In childhood, in deepest, darkest Dorset, it was my sister's first ever articulated 'baby doll' - a little bakelite plastic thing in an unrealistic shade that they like to call 'flesh' (if you were an apricot maybe). She's dressed in a fairy costume made by our grandmother from what could have been her wedding dress (a heavy silk, turned ivory with age) with wings of the same, all trimmed with a delicate edge of silver tinsel. She has a matchstick wand with tinsel 'star' that always had to be re-sticky taped to her arm every year. She has string around her middle under the skirt and she's tied to the top of the tree, whether a real one or an artificial one. Her legs dropped off about every 3 years or so, but she was always on the tree until the mid to late '70's when she was replaced by a nasty silver winged cone with a plastic doll's head which had fuzzy, custard yellow hair. I hated her with a passion and she mysteriously 'disappeared' in 1980. When my mother emigrated in 1998, I acquired her decorations and have the old fairy doll still, waiting for me to reattach her legs and put her in her rightful place.

Since leaving home in 1982, my tree has always had a star, usually home made for that year in various materials.

LTS