JOHN MARTIN

Does anyone here want a used Christmas tree?

Going cheap!

OK, free. I just have to work out a way to get rid of it.

I remember a time when I used to recycle Christmas trees. In my bachelor days, I always gave myself permission to get an artificial tree.

People who don’t remember the curly-wurly indoor TV aerials of yesteryear won’t believe this, but artificial Christmas trees made of metal and painted green made fine emergency TV aerials. If you hooked up the aerial cable to them, you could see all manner of Christmas movies on your TV. It added to the atmosphere that they were usually obscured by heavy snow.

Your flatmate would be up on the roof with a recycled Christmas and you’d be yelling out the window: “Try tilting it towards the hill where the transmitters are”.

Finally, everyone would give up and you’d decide to make a pot of tea.

Then you remembered you didn’t actually have a kettle.

Luckily for you, the steam iron served a dual purpose.

Hang on. I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking: What young bachelor actually owns an iron when he knows laying shirts under the mattress will do an approximate job? Not perfect, but good enough because no one has high fashion expectations of someone so skint they have to use an old Christmas tree as an aerial.

Thankfully, my wife rescued me from that cesspool 27 years ago.

The downside is she insists on us having freshly-cut Christmas trees, which make lousy aerials.

I digress. I really wanted to wish you a happy new year.