Daisy

Home and Garden.

This weekend the boy and I went for a walk to Belsize Park in London, to meet my kittens Christmas baby-sitter. On the way back we came across a shop in the middle of the road selling Christmas Trees.

I held tightly to the boys hand with my blue glove and whispered in his ear. I so wanted a Christmas tree.

I know that I am appearance based in character, and that at Christmas I am so stuffed full of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks that I seemingly have no choice but to create a world so unreal and beautiful that it warms me.

Growing up, everything around me was very very beautiful. My father is a designer, and as a consequence I lived in a world from a magazine... Everything in my life glittered and sparkled and glowed (the cleaning lady who came five times a week saw to that!!!). Equally, outside was a world of little groves and tree lined fences. I had my own swiss chalet at the bottom of the garden, with carpets and heating and wood panelling. It was my not so secret place to be. In the winter sometimes it would snow and my play chalet would look so wonderful against the fairy lights in the pine trees surrounding it

Even outside of the fairy world of beauty created by my parents, everything was wonderful, for I lived in a little coastal town, five minutes from a red squirrel filled national trust forest and the raging grey cold Irish sea. In the summer we would go to the beach and sunbath, we would pretend to live in California. I think our life was better. In the winter that pine forest would look for all the world like santa lived there, the squirrels tails would get fat and people would go sledging on the sand dunes. 

Eeven the nearest town to me as a child and a teeneager was voted the prettiest in England. I think that maybe I started to take beauty for granted.

As my parents grew wealthier they moved away from the home of my childhood to an even more stunning house perched on the edge of a rolling, famously pretty golf course. It takes them at least a week to prepare this palace for Christmas. The trees are frosted with white lights, the rooms subtley change their colours to shades of red and green and the corwning glory, my mothers Christmas tree is coated in the 500 different decorations that she and we have collected from all over the world.

As a child, I was obsessed with my mothers tree. My favourite decoration (now relegated, I am sure to a back corner) was a glass of real sherry which looked like someone had disgraded it into the tree by accident at one of my parents ragingly glamourous Christmas parties, where I would inevitably be dressed as a fairy and forced to give presents and wine to the guests.

But, it was always my mothers tree... and after my father had covered it in hundreds of lights no-one was to touch it but her. It was the best tree in the world, but it was plastic and perfect and cold.

So, we bought a tree on Saturday in Belsize Park (me clinging to the boy, breathless with excitement) and had it delivered. It was the most stunning tree I have ever seen.. and we decorated it with red wine and giggles. I still don't know if the best thing about it was whether it was real, or whether it was mine.

So, the boy and I cuddled down on my stunning birthday sofa with our red wine, and looked at the tree being ;tapped; at by my perfect white kitten in a Christmas cardy kind of a way... and I realised that I too now have the power to create a beautiful perfect moment. That my life now is still all glitter and sparkle and Meg Ryan kisses - this time of my own making. But the wonderful thing is that all of this is supported by real love, from parents and sisters and kittens and boys and, as such, I really am the luckiest girl in the world.

7.12.05 09:40