Last Friday, I purchased a Christmas tree. Given that these days they’re wrapped in a sort of hairnet, it’s a bit of a lottery as to whether the shape will be right or not (like purchasing packaged derivative futures, probably) when you open them up. But it was reasonably priced, and having got it home, it looks the part.

This is the first time in many years I’ve prepared for a traditional Christmas, as my delightfully naughty granddaughter is coming to stay, along with most of the Anglo-Irish clan. So although I find it very easy to be Bah Humbug about Christmammon, I really am looking forward to dressing the tree this year. And today’s the day.

When family cometh, there’s more preparation than you think. For much of this week, I have been putting curtains up. This isn’t a metier that comes easily to me: I’m not a girlie, I’m not gay, and I’m not patient. Patience may well be a virtue, but when hanging curtains, one needs the virtues of a Saint who has been to St Ignatius Loyala College in order to train for his St Christopher Badge as an Übersaint willing to try and understand everyone from Jeremy Hunt to the most territorial squirrel. When it comes to curtains, my general view is that hanging is too good for them: they should be burned.

It starts with the putting up of the poles. There are no horizontal or vertical lines in this house, as it has been slowly wandering downhill for the last 250 years. Thus it’s no use being all anal and using the spirit level, because if you do it looks as if the entire arrangement is rushing uphill. But matters get worse when it becomes clear that 250 year-old oak beams are near-petrified – and thus have a consistency close to that of anti-nuclear attack reinforced concrete.

The trick is therefore to support the poles using the stone walls for the drilling thing, but here too nothing is easy: some stone is soft and grey, some is calcaire and medium hard, and some is impenetrable flint. This is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Universe, but somehow flint is ever-present at the point one wishes to penetrate.

As I am (I can exclusively reveal) the comic super-hero Captain Slapdash, it is not unknown for me to revert to Harry Hammer at this juncture. And while Harry Hammer isn’t renowned for his clinical accuracy, he’s pretty damn good at mercilessly pummeling flint into submission.

Then there are the bits that go to make up the curtain’s ability to hang. For most blokes, the obvious answer seems to be rope and weight-hooks, but oh dear me no that is really unacceptably crude and vulgar, and so oddly fashioned plastic mini-mazes come into play.

They look a little like paper clips, but without the ability to clip. I always forget which way they load into the curtain backing, and this causes the curtain not to hang at all, but instead to fall dramatically to the ground…usually taking the walled rawlplugs with them. But once you’ve worked out which way is up, it’s plain sailing – apart from the fact that somehow you need to be an Olympic weightlifter to hook the clips onto the poncey iron rings as supplied by Sir Fennimore somebody or other in order to give one’s curtains that timelessly classic yet somehow contemporary joi de vivre.

The daftest part of the process is when – after much navy-blue air has been emitted – one then plumps the curtains up onto the iron croquet-hooks at either side such that the whole resembles a giant handkerchief into which someone with a heavy cold has sneezed. As Basil Fawlty would’ve said, “You wouldn’t understand dear, it’s called style”.

By the way, while I was typing this, the WordPress team have come back every three minutes to say that Oops! our operators have stepped away from their desks right now. Apart from grinning at this euphemism for taking a pee, I am suffused with the desire to seek out the robotic jerk who designed such patronising software, and use him as a rawlplug when hammering into flint.

ΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣ

A few other amusing things came across my desk later last week. One came courtesy of the Canadian Watering Can Slogger, who linked me to a Dacre Mail piece showing that Cameroid’s Big Society Project (which won an £830,000 lottery grant – Fix! Fix!) with its plan to recruit a million members in a year in fact managed to attract, erm, just the 64 sad folks.

This is an opportunity for my fully-trained market research maths to come into play. For on that basis of achievement, it shows that yes, jusscallmeDave connects with 0.0064% of the UK population…which equates to our beloved Leader bonding with just four out of every 625 people he meets out there on the hustings. As one of these is Rebekah Brooks and the other is his Missus, that means – roughly – Avid Cameldung will have to kiss 1000 babies on order to impress three mothers. It’s not what you’d call a terrific strike rate, is it?

I rather suspect the Tory Knives are watching events closely, and indeed yesterday the Telegraph was yet again floating the boat of ‘Tories plot against Cameron as polls tighten’. While curtain poles may tighten at times, opinion polls don’t…but this was merely the Barclay Brothers’ semi-literate attempt to suggest that Labour is catching up. My own view on this is more straightforward: Milband has been quiet on Twitter the last few days; the Left is at last taking the Slog’s advice – gag Miliband, and you can’t lose.

Last night at The Slog: Lots of tits in Claridges, everything normal