How to have Christmas

Ingredients:
One London terrace house, Victorian era (next to a park, if possible)
One tiled fireplace (must have proper mantlepiece)
One Christmas tree (Blue Spruce is recommended)
Sundry decorations (buy some from the V&A if you can; their selection is lovely)
A garland for the fireplace (may have to be ordered off the internet as they're VERY hard to find)
Ilex or holly or other seasonal flowers, as desired, from Columbia Road
Assorted friends to come around and drink red wine and eat roast pork and admire all of the above


Method:
Purchase Christmas tree, bring it home by any means necessary. Wrestle it into the living room, release it from its net and set it up in its stand. Fill stand with water. Decorate tree with lights and baubles and lovely gold lametta.
Liberate garland from the over-large box it arrived in and unbend all the tips. Hang from brass hooks in the underside of the mantlepiece. If you should discover that the mantlepiece is actually metal, and brass hooks cannot be screwed into it, wedge the hooks into crevices and hold them there by sheer willpower and reverse gravity. Decorate garland with decorations from the V&A.
Invite friends to celebrate St Nicholas' Day. Buy pork, apples, parsnips, potatoes and other vegetables. Buy pudding, brandy sauce and double cream from the Channel Islands. Buy wine.

Serves four.

Columbia Road

Columbia Road is shaped like a wide V, with the ends of both arms ending up on Hackney Road, about ten minutes' walk from home. It's pretty nondescript for most of the week - oh, there are some nice enough shops there, but there are a few of THOSE around London - no; what makes it special are Sundays. For on Sundays, there's a wonderful flower market there; stalls of flowers and plants and vines and small shrubs and trees lining the street for what seems like miles; East End stallholders all vying with one another for your business ('one for four pahnd; free for a tenner! lovely pansies; six pahnd a tray; I'll frow in a extra one wiv it; can't say fairer'n'at'), cafes selling aromatic coffee and bagels and pastries; pubs offering a fry-up (aka the 'Full English'); buskers; second-hand stores; the lot. People flock from everywhere; it's always packed. And all day on Sunday, wherever you are around Hackney, if you see a guy on a bike riding somewhat erratically whilst holding a massive bunch of tulips under one arm, or a young couple walking slowly, with frequent stops to put down the weeping fig in the black glazed pot, or an old lady with a spray of holly across the top of the shopping trolley she's trundling, you know they've been to Columbia Road.