TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR

To twinkle or not to twinkle, that is the question.

This weekend is an important day if you happen to be a little superstitious, as it will be 12 days before Christmas when some believe that is the time to put up the Christmas decorations. Then 12 days after you take them down, and a curse be upon you if you're late!

Well, mine went up last night, and very nice they are too, so there.

Pauline and I met up in the city centre to wander around the Christmas lights of Edinburgh. Within the confines of the east side of Princes Street Gardens, right in the heart of the city, a large Christmas market had sprung up, with traders all housed in quaint wooden, chalet-style huts. The remainder of the gardens are occupied with a myriad of entertainment opportunities, everything from a giant Ferris wheel to horse carousels and even an ice skating rink!

As we wandered around, with traditional Christmas music as the backdrop, it started to snow. Which was nice.

Next stop was the huge department store of Jenners, to see their traditional giant Christmas tree. And giant it was. I've never quite figured out how they get this enormous tree in there, but apparently it does come in, through the front door, in one piece! All around the balconies above were strands of white lights.

George Street, one street up from the Christmas market, always does something a little special and this year is no exception. At regular intervals all the way along it's half mile stretch, were pure white artificial trees festooned in white fairy lights, throwing out a magical bright white glow. One business on George Street always decorates the giant stone pillars outside their entrance with large holly garlands wound around the pillars and lit with thousands of lights.

After a Christmas Blend latte at Starbucks, with a muffin too of course, we set off home to put up our decorations.

This is not quite on the scale of what we had seen in the city. We have a two foot high artificial tree decorated with bits and bobs of Christmassy items collected over the years, and a small string of lights. As a small addition this year we bought some tiny coloured fairy lights, powered by a small solar panel. This we have wrapped around the bare hawthorn tree in the garden. You can have them on all the time or they can be set to flash and twinkle.

Sadly, on day two, they do neither. It would seem there just isn't enough light during the day to charge them.

And there was me deliberating over whether to have them on all the time or to twinkle.