According to a recent poll 9% of Brits still pick mistletoe.  Which sounds good and reassuring for us mistletoe promotors – except that I don’t believe it for a moment.  9% hang it up – ok, 9% pick it?  No. This is the same poll, reported in many papers (eg the Telegraph, the Metro), that claims 65% of Brits have champagne breakfasts on Christmas Day – which many commentators have pointed out seems unlikely. But […]

At the mistletoe auctions this year I’ve overheard several people grumbling a bit about too much ‘yellow’ mistletoe, often comparing it unfavourably with French Mistletoe (which is ‘always yellow’ according to Tenbury lore).  This is, of course, entirely untrue, and should perhaps be described as a sort of Tenbury Wells Urban Legend.  It helps build the market for the English stuff you see… In reality all northern European mistletoe goes a bit yellow around this […]

Tuesday 11th December.  The last of the 3 Tenbury Mistletoe Auctions for 2007.  And this time I’m there for 05.30 hours and it’s very very cold (-2.5C) and very dark.  The mistletoe looks good though, all sparkly and frosty! Why so early?  Well, BBC Breakfast TV are here to broadcast live links during the show (6.00 to 9.00am) and this year I’m acting as a sort of press officer for all things Tenbury Mistletoe.  Though […]

My listing of online mistletoe suppliers in the UK last week was somewhat dismissive of the Ebay suppliers, and I’ve been taken to task a little by the Mistletoe Lady, who is a year-round mistletoe seller (incl grow-kits, in season), based in Cheltenham, and should really be added to my listing of non-Ebay suppliers.  You can find her details here, and a list of her current sales items here.  Talking of grow-kits (see previous blog […]

Well. here’s a first, not only do we have a sensible feature on how to-grow mistletoe in the Telegraph on Saturday but we have another one, equally sensible, on Monday.  What’s going on?  The same national newspaper runs the same feature over 2 consecutive days?  And such a distinctive feature too – you’d think the editor might just notice.  Each by a different journalist of course, and each with some differing content of course.  But […]

The opportunity to buy mistletoe online in the UK is relatively new – in fact I don’t think you could at all until TEME began trading back in 2005.  Over in the States things were different – but then so is their mistletoe – which is small, compact in branching, and easily slips into an envelope.  The downside is that the US stuff is really uninspiring, and begs the question of why anyone would want […]

Despite all the TV interest in the auctions so far this year, there’s not been a lot in the newspapers.  A bit in the local papers around Tenbury – good coverage of the Mistletoe Festival in the Tenbury Advertiser (though not yet in their online ed), but ousted by Worcester Christmas celebrations in Worcester News.  And apparently I made the front page of the Shropshire Star on 27th Nov – but I’ve not seen that, […]

If you’ve followed the various mistletoe blogs over the last few years you’ll know that I really really hate plastic mistletoe. At this year’s Mistletoe Ball I gave a short speech on the perils of plastic – if you don’t keep up the tradition of using the real stuff we risk celebrating/kissing under plastic stuff – and all the tat that comes with it.  Like the Musical Mistletoe – a crowd-pleasing bunch of plastic mistletoe […]

Tuesday Dec 4th, and the second of the traditional three Tenbury Wells Mistletoe Auctions. As described last week, the venue is out of town this year, and, like last week, there’s a steady patter of drizzley rain from a grey sky.  But lots of mistletoe. Prices for mistletoe are still low, there’s too much good stuff about this season, though holly prices are much higher, and there are more holly lots this week than last. […]

Sunday 2nd Dec – and a day spent harvesting mistletoe.  I’m out with TEME, the online mistletoe trading group from Tenbury, and we have a number of largish orders to fulfill in the next few days. Since TEME only deal in ‘processed’ mistletoe – ie mistletoe tready to be used, not ‘raw’ on the branch we want to minimise the amount of waste we take back to the barn – so we have a team […]