So we woke up this morning to a total white-out: freezing fog and a heavy ground frost meant that we could see absolutely nothing. Not quite snow, but close enough for us to feel slightly Christmassy. Bertie thought it was wonderful and legged around the garden, crunching and scrunching, whizzing round in circles and generally being a bit of an arse.

I crawled at a break-neck ten miles per hour all the way down to the nearest big town to get my hair done (a girl mustn’t neglect her roots, even at Christmas) - taking the extra time to view a veritable menagerie of dead beasts by the side of the road: dog, cat, fox and hare amongst the frozen solid delights on offer today - it’s like an ‘Evil Dead’ safari park on the N3 - and was amazed to find that even though there was less fog in town, the traffic chaos continued. It seems that the whole of the Midlands of Ireland goes bonkers and insists on doing all of their Christmas shopping on the last Friday before Christmas as every car park was full to capacity and every pavement heaving with shoppers. Inside my favourite hairdresser, it was the same story: hoards of people, blow dryers blowing, hairdressers… er… dressing… Still, now I’m all coiffed and lubly again I don’t care as I’ve done my Christmas shopping, it was back up to English Towers for a large mug of mulled cranberry (cranberry juice, brown sugar, slices of lime impaled with cloves, cinnamon stick) and a slice of mincemeat tart (pastry, mincemeat, flan tin, oven…you know the drill) before settling myself down in front of the fire for a foodie-fest of the Christmas specials on UKTV Food.

Did I mention I love Christmas?

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