On the street tonight, an old man plays with newspaper cuttings of his glory days

I may not wear heavy black eyeliner, leopard print and a tiara these days, but I'm still prepared to brave the crowds and cold to see the Manic Street Preachers. They played a one-off singles gig at the O2 arena in Greenwich on Saturday, and it was fantastic.

Nicky had a costume change during the interval, and ended the gig wearing a white 'Spiller's Records' hoodie, a printed miniskirt and pedal pushers. Those of you with Welsh connections will probably remember Spiller's Records, a gem of a record shop in Cardiff. They had a special Welsh rock section, and when I was living in Swansea, I would often go there to get Manics bootlegs and fanzines. Sadly, like many record shops, it has closed down.

I felt a shiver down my spine when James sang the opening to Life Becoming a Landslide. And I'm getting soft in my old age - I was close to tears during Your Love Alone is Not Enough and when Nicky spoke of Richey. I'd never heard Nina Pearson sing live before, and I was mesmerized by her raw, beautiful voice as she sang lines like 'I could have written all your lies...I could have shown you how to cry'. Gruff Rhys also made a guest appearance on Let Robeson Sing - apparently, he was meant to sing this with the Manics when they went to Cuba, but he didn't make it.

James and Nicky were on top form, chatting to us and each other. 'You never f***ing liked this song, did you?!' James said at the end of Why So Sad. Some of us did, James! 'We used to write songs about the miners' strike,' Nicky told us. 'Nothing's changed. There's still a lot of a c***s in power.'

The golden Holy Bible era may be long gone, but I hope the Manics continue to write songs about the things that matter.

I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes, that learned how to spell.
Faster

Silver bells, silver bells, it’s Christmas time in the city

I finished my work experience at Nikki Tibbles Wild at Heart this week. I remember literally jumping up in the air when I listened to my voicemail message telling me that I had an interview for a placement there. I had just got off a plane to visit a uni friend in St Helier, and I got a few strange looks from the other people who were waiting to collect their luggage!

Nikki Tibbles Wild at Heart is an incredible company. It does flowers for weddings, huge events, private homes, and has four shops in London. I’ve been to the concession in Liberty (which is one of my favourite shops in London; not that I can afford to shop there!) and it’s beautiful. It’s just what I want from a flower shop – an amazing selection of flowers, many of them scented, and florists who will work with your budget and brief to create something gorgeous. I’d also seen that Nikki had designed bouquets for The National Gallery, inspired by some of the work on display there. You may have gathered that I’m rather fond of flower arrangements inspired by culture, art and fashion, so I do love these. The Dutch still life arrangement, in particular, is something I would never have thought to try, but it works so well.

When I started working for Nikki and her team in November, I got to see what a typical morning in the Pimlico shop was like, as well as the warehouse that also serves as a studio. During my time there, I did the stuff you would expect to do as a floristry student, such as conditioning flowers and cleaning up (when there are lots of florists making up wreathes and flower arrangements, the floor gets covered in pine, stems and leaves pretty quickly), as well as other tasks that are key to the run up to Christmas, such as wiring dried oranges and pine cones, and ribboning cinnamon sticks. A LOT of cinnamon sticks.

I had the heart-breaking job of dismantling two humungous and stunning arrangements that had been made for a bridal sample – one consolation was the sweet smell of the beautiful O’Hara roses as I worked. I had some 'Banksy' moments, as my friend described them, spray painting ivy trails red or silver or gold. And, sometimes, I had the chance to make arrangements and get some fantastic advice and feedback from the other florists. I made a few wreathes, some table arrangements, and on my last day, the marvellous Leigh stopped lambasting my football team and taught me to make this lovely, Christmassy table centre, and some tulip domes.

On my last day, I also worked the morning in the Pimlico shop. After the usual conditioning of flowers, I made up little bunches of mistletoe. Finally, I hand delivered a bouquet that had been made by the shop's amazing florist, Ruth, who I learned so much from. As the film Bed of Roses has been one of my guilty pleasures ever since I saw it on a weekday afternoon when I was off school with a cold, it was nice to see for myself why Christian Slater’s character (a florist) enjoys delivering flowers himself. People’s reactions when they receive flowers no doubt vary, depending on the person and the occasion, but they’re a reminder of why corny old romantics like myself want to become florists.

I’ll finish this with some photos I took of the Pimlico shop on my last day. What a beautiful place to work.

Sugar plum fairy in a pear tree

I was a bit sad to hear that my partner, who loves Christmas drinks in coffee shops and the Mariah Carey song, wasn’t going to have a tree this year. If it wasn’t for the trouble I had when I carried my topiary tree on the train back from college, I would have made another one for him. So, since he likes candles and prefers silver to gold, I made this table centre for him. Leigh at Nikki Tibbles Wild at Heart taught me how to insert soft-stemmed ranunculus into floral foam without squishing or snapping them, and as the market is full of them right now, I thought I would try them out at home. I used eucalyptus and berried eucalyptus, white and pink ranunculus, ilex leaves and thistles that I’d painted silver, and sugared pears. I think the berried eucalyptus has made this a bit flat, but otherwise, I’m quite happy with it. Let’s hope it survives my last trip to the Midlands before Christmas.

Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree

For our last week at college this term, we did lots of Christmas arrangements. The garland and the candle table centre were fun and comparatively straightforward to make, and the wreath took a while, but we were used to that kind of work after making two laurel chaplets in November (see Remembrance Day post). However, the topiary tree was a seemingly endless slog! I was so relieved when I’d finally finished making the ‘tree’ part, but I didn’t have long to decorate it. And as I carried it home on a crowded train, the tip broke off. I have since spruced it up a bit with a golden angel and some ribbon, and I will add those photos later.

There was no red or green on our classroom tree though. Every man I’ve shown this photo to has reacted with the same bemusement. But as our class is comprised mainly of girls, we loved it, especially with all the secret Santa presents underneath.

We're dancing in the midnight sky

Let’s have a different song this time.

Unfortunately, getting a market flower stall is not as simple as my friend and I had thought. For various reasons, we’ve had no joy so far. But we’ll keep trying. I really enjoyed planning our stall and the bouquets and posies I wanted to make, which are all inspired by Christmas songs. As I’m so keen to make them anyway, I bought lots of flowers from the market so I could start making them as presents for people. Here are three that I made for my tutors and the technician at college. They work so hard teaching us and organising flowers and sundries for all the students, and I feel very lucky to be doing my course.

This floaty one is called Walking in the Air. It’s funny, because I wrote out the kind of material I wanted to use in the arrangement weeks ago, such as fountain grass and lisianthus, and the delicate, ethereal effect I wanted it to have, and when I finally made it, it was just how I imagined it would be.

This pretty one is Fairytale of New York. I wanted it to be white, pale pink and green, and I thought the pastel colours of the anemones and Little Silver spray roses, the delicate narcissi and the big, sweet-smelling O’Hara roses would help to create a ‘fairytale’ effect. I also listened to The Pogues’ and Kirsty McColl’s song again and realised that there are some sweet lyrics in it, amongst all the insults!

And the last one is Blue Christmas. Due to budget constraints, I couldn’t buy all of the flowers I’d originally planned to use, so this arrangement didn’t really turn out how I’d hoped. But I think these anemones and beautifully scented muscari are pretty blue, while the thistles and eucalyptus are lovely and Christmassy. I have to confess, when I planned to do a Blue Christmas posy, I had the Shakin’ Stevens version in my head (I’m sorry, Elvis). He was my idol when I was about three years old. If I do this design again, I’ll see if I can get some denim ribbon to tie around it, in honour of him!

And everyone is singing, I hear those sleigh bells ringing

Another week, another lyric from Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You. I’m glad it’s finally ok to admit that this is one of my favourite Christmas songs; I remember being mercilessly mocked for liking this song when it came out in 1994!

I met my partner's family last weekend. I did a Christmassy bouquet for his mum, and a little jam jar posy for him, and managed to carry both of them intact up on the train. The hyacinths and eucalyptus smell gorgeous, as do the milder-scented Grand Prix roses; although I hope the fragrance wasn’t too intoxicating for other passengers on the train. I decorated the jam jar with ribbon and little bells – and yes, they do jingle!

I’m sorry, I just hallucinated

I’m fairly good at written work, unexpectedly good at botanical names tests, but find practical work more of challenge. So imagine my surprise when we had an assessment to do a corsage, something I’ve always found challenging (my wires are too thick and twisted; my branching unit isn’t great; flowers aren’t distributed well; there’s no focal flower), and I somehow walked away with a distinction for this design. I was gobsmacked.

A week later, it was back to reality. We had an ikebana-style hand-tied test and all of us, bar two students, failed it. Luckily, our tutors have given us the holidays to research and practise the design, and resit it in the new year.