Page 61 of Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
I open it gratefully and turn it this way and that, tilting my chin towards both the normal side and the magnifying side. There’s nothing there. ‘I don’t have stubble rash.’
‘Ah, but you wouldn’t have even questioned it unless you’d been doing something that might’vegivenyou stubble rash.’ She beams as she whisks her mirror back out of my hand, looking extremely pleased with herself.
‘People your age are supposed to be above such sorcery,’ I say, even though I’m kind of impressed by her innovativeness in her quest to get us to admit to something wemightnot have done.
‘You don’t get stubble rash from kissing Chihuahuas,’ Noel says as he walks past with a tree over his shoulder. ‘I’ve just heard there’s a bath pearl gone wonky on your tree, Fiona, you should go and double-check it before the kids get here.’
She falls for it and rushes off even though the schoolchildren who are judging won’t be here for hours yet, and I thank him for rescuing me.
He laughs. ‘I don’t know how she knows, but she knows. She’ll try to catch you out again, believe me. I was late one morning last year, and she’sstilltrying to get me to admit where I really was, even though it was nothing more interesting than oversleeping.’ He holds his hand out to help me up into the truck bed. ‘C’mon, make sure you’re busy before she comes back. You can pass me trees and pumpkins down and I’ll get the stall set up.’
In the bed of his truck, there are still a couple of crates of pumpkins – although they’re culinary pumpkins rather than ones for carving now – and a few crates full of Glenna’s goodies. She’s really gone overboard in preparation for the extra customers the competition will bring in today. Apart from trees, I’ve got some bunches of mistletoe and a few wreaths I’ve made from the branches of unsellable Christmas trees, fronds of fern, with twists of mistletoe, pine cones, and holly leaves and berries.
I hand him down the crates of pumpkins first, followed by Glenna’s goodies, and then haul trees over the side one by one, absolutelynotappreciating the sight of his arms as he shoulders two at a time and makes it look easy when he leans them against the stall in neat piles organised by species.
We’ve also got one of each species to decorate for display, not for sale but to attract customers like the carved pumpkins he displays in Halloween season. I jump down from the truck to set them up in stands and give them some water, while Noel carries on arranging the table full of Glenna’s pumpkin muffins, pumpkin loaves sprinkled with rosemary, jars of pumpkin jam, marmalade, and pumpkin spice mix for lattes.
We’re going for a peppermint decoration theme, and while he’s still stringing red and white peppermint-striped tinsel and strings of red and white lights around my display trees, I have an idea for the finishing touch to his competition entry before all the local schools arrive on a multi-school trip for the judging at lunchtime. I grab a pumpkin carving kit, help myself to a bag from his belt and load six small pumpkins into it, aware of Noel’s curious eyes on me along with Fergus’s watchful gaze.
The trees for the competition are spread throughout the market. Noel’s stands in a corner between the bookseller and the baker, and I really think it’s got the magical fairytale quality to appeal to kids. He and Glenna have gone with the Cinderella theme; the tree is laden with glass slipper ornaments and sparkly pumpkins, and surrounded by a horse-drawn glittered glass carriage running around the base of the tree like a model railway. Instead of a star on top, there’s a knitted fairy godmother, complete with magic wand, sitting on a wooden sign that reads ‘you shall go to the ball’. The fairylights give out a warm orange glow, the tinsel is white with iridescent orange bits which catch the twinkling lights and make it look like it’s moving, and the knitted bunting is wrapped around the tree with glittery green leaves and tiny pumpkins dangling from it. If I had a vote, it would be my winning tree. Not that I’m biased or anything, but it’s a truly special tree, and it stands out from the others in the market because of Noel’s creativity and attention to detail. It’s an immersive experience to stand and look at the Roscoe Farm tree – something that makes you feel festive and simultaneously like you’re standing in the middle of a pumpkin field where a fairy godmother could pop out at any moment.
A lot of the businesses have simply decorated with baubles made from their own logos. Some have gone for the excessive fairylight approach – if you can see it from Jupiter, it must be a winner. Some have been a bit more creative, like the way Fiona’s tree is decorated with strings of bath pearls, mini-bathbombs hanging up like baubles, and tiny festive soaps tied to the end of each branch, the amazing scent being her crowning glory. Fergus has put so much effort into helping Fiona with hers that his biscuit-themed tree looks a little lacklustre in comparison, decorated with lots of lights, tinsel and hanging gingerbread depictions of every festive thing you could ever imagine, from nutcrackers, sleighs, Santa’s boots, and brightly-iced presents, to every conceivable character in the nativity scene, including the donkey, the cattle, the inn keeper, various shepherds and their sheep, some fleas that were probably on the sheep, some of the earthworms that might’ve been living in the grass, and a gingerbread recreation of Mr Bean on the theory thateveryonewatchesMerry Christmas, Mr Beanat least once a year.
I kneel down in front of the green fluffy blanket that Glenna put in to hide the tree stand and start cutting lids in the top of each pumpkin and scooping the guts into the empty carrier bag, enjoying the quiet in this little corner as I watch the market waking up for what everyone knows will be an important day. There’s even someone wandering around playing Christmas tunes on the bagpipes today.
I love how easygoing things are here. Everyone trusts their neighbours to look after their stall when they need to pop out for a few minutes. The used bookseller has already learnt that I love reading romantic comedies and started putting them aside for me when he gets them in. The baker brings a fresh loaf of bread over whenever he sees me. If the flower seller has an influx of bouquets, he brings one over to decorate the stall. Noel does the same with Glenna’s goodies, like Fergus freely hands out gingerbread teacups and Fiona makes mini-bathbombs solely to give away to her friends. I’ve already resolved to make everyone a wreath before Christmas. Everyone is helpful and friendly here, and the whole atmosphere is laidback in a way I’ve never known before.
I love this market and I don’t want anything to happen to it. Elffield will have nothing without it. If Noel is right about the bus interchange, the whole place simply won’t exist. And that’s unthinkable.
The Christmas tree competition has helped, I know that. The rental fees that local businesses have paid for their trees to be here until January has given the market a much-needed cash boost. There’s been an increase in customers, and there’s a buzz around the place. The trees have been gradually decorated over the past few weeks, and excited children have been following their parents around and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over them. The incentives to shop at other stalls in the market have paid off too, people have been gladly handing in their coupons. I heard a customer say to Fiona the other day that she’d bought a candle and a bathbomb giftbox through the partnership with the candlemaker, and how pleased she was that her whole gift was sorted so easily and that she was going to tell all her colleagues to come here for their Secret Santa gifts. Sales are up for everybody. Stalls that were quiet and half empty of goods last month are full and bustling with customers again. A tourist bus came last week and dropped off a hundred tourists and picked them up two hours later, laden down with bags, and Fergus assured me that this is a bi-weekly occurrence as it gets closer to Christmas.
I slice a Christmas tree shape out of each pumpkin in turn, pop in an electric tealight and arrange them so they form a path up to the Christmas tree. Noel’s always saying he needs a way to make pumpkin season last longer, and if this takes off, the whole town could be lighting their roads and driveways with pumpkins to illuminate the way for Santa. But he needs more than a slight extension to pumpkin popularity. Everyone on this market needs more than a good Christmas season – we need a good year.
When I get back to the stall, Noel is exchanging money for one of the Christmas trees, having already sold a few from the stacks, and some wreaths. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘Youdidn’t have to dothat.’ I nod to the retreating figure of a man carrying one of the small Christmas trees. ‘I couldn’t have done any of this without you, Noel. I’d probably still be sitting outside the house crying in the car. Youdeserveto win this competition because I want someone other than me to appreciate how creative and talented you are, and before you shrug that off, just shut up and take a compliment.’
He bends down and whispers in my ear. ‘Do you have any idea how much you’re making me want to kiss you?’ He presses his mouth closer so his lips brush my earlobe. ‘And I can’t because Fergus is watching, but I think it’s only fair that you know how much I want to.’
My knees definitely feel weaker than they should. ‘You pretend to be all sweet and charming but you know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?’
He pulls back and grins at me. ‘If you look over at the biscuit stall now, Fergus is desperate to tell Fiona about this. He’s fizzing so much that it looks like he’s justeatena bathbomb. If I did what Iwantto do right now, we’d be calling an ambulance for the pair of them.’
Thankfully someone else comes over to ask if we’ve got any smaller versions of the tree in the entrance, and Noel slips smoothly into his well-practised chatter about Peppermint firs and the benefits of them, showing off our three-foot and four-foot tall specimens, but the man doesn’t need any persuasion as he hands over the money and walks away with a three-footer.
***
By the time of the judging, the supply of trees is seriously diminished and so is my pile of business cards because I’ve been handing them out all morning due to the amount of enquiries we’ve had about when we open. Noel’s been in and out all morning, carrying the purchased trees to cars, taking addresses for delivery later, and generally being charming and so knowledgeable when talking about Christmas trees that customers start to glaze over and agree to buy anything he suggests. Every inch of me wants to throw my arms around him and smother his gorgeous face in kisses because he makes every aspect of my life seem brighter. I still can’t believe how many Christmas trees we’ve sold. Noel suggested bringing more and I said no, envisioning piles of unwanted trees dying where they stand because it’s barely the last week of November and I thought it might still be too early, and now I’m wishing I’d taken his advice. The Peppermint firs have already sold out, there’s one lonely-looking Blue spruce and a couple of Nordmann firs left, and that’s it. The mistletoe bunches are long gone and the wreaths sold out within the first hour. People have even asked if they can buy the decorated display trees as they are, to which Noel has smoothly responded by handing them a business card and telling them we might have some leftover peppermint-themed tinsel at the farm and to pop by when it opens next weekend.
It’s lunchtime when a majority of the schoolchildren in Aberdeenshire are herded into some form of order by their teachers at the front of the market, ballot papers and pencils clutched in little hands as every child marks their favourite tree and posts their paper into a red postbox usually reserved for letters to Santa. Their laughter and chatter reaches every corner of the market, and the exhilaration is clear to see on their faces.
It’s weird to be involved but not involved at all. There was no point in me doing a Christmas-tree-themed Christmas tree, but I want Noel to win so badly that I’m as invested as anyone else with a tree in the race, and we’re surrounded by other market traders who have rented their own trees and representatives from the businesses who have got involved, staying to watch the progress of the judging.
A local car dealership who have decorated their tree with silver tinsel, hanging car air fresheners, and keyrings bearing the logos of well-known car brands. A takeaway delivery company whose tree is adorned with metallic baubles of pizza, fries, and hot dogs. A DIY shop whose decorations are samples of custom-mixed paint cards in a rainbow of colours. A secondhand furniture shop from one of the nearby industrial estates have made chairs, tables, and sofas out of miniature clothes pegs and strung their tree with bunting bearing the shop’s logo. A seafood restaurant from the nearest big town who have gone for a lobster and crab theme, and a pet supplies shop whose tree is laden with garlands of plaited dog leads and their branches are hung with metallic collar ID discs, engraved with the names of people’s own pets that they asked locals to put forward in the store. The bookseller’s tree is covered in free bookmarks with a sign up saying ‘help yourself’ and strung with paperchains of well-known book quotes, the flower seller has tied poinsettias on to every branch of his tree, and the Scottish souvenir seller has hung up lots of flags and mini nutcrackers wearing kilts and playing bagpipes.
All the stalls are temporarily shut while the votes are counted. An audience of customers stand around waiting. Children, teachers, parents who have accompanied the schools, parents who have popped down anyway to watch their children having the festive equivalent of a day in parliament, making a decision that you’d think was equally vital. Teachers have obviously played up the importance of having an input into their festive surroundings, and each child acts like a Westminster politician, but more civilised, as they wait for the town mayor to count each vote. The news crew wander around filming everything, photographers are snapping pictures, and there are reporters walking around with notebooks and Dictaphones, asking the children how they decided on their favourite and trying to get them to reveal their top-secret votes. Fellow stallholders come over to wish Noel luck, and even Glenna has ventured down with Gizmo for moral support.
We wait with bated breath.
