Christmas mystery

When I was a child, I used to love gazing deep into the Christmas tree when the lights were switched on, preferably in the darkness of the room before anyone had lit the other lights. I found myself doing it again this Ne'erday, only this time I had my camera to hand. My tree decoration tends to the old-fashioned - not quite candles wired precariously to the branches, but the modern equivalent of the coloured lights my parents used, and decorations that remind me of the years of accumulating them, right back to the first year of our marriage, Christmas 1970, when I discovered we didn't have a star for the top of the tree and made one out of wire twisted into two triangles and wrapped in tinsel.

Like us, that star survives, difficult to fasten to the tree, the tinsel slightly worn (like us!) but irreplaceable in my decoration box.