John and Sherlock were sitting in the living room of 221 B baker street. Well Sherlock was sitting; John was busy removing the Christmas decorations from the Christmas tree. He couldn't help but think to himself that all this de-decorating would take far less time if the consulting detective decided to help him. But of course Sherlock had no such intentions.

After having successfully removed the fairy lights from the tree, John decided that he deserved a break and flopped down on the sofa next to Sherlock.

Sherlock held up a Chocolate Santa that he had been staring at for the last few minutes.

"When I was little Mycroft and I used to remove the wrapping of Chocolate-Father-Christmases really carefully and then flatten them out. Mycroft traded them with the other kids at his school. I traded with Mycroft" A small smile creeped into Sherlock's face.

" When I went to primary school all the kids had these great sticker albums" said John " with coloured, glitter covered and even phosphorescent stickers. But I was the only boy in the whole wide world whose parents had not bought him a sticker album. I can't even remember why not. They probably thought it was too expensive or too silly, or they just couldn't stand me. Anyway I decided to make one myself. I stapled the empty plastic sheets that were left over when my dad used up his address decals, together.

I collected Write Back Soon stickers from the postal service, they were white and oval and had a fat pigeon on them, and those terribly ugly A Heart for Children stickers."

" Why didn't you just collect your dad's address stickers" asked Sherlock.

" I did, I had quite a lot of those." "Cute" " Yeah, but the other kids never wanted to trade with me"

Both Sherlock and John were quiet for some time, Sherlock twiddling with the Chocolate-Santa in his hands and wondering whether the story was over, and John lost in his thoughts.

"Well be that as it may, I thought my sticker album was awesome, I still have it in a box on top if my wardrobe."

John sighed and got up. He resumed trying to pull of the many little tree balls from the branches of their Christmas tree.

Sherlock slowly pulled the wrapping off the Chocolate Santa; he flattened it out and stood up. " Go get your album," he said to John " let's trade!"