Christmas on a Budget

Last week I promised Rachel (of Night Jar fame) that I’d spend Monday helping her decorate the bar.

I arrived at 11am as promised so that we could get in a good nine hours work or so before she needed to get the bar ready for opening at 9pm.  But invariably we had to have a coffee and a strategy meeting first to decide what we needed to buy, what the budget was with which to buy and what exactly we wanted to achieve!

Now, there are a myriad of stunning Christmas decorations out there with which you can turn your home (or bar) into something out of the Christmas edition of Homes and Gardens...but we were on a strict budget and we were also limited by what North Cyprus could offer us in the way of decorative items - seeing as what it is a Muslim country and Christmas ain’t a big thing here funnily enough!

That said, the usual suspects - namely Deniz Plaza, the Milyon Shop etc. - all had a really good selection of sparkly, tinselly delights which we could go wild with - including a bright pink tinsel tickling stick that smelled of mildew...so we bought that.  And then best of all by about fifty million miles were the lights on sale in the Milyon Shop for next to nothing.

My goodness, what a selection!  Flowery ones and fluffy one and strange holly like one and little lanterns and tiny rice lights - we actually went a bit mad on the lights and spent over half our budget on them I think!

So anyway, that was shopping taken care of in a matter of minutes really!  Cheap, cheerful and plentiful...that’s what we like!  And so then it was time for a victory coffee.  And then we bumped into an old friend of Rachel’s on the harbour - we just happened to be in the general vicinity of the harbour and needed to take a look to make sure it hadn’t changed while we’d been out shopping.  And then of course he (the old friend) wanted a good old gossip - as men invariably do (!) - and so then we had to stop for another coffee...and then we decided we’d better look for a Christmas present for Andy.

Anyway, we got back to the bar and it was time for a beer - well, you can’t be in a bar and not have a beer can you?  And as we were ‘doing Christmas’ we had to have Christmas music.  So we spent a little while searching through the back catalogues on the PC until we found a good selection and then we set to work.

Phew - who knew decorating was such thirsty work?

So we sat down and surveyed what we’d done so far (unpacked the shopping bags) and had another beer.

Then we were really fired up and things started going swimmingly...until we discovered the tape we were using wasn’t really very sticky and most of what we’d already done fell down again.

So then we lost heart and had a coffee and debated all the rude things the North Cyprus estate agent boys will say when they spy our efforts.

Then we put the music back on and started dancing and in the end I think we really only managed to put up two sets of lights and cover the pool table in glitter (accidentally) before it was time for me to go home and make an appearance and prove to Andy I hadn’t left him.

But we did manage to find a home for the Barbie pink tinsel tickling stick that smelled musty...down the back of the coca-cola fridge.

So, I’m going back today to help finish up!