There was a spare slot in the Christmas wreath-making activity today, so I volunteered to go along and get my hands grubby. It's a nice thing, organised by the people who run the business park - mince pies, a cup of mulled wine and a gardening expert in an elf-jumper to show you how to turn a pile of ferns and some old pine cones into a lovely festive ring of joy.
So along I went. And a wreath I made.
You start off with a sort of hedge that's been bent into a circle for you. It has a flat side and a domed side.
You cut fern branches and use some tightly wrapped garden wire to attach them. Or alternatively, you can spend five minutes trying to find the end of the garden wire, which has been mysteriously tied back into the reel by the last devious person to have used it. The next step is to break your fingernail trying to pull it open and cut a loop with the secateurs, which of course, were not designed for that job at all.
Then, while everyone else is already halfway around the ring, layering fern branches and tying them on, you pick up the leftover ferns and snip to what you believe will be approximately the same length. Later, you will discover that your definition of approximately varied mid-snip of course. Do check that your ferns are facing the right way and are not being strapped to the wrong side.
Once layered, your wreath will look roughly like spruce woven into a circular pattern with a perfectly clockwise or anticlockwise weave of course. You'll have an annoyingly short length of twine left over, which the instructor will tell you to loop through the ring and tie off. You'll try this but it will be the fiddliest thing you've done since... well, trying to find the end of the gardening twine on the reel. As you shuffle the thing about, you'll dislodge all the bits of dried fruit that have been laid out for you, and watch as crusty old oranges and dried apple peel gets scattered.
At this point, your colleagues will pick up their exquisitely symmetrical wreaths and twirl them round their delicate hands, tightening their loops while you look on admiringly nursing your sore and bleeding fingers.
The instructor tells you to loop some stabwire around a pine cone. This strikes you as an unusual sentence but you go along with it. Your pine cones will be closed of course, so any attempts to do this, will result in pine cones flying off into the middle of the room.
"Oh by golly have a happy holiday this year!" warbles Michael Bublé from the stereo in the corner. You quietly wish him well as you pick them up.
When you've collected your cinnamon sticks, orange peel and pine cones from various points on the carpet, stab them through the middle and jab them into your wreath. (This activity will give you a kind of curious relief. Be careful not to make sound effects though. It will be tempting.)
The instructor will probably show you how to tie a lovely festive bow, once you're ready to attach it. He'll cut a length of glittery fabric and then, with all the competent fluency of a Blue Peter presenter, he will fold it like origami into the kind of Christmassy bow you'd see on a golden box in the window of Harrods.
Ignore this impossibly fluent demonstration. Yours will look like a bandage caught in the arms of a sagging fir tree. Take some more stabwire, wrap it round the damaged bow and then wedge the whole thing somewhere just beneath the tiny loop that you made earlier.
It's more than likely that your colleagues will want to take photographs of the Christmas wreaths you all made together, ready for the company newsletter. You'll all lay them carefully against the wall as though it were Remembrance Sunday.
Make sure yours is on the end. Then, turn to the girl with the camera and ask her if she knows how to crop photographs in Photoshop. She almost certainly will - she more than likely works in marketing.
It's probably best to have a few handy stock phrases for use while you all walk back to the office. You know, things like, "Well, it's only going on my front door anyway," and "Hey well, we can't all be good at everything." Maybe even, "Well, perhaps the mulled wine had something to do with it," or some such, you can be creative.
Or perhaps not.
Anyway, I did make it back to the office without dried out oranges rolling all over the road and fern branches trailing behind me. I've left it on my desk for the glowing envy of my team to admire.
Yep, it looks like it fell out of the local garden centre's 'discarded' pile. Sure, it's wonky, top heavy and protruding unsightly ferns in all the wrong places. It was quite good fun making it though - a very Christmassy afternoon indeed. And it'll be the best wreath to go on my front door this year.
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