THIS isn’t supposed to happen. I’ve been good! On balance, anyway. I was expecting a sock full of festive treats and all I’ve got is the flu. True, there’s still 18 hours to go, but no matter what I get in my sock I’ll still have the bloody flu. It was so much simpler when I was a kid. Being good enough to con Santa into bringing you a bike involved no more than one week of putting your toys away, or not throwing things at your mother. “Santa’s fairies will be watching,” she said. “And if you’re not good he’ll bring you a lump of coal.” Santa’s fairies were…

THE Advent calendar was a bad idea. It’s fallen off the wall eight times and there are still eight days to go. I’ve seen pictures of families opening Advent calendars. It’s all very holy and gentle. They are admiring the biblical scenes inside the little doors: Mary trying to make a manger and a pile of hay comfy, and Joseph leaning on his staff like a council workman. You know these family vignettes are phoney (I mean the family looking at the Advent calendar, not the holy family) because they always have a mummy and a daddy and two children. It’s the two children that give it away. It might…

THIS is ridiculous. I am about to engage in the most popular leisure sport of the 21st century.I want to be good at it. I want to be able to compete at masters level. Possibly veteran, given my age. But I can’t find a coach, or a book of handy tips, or even a mentor. No one to help me on the road to the shopping championships. There are more advertisements for shopping than there are for football. Twelve Shopping Days to Christmas! Take The Kids Shopping! (are they mad!). Shop Until You Drop! But no one is doing any training. Even the professionals aren’t taking it seriously. I saw…

IT’S December. I love it when December arrives. It’s like being on a rollercoaster that has finally rolled around to the big drop, and as you look down the curdling slope you think: oh my God I’m not ready for this. Except that this year I am ready. Oh, I haven’t bought any presents yet, nor written a Christmas card. But I am wearing a grin and if anyone smiles back I shall yell yo ho ho! Not, however, because my infuriating sense of bonhomie has anything to do with Christmas. Because today is my wedding anniversary. What makes this really special is that I am celebrating with my wife.…

IF I ate a different meal every day from now until I die — and assuming I didn’t die until I was 183 years old — I still wouldn’t have eaten my way through all the recipes that choke the drawers in our kitchen. They say the third drawer down in any kitchen in the world is full of junk. That’s true; but in our kitchen the junk happens to be recipes. And they’re in the second drawer, too. And the first. We have recipes cut from the top of cereal packets, from the bottom of cheese wrappers, soaked off tins, snipped from magazines, peeled from bottles. We have books…