Scottish fir tree acquired. Now for the dex.

Well, I've hunted down the Christmas tree. It was more difficult than I expected. I arrived at the usual place and instead of the typical trees stretching as far as the eye could see there were just five trees left.

I use the word 'trees' reservedly. They were being advertised as trees, but my ex-greengrocer instincts cut in and I decided that they should really be classed as stray collections of branches and twigs.

It was fascinating that they were all from different ranges too, as if the entire collections had been selected down to the last few whittles.

I had to leave empty handed. This would be problem if I returned home without a tree, so I moved along to the next place. A farm shop. They had a huge advertisement for trees.

But no trees at all. A nice line in mistletoe, but no trees. My inner greengrocer noticed that the mistletoe was on sale as well. Back in the day the mistletoe was given away free.

Next stop, a huge superstore. So huge that the entire car park was filled and people were double parking on yellow lines. I decided to give this one a miss. Surely any remaining trees in this establishment would have been snapped up but it would talk me a good half an hour to discover this. I moved on.

Instead to palatial garden centre, which had people marshalling the cars into the car park. They directed me to a parking spot, which I noticed was really for electric cars complete with the recharging points. This place would surely have trees?

It did.

Even the Nordman ones that don't drop their needles.

Mine was 'red 593414', which I looked up on the needlefresh.co.uk web site.

It was from near North Kessoch on The Black Isle at the Moray Firth. In shipping forecast terms it's Cromarty. There's a high rainfall and minimal frosts due to the Gulf Stream circulating round this peninsula-style island, and this produces vigorous growth in the trees.

Now to locate the decorations, from the depths of the garage.