Rewind to Christmas in the year 2000. I love my memories of Christmas that year.

Bird and I had just moved into our very own flat. Until then, we had lived in separate studio flats and then squished into a single bed in a skanky student house we shared with two smelly young men. We were 22 and felt very grown up having our own little home to decorate for Christmas and a place to start our own Christmas traditions…which that year meant a lot of two-for-a-fiver red wine and splurging on Malboro Lights instead of scraping together scraps for rollies.

I carried the Christmas tree nearly a mile home on my shoulder in the freezing sleet on a very dark Liverpool afternoon, while a very dear friend carried a bucket of bricks. Literally, a bucket full of bricks. We had no car in those days and were always broke so it was walk with the tree, or have no tree, which wasn’t an option.

We had little money left for decorations so when a cut-out Ali G Christmas angel came free with The Guardian it was our very own Christmas miracle. Ali G sat proudly overlooking our Christmas that year. It sounds cliched, but looking back, things were so simple then. Christmas was Bird and I, a Christmas tree and a lot of love.

These pics remind me that it doesn’t matter if your tealights don’t coordinate with your baubles. You don’t have to have a theme and spend a fortune on holly to have a very happy Christmas. For me, Christmas is about being together and being happy and celebrating those things. But I’m glad we can spend more than £2.50 on a bottle of wine these days. I don’t think I could handle the ‘cheap sleepy wine’ hangover anymore.

The theme for The Gallery this week over at Sticky Fingers is Christmas of Yesteryear. Go check out the other entries and lose yourself in nostalgia and all things festive.