And so that was Christmas........

.....the tree went up....

and now it's down. The chocolates are all gone and there's just a few Turkish Delight left...... and a little bit of homemade sloe vodka....

....another year over and a new one just begun. Now it's all about the soup. Happy new year!!

Top tip: go see 'Birdman', a cheeky matinee is especially good at blowing away the January blues....

Baby it's cold outside......

Be like a diamond in the sky this Christmas....... try a Twinkle.

Shake vodka and elderflower cordial with ice, strain and add to Champagne ........ also works with Prosecco........Happy Christmas!!

Top tip: bring back the cocktail hour.

Sleigh bells ring.......

We seemed to have gone from this......

to this........

with alarming speed and so I have decided to embrace my inner Santa, crack open the sherry and let it snow.....let it snow.......let it snow.....

Top tip: if you've never seen the American comedian Louie CK then make it your mission to seek out his show on Fox.

Brought to book........

I hope you all had a happy Christmas or at least got through it in one piece. I spent most of it on the sofa with Rupert Everett. Having enjoyed his first biography, Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins, I'd requested his second, Vanished Years, from Santa this year. As it was a presi it was perfectly acceptable to read continuously through meals and movies, thus avoiding all opportunities for fighting and fretting. It helped that it was very funny and poignant and most enjoyable.

Having made read Dickens one of my New Year resolutions last year, and having successfully enjoyed Great Expectations, this year I've decided to extend my literary pursuits to George Eliot. No, I've never read him, or her, but when I checked my library....... the shelf of books that circumnavigates my hallway........ I discovered I had copies of Mill On The Floss, Middlemarch and Silas Marner, I'm spoilt for choice it would seem. So it's back to the sofa for 2013......Happy New Year!!

Top tip: festive food goes on sale now....go fill the freezer!!

Ho Ho.....hum

The halls are decked.....with giant, tissue oh-so-on-trend paper balls......

the pies are baked.....

the cards are made....4 years at art college not wasted...... the tree is in.....

the chili jam.... homemade gift of choice....is done.

I've drunk mulled wine, sang carols, done the requisite charitable work, I've stuck cloves in an orange

and been wolf-whistled by a pack of Santas, but still, I'm not feeling it. Nope, nada, nothing, zilch.....the Christmas tree lights are on, but the festive spirit's not home........

Top tip: from Dickens....Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.....

Merry Christmas everyone.......

As we hurtle towards 2012 I have taken a moment to stop and wonder .......2011 has not been a great year. More a year of loss than gain, of too much death and disappointment. But then I got to thinking and looking at pictures and actually there were a lot of other things that happened too.........

Like it snowed a lot......

and I went to France......

and I went to Argentina.......

and walked on a glacier in Patagonia......

and went for a drive in Salta.......

and stayed in a beautiful Finca........

and had a coffee in Buenos Aires.........

and saw Patti Smith sing.........

in Amsterdam........

and grew my own radishes...........

and went to France again..........

and hung around the pool...........

in the hot sun........

and got to write a lot.........

and ate homemade crumpets with jam and cream and a glass of Prosecco in Dorset......

and got these in the secret Santa.....

and finally learnt how to upload a picture on my blog........

And I thought, there's quite a lot to be thankful for really......... so Merry Christmas everyone.......

Top tip: count your blessings!!

A Christmas cracker......

I know we're dashing through December ..... if not through the snow.....but I'm not really feeling it this year. I don't care who knows if I've been naughty or nice, sleigh bells can ring I'm not listening and baby, I don't care if it's cold outside.

I went to Judith Owen and Harry Shearer's Holiday Sing-Along and sang-along......... glorianaing and jingle-belling and walking in a winter wonderland; I've bought my card to make Christmas cards, started hiding presents under jumpers and in the back of my closet where I shall forget I've put them and just baked my second batch of mince pies in three days (pastry from scratch, mincemeat from a jar..... life's too short) but still, it's not beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I've bought a large, pink, not-actually-Victorian glass bauble and am wearing my Sarah Lund meets Santa, Killing sweater in strawberry with a pink, green and yellow pattern, and have collected jars to fill with homemade chilli jam (so much easier to make than it sounds) to give as gifts and am drinking whisky and ginger to get into the spirit.......any spirit. But the spark and glow of yuletide has yet to burst forth and rise up from the ashes of Christmas past, fill my empty stocking-of-joy and raise a cup of cheer to one and all. Hopefully the cold snap of a turkey drumstick, crackle of re-gifted wrapping paper and pop of fizzy wine will fill the bleak mid-winter air and soon I will begin to feel a lot like Christmas.

Did anyone see Black Mirror: The National Anthem, Sunday night, Ch.4 ? I've never been much of a fan of Charlie Brooker, who wrote it, till now: it was brilliant. Fabulously acted by Rory Kinnear and Lindsay Duncan, this pig's tale of the unexpected had me squealing in hysterics and horror. Go watch it again if you missed it.

Top tip: Mrs. White's Physick Rose Youth Serum, it's utterly delicious.

Getting The Christmas Party Started

Shirley Bassey is brilliant, it's official. This week she's been everywhere promoting her 'must have' new CD, 'The Performance' and it's going straight to the top of my Christmas list. Alan Yentob's 'Imagine' profiled her and was so absorbing I just wanted it to go on and on but it was her appearance on Graham Norton that stole my heart. She was hilarious and stunning in equal measures with apparently boundless energy for a woman of 27 let alone 72, and an infectious naughty streak. I don't think I've ever seen her interviewed before but it wasn't what I was expecting. In the 'Imagine' we got to see her working on the new songs for the CD, written by an eclectic mix of the good and the great from the Manic Street Preachers to KT Tunstall. Each was given the SB treatment and magically transformed before our very eyes.

Which is all rather marvellous because I shall need something to raise my Christmas spirits. This year the son gets to do the Continental with his Dad and with cash severely strapped there'll be no beach action for me so I'm being the good daughter and going to see my mother. Normally I don't. My brother (divorced and childless) does a very good line in Bah Humbug and so I could imagine us sat in a darkened room, an unlit fire, slurping a bowl of gruel.........actually it's not that bad, well hopefully. I am attempting to embrace the countryside in all it's festive glory, go to the pub and cheer on the Boxing Day charity fun-run and so on. As luck would have it, a good friend of mine is appearing in pantomime at an almost local theatre, starring along side Julian Clarey, he will give us his ugly sister, and we're all going.....oh yes we are!!

Top tip: Mineral powder foundation, easy and quick to apply, defies wrinkles and leaves you with more time to party........