1. Drag tree home from local, overpriced yet convenient, under the railway bridge tree emporium and realise you need to rearrange furniture to put it up.
2. Rearrange furniture.
3. Get ladder to open frozen loft space and find stand and decorations.
4. Remember you have two stands and neither is really right, plus one is actually broken. Ditch broken one.
5. Attempt to hold up tree with one hand while tightening stand screws with the other until tree vaguely wedged in and doesn't topple over completely.
6. Cut away spiderweb of nylon and realise tree is bushier than you thought, so drag stand out from the corner, triggering immediate topple effect.
7. Crouch under branches, holding main tree stem with one hand and rectify topple to reasonable degree.
8. Unloop lights from box. Realise that to get to plug to turn on lights will require snake-like belly crawl underneath tree and arm's length reach with prickles in your head.
9. Put lights problem to one side and unwrap baubles and decorations. Realise that you quite like most of them and have three camels, a skunk and a glittery pink-lipped frog amongst many others. Resign yourself that your tree will not be especially sophisticated and refuse to draw conclusions as to what this says about you.
10. Attempt to disperse lights around tree without increase in topple effect.
11. Position decorations decoratively.
12. For the final touch, attach metal star to top branch and watch it bend gently sideways with the excess weight.
13. Perform snake-like belly crawl under tree to turn on lights.
14. Step back to admire and realise you have constructed the leaning tower of Pisa with bells on.
15. Leave for 24 hours. As list towards the floor increases, realise you should have attached guy ropes to secure more fully.
16. Unearth picture hooks and string for tree improvement scheme.
17. Construct guy rope system by hammering picture hooks into underside of shelves (first losing a hook for half an hour and finding it in the bin) and running string around tree.
18. Perform snake-like belly crawl to plug in extension cord for lights, thus obviating need for futher crawling.
19. Realign tree in stand and ultimately adjust Pisa list from front topple to a backwards lean. Decide this is the best you can do.
20. Stand back and admire. Pour large drink.
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