it in and out of the front door, no wrestling it into the bucket thing, no getting tangled up in the mesh. No lights to unravel and test, no pine needles all over the floor. No watering the base, no sad yellow needles by new year, no leaving it on the front lawn until February hoping it'll melt into the grass.

And absolutely no character.

For me, the tree symbolises the difference between Europe and Australia, Europe with it's smelly cheeses and awkward Christmas trees and Australia with it's Chinese fibre-optic crap and ban on anything unpasteurised. Still, I hear it's chucking it down in Cheshire. Given the option, which would you choose?