We detour today for a christmas expedition. The ever reliable Mrs Martin tipped us off that our random wee xmas tree place was still open for business. So, well fueled up on scones and hot chocolate, we set off on a joint Mullan-Martin adventure to hack down some trees.
The place we go to is in the most beautiful setting, just on the west side of the bann near Castlerock. The trees were supposed to be harvested 6 years ago but instead have grown tall and close together and form one big christmas thicket, into which the 10 of us fought. They were all way too big to just chop at the bottom so we had to try and hack them down from half way up. JM and I would have been completely useless at this by ourselves,ending up grumpy and poking each other with pine needles. No false modesty here, our later attempt to get the tree to stay upright more than proved the point with a very stroppy stand off over a bag of vermiculite.
Another festive treat was a trip to Coleraine’s only proper sweet shop to spend our St Nicholas gold. Little white paper bags filled with treats make me very nostalgic for childhood and my weekly quarter of cinnamon lozenges, for the princely sum of 25p. My Gran’s handbag always had an assortment of brandy balls, chocolate limes and murray mints and Sunday nights at church, someone in the row always could be counted on to share their mint imperials. We spent a very long time in the shop, helping the boys work out what goodies they could squeeze out of their pound coin: two quarters of cola bonbons (I don’t remember them…) and various brightly coloured E-tastic crap. The sugar high could last days…
