Back home, we have a plastic Christmas tree. Before anyone calls me a heathen or anything, think about it. I live in central Queensland. Conifers? What about a nice palm tree?

In any case, during the year we keep our Christmas tree in a box in the cupboard in the spare room, and about this time of year I drag it out and start putting it together. I'm the only one who can be arsed. I do it because the Christmas tree provides a good rallying point for presents. We can put them all underneath it, and then when it's time to leave for the family gathering in Brisbane, we don't forget any. It's happened before.

I am a decorating-nazi. Each year, I will look through the generations of Christmas decorations we have in rotting old plastic bags, and I will declare: "This year, the Tree will be silver and blue!" Or red, or gold. Those are about the only choices. And then I will drape and hang up and all those sorts of things, standing back to analyse the decoration to tree ratio and move a bauble half an inch south. I'm terrible. Really terrible.

Of course, all my hard work's undone in half an hour when the cat comes in, takes one look at the tree, and attacks it. Plus, never have those fake icicle silver drapy things in a place where 'gale-force' is the usual wind speed.

All of this was brought on by the fact that yesterday Sadie (my partner in cleaning crime) and I had to move the college's small (and real) Christmas tree and redecorate it, since everything fell off in the process. She turned out to be hideously allergic to it, and only found this out after wrapping her arms around it in an effort to keep it upright. See, she declared, tree-hugging only leads to pain.

PS: I had a dream last night in which I met Row. A friend and I were on the run from something or other, and for some reason ended up taking shelter with Row at the place she worked, which was with three other guys, one of whom was absolutely gorgeous, and of course, the bad guy. There was an underground bunker. (What, you want my dreams to make sense? Don't you think that's a little unlikely?)