Bauble envy

December 14, 2011

Bauble envy

Christmas shopping on Oxford Street last night wasn’t one of my best ideas. I never meant to end up there - it just sucked me in and wouldn’t let me out. In the end I joined the rest of them, shuffling slowly past the shops I was supposed to go into but now looked too full to bother with. Needless to say I achieved nothing.

Then, as if my Christmas spirit hadn’t been bruised enough, I picked up an old copy of last Saturday’s Telegraph Magazine on the tube and read all about the amazing Christmas decorations at Chatsworth House - exactly 160 miles away from Oxford Street. Proper, bushy trees (Norwegians, take note. It’s very kind of you to keep up your gift to Trafalgar Square, but those branches are looking decidedly spindly. And don’t get me started on the lights…), hundreds of candles and thousands of glassy baubles. Chatsworth is amazing at the best of times, but for someone who gets as excited about Christmas as I do, the photos in the Telegraph were tantamount to festive porn.

I’m now sorely tempted to up sticks and drag whoever is nearest with me to somewhere Christmassy. Last year, the amazing winter illuminations at the Westonbirt Arboretum, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire, were pretty high on the pre-Christmas goosebump factor (and that wasn’t just the sub-zero temperatures), but been there, done that.

I will continue to plan while putting off Shopping: Round Two.



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