The icicles which drape so nicely over Susie's skinny thighs were bought for Belvedere Road, my previous multitextured (and rather larger) house, for a blue and silver christmas which (unlike most of my previous christmases at that house) was mostly packed up afterwards. The baubles I found in the flat before that, which contained a staircase that went nowhere. In the black hole of its cupboard under the stairs, I found old display racks, an electrical heater of truly extraordinary design, and, wrapped up in black plastic bags like a neatly dismembered corpse, an artificial christmas tree, complete with lights and decorations.