M is for Man Down! Meeediic! Maaan Doouuwwn!

The hero of at least one past Christmas post; Sergeant Drill has ceased to hang . . . sniff! He suffered a catastrophic fracture or two, and went to the great green glass-recycling basket in the drive, a couple of three Friday's ago.

Following his accident; All the King's horses and all the King's men were summoned, but being rigid plastic proved no use at all! However, the yin-yang was strong in that one Luke, and the next day I found another in the DEBRA charity-shop for 20p!

Along with a nice glass fir-cone (another side-theme in the bauble stash) and a pink parcel for the 'gay' tree, and here pictured with two sets I grabbed in Homesense, the TKMaxx home-ware vehicle. So as one leaves the ranks; another joins.

Truth be told I have a couple of duplicates of the newly-lost one in my own stuff, so next year (I won't be doing a tree this year, still a little raw, and the house is chaotic!) we will have the full parade, which should be about ten, or twelve, of all ranks now?!!

The new one has a rather annoying grin, which I could have done without, but beggers can't be choosers! And he's a little smaller than our recent casualty, so he bridges the gap between the fourTKMaxx smallies of 2016's purchase and the older, larger or 'standard' sized chaps.

And here he is with this year's previously seen additions to the figural element of the tree decorations. not that they are the only ones, as this year's TKMaxx buy . . .

. . . included a daft cat with a flower in its mouth and a dog, who are both from the little boxes of smaller decorations they've been doing for five or six years now, which are very useful for filling the gaps at the top of the tree.

I also grabbed these in The Works, they have also had them for several years now, but each year the selection on offer is different; one year it was assorted sizes in the pack, another year it was larger pairs, last year - I think - they were all metallic red or gold; no good for toy soldier photography (or war gaming), but this year it was a useful 'five small' in pine green or snow-covered!