Basil Seal's Christmas Shame...

The aluminium tree and accompanying colour-wheel is a very painful childhood memory for me...Yes, I admit it, one year my dear Mother erected an aluminium Christmas tree and colour-wheel...There, I said it...It was, of course, a year that will live in infamy...My cheeks still burn with the shame of it all...

What possessed her we have never learned. Was it depression, temporary insanity, the kitchen sherry, or just plain wickedness? That year she was doing charity work amoung the lower classes, and it is possible that their questionable taste in Christmas trees rubbed off on her, we are not sure.

Needless to say, Father forbade anyone to visit our house that year, or for anyone to open the curtains and I believe my sisters underwent years of shock therapy due to this lapse into vulgarity by my Mother. It's strange, even today as I look at my tiny frail gray haired Mother, I still find it hard to fathom the diabolical evil which lurked within her on that fateful Christmas season. I still shudder to think of it...

Happily one night someone, under the cover of darkness, dressed in velvet Alberts and heliotrope pajamas, stole silently to the colour-wheel and wedged it in a way as to keep the wheel from spinning. A clear cut case of sabotage. Needless to say this meant that by the next morning, the wheel was melted and a complete loss. We never learned who did this, but that was the end of the aluminium Christmas tree...