Sorry! I bottled out!

I have always thought that one can indeed overdo the outdoor christmas lights. There are plenty of examples of this on my daily drive into work. One enterprising neighbour has an inflatable Santa and a whole herd of multi-coloured stags with nodding antlers.

But, face to face with an £80 illuminated reindeer in my local garden centre, I bottled it.

I am sorry, but even at that price, it was...well...naff.

By the time I got home, my whole family had heard that I may well be coming home with luminescent wildlife and they were, to a man, really worried that I'd finally gone "eccentric" (something I have always threatened to do).

I'll perhaps do that next year - with a solar powered twinkly tree. Saw one of those at the garden centre and was tempted.