To try and recreate a Christmas market in my back garden.

(This was years before The Simpsons and their opening credits - we just knew )

You'll need some kind of floor matting that simultaneously has overlapping bumps and massive gaps, so you can trip and stumble dropping everything you're carrying.

A giant marshmallow stall where every flavour is something like marmite on toast / pimms / banofee pie. Buy one for the kids knowing they will hate it, cursing that there are no normal flavours. Queue again to get within a metre of the adjacent fire bowl to toast the marshmallow, which takes half an hour and they still haven't changed colour so you eat lukewarm rubbery perfume lump of sugar. Bonus points if you burn the sleeve of your coat.

You will need all of the following:

Stale almonds dipped in some sort of fructose-syrup/faux cinnamon concoction and heated a temperature you’d associate with the centre of a volcano. Alternatively, burned chestnuts with a shell so sharp that attempting to remove it without protective equipment will require stitches.

Some sort of gifty wifty thing that can be personalised with your name in metal work.

Sheds cut in half and stuffed full of Scandi cushions where you will feel obliged to spend £25 on a clutch of drinks in order to sit in them.

Yeah make sure the pic n mix items are made of heavy jelly and enormous. The cost of a tall bag full (how profligate!) will equal your monthly utilities bill.

Ensure your lawn is thoroughly churned up and apply wet mud to everything up to a height of 1.5ft.
Including yourself.
Mix lots of cables and trip hazards in. Maybe a hole or two.

The day after your extravaganza survey the trampled carnage. Sell some very competitively priced extortionate tickets to yourself and take Daily Mail sad face photos of you and the kids. Send to the press and complain pitifully about how you were ripped off and the kids have had the magic of Christmas ruined forever.
Perhaps include a muddy, hungover Santa and elves in the back of the shot.

Erm, I think you forgot the stall selling light sabers / wands/ swords that glow but you’re not really sure why but remember some story from the 1980s about them being radioactive so you say no three times before saying FFS OK then you can have one.

The price? £15 each or two for £40.

And definitely don’t forget to recreate the 1.5 mile long park and ride bus queue

Pick n mix? £10 for a couple of cola bottles & a jelly snake?

Lay out all your Christmas decorations individually and charge yourself £1 for each of them

Don’t forget to ask 15 neighbours to drink out of the mug first, merely rinsing it in cold water between each neighbour

Don't forget to add some smokers in there, get a waft whilst your jostling to get past folk with their buggy's.

Ooww much?! 😂🤣

Knock up some marshmallow/strawberries on a stick you’ve thrown some chocolate on that cost pennies to make....place them at your DCs eye level so you can pay £5 each...always a winner 🤨

Waffles loaded with molten chocolate that goes all over you with the first bite if your going for the Brussels market vibe.

Or take your mum who constantly repeats "how much! You have more money than sence!" Who then tuts for the next hour before you get pissed off and drive her home.

Sherpa bed throw stalls at every corner

Make sure you have trays angled so young children instantly drop the contents

Make sure you can sneak into Wetherspoons/Maccies to use the toilet!

Yeh I do think alcopops and heckling Santa are a bit 90s. For a more modern woke vibe you can draft in a sullen teen to complain loudly about the lack of vegan catering and the single use plastic cups and bags

Make your own ice bar by putting on a really big coat, sitting in front of the open freezer and serving yourself a couple of shots of Tesco value vodka - £30 for that experience at least.

Buy a load of French and German stuff from Lidl and lay it out on your kitchen counter with massively inflated prices. Those £1.99 gingerbread cookies? £7.99 pls.

I adore this thread.

Please also have a stall selling glass tree ornaments for £20 each that you talk yourself into buying as it’s the sort of thing you’ll treasure forever and get out every year with memories which will be broken after 30 seconds on the tree by cat/dog/child. Unless it breaks on the way home in the cheap carrier bag.

A gang of yoofs need to trample through taking the piss out of Santa and dropping empty alcopops. Well if its a vintage 90s vibe I suppose. My DS18 doesn't drink or trample just 'wokes' around

when you start to feel thirsty and decide that you are willing to spend 8 quid to drink a plastic glass of heineken with a two inc, head, stand at the 'bar' and ignore yourself for at least 20 minutes first.

Don't forget to pretend you're German. Or an elf.
Big plaits, big ears..

Aw, DS and I had a lovely time at Bath Shedfest '19. Mainly because he was just 1 and in a buggy, and it was 10am on a Tuesday. I shan't go again until he is 12 and can be left at home!

If you don't remember to say "fuck it, it's Christmas!" About a million times to justify drinking another £7 a glass Baileys Latte or a £5 a pop mulled wine from Aldi then it's not real.