Christmas didn't quite go to plan on the farm on the M62 - Jo Thorp

He arrived home one evening announcing he’d been lucky on the tree shopping front as he’d managed to secure the very last tree at our local agricultural supplies store.

Now, the fact that it was the only one left should have been a warning sign, even if he’d managed to miss all the dead, needle-less branches at the bottom.

I’d suggested a 5-6 foot tree, but the one he dragged from the back of his cattle wagon late one night, was most definitely not a 5-6 foot Christmas tree. It was huge. And very dead looking.

It stayed leant up by the kitchen door, tightly ensconced in it’s white netting and soaking in a bucket of water for several days.

Then finally after the damp proof course was finished and the flags were re-layed and pointed, we brought the giant tree inside. It stood crammed awkwardly into the corner of the sitting room, it’s top bent over.

Wisely, Paul made himself scarce before I got a pair of scissors and hacked away at the netting to access the state of the tree. With the first cut, a huge shower of needles dropped to the floor, sprinkling themselves out on the flagstones.

A solitary, brown branch hung forlornly as I continued freeing the tree from it’s web, trying desperately to ignore the huge pile of needles gathering at my feet. I stood back and took a good look at it, then begun to spin the tree round and round hoping to find a good side.

I finally admitted defeat and instead settled for the least awful side. It was decorated and then secured behind a large, old fire guard to prevent accidental brushing against the tree and dislodging the last few remaining needles.

We’d quite a few plans for the Christmas period, most of which went completely out of the window due to a series of unfortunate events.

My eagerly anticipated trip to the wonderful Christmas fair at Bentham market never happened, along with several other outings.

Animals have a funny habit of getting out or getting ill when you really don’t want them to and it’s usually the ones furthest from home.

Vehicles also become very good at letting you down, again when you’re furthest from home. So our best laid plans went out of the window and we did what we always do; stayed at home and tended to the animals.

The little guy made it through another term at High School without too much drama and spent most of the Christmas break devouring his own body weight in chocolate and building huge ramps for his bike.

Paul also did his fair share of chocolate eating and Boo, thankfully managed to avoid the mince pies, fruit and nut mixes and all things bad and for once, there were no panicked calls on Boxing Day morning to Shona, our vet.