the smell of gingerbread in the morning

I once made gingerbread decorations for the Christmas tree. The tree looked very nice, and very tasteful. Too tasteful. My smelly lurcher, Grommet, pushed the tree over and ate all the decorations, then stood there looking gormless and guilty. It's just what lurchers do. It's a 'force of nature' thing.

Grommet was safely planted in a friend's garden some eight winters back. He was dead at the time, obviously.

So I figured we'd be safe to have another go at the gingerbread, for our small tree that we bought from the BTCV stall at the CREATE Christmas Fair, where the old hippies go for their Christmas nick-nacks.

Things started pretty well...


But then disaster struck, although we did not recognise it at the time. I got a phone call from someone on Freecycle, offering me a bike workstand that I'd put in a request for. But I had to dash off and get it there and then. Katie retired to her computer, and failed to hear the clockwork timer announcing that it was time to take the gingerbread out of the oven.

I got home to smoke, open windows and a really rather upset Katie.

And some very blackened gingerbread.

Making the best of it, we painted it with some white emulsion we'd pulled out of a skip, and then painted the decorations with bright acrylics.



And now we have a very nice tree.