Christmas is over. It’s official. Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but the Christmas I love happens in the weeks leading up to the big day - the dark evenings and twinkly lights, cosy meet ups with old friends over mulled wine and mince pies.

I love buying presents too, but the shopping, and imagining my children’s angelic faces as they open them is always more fun than the actuality. Never in my fantasies does my ten-year-old have a strop because her sister has been given something she wanted, or complain that she only got nine out of the ten things on her Christmas list.

Once the rose-tinted build up is over, the day itself is always an anti-climax, and the no-mans-land between Christmas and New Year is positively ghastly. I’m practically stuffing gold coins into the kids’ mouths in a bid to clear the house of anything remotely festive, and as much as I love getting the decorations out of the garage mid-December, nothing beats the feeling of packing them all away and hoovering up the last of the damn pine needles.

I love Christmas, but once it’s done, I want everything out. I wait impatiently for the Christmas recycling collection so I can dump all the Christmas cards and cardboard packaging and long to pack everyone back off to school, to reclaim the house and perhaps just a little of my sanity.

If only I could find it under all the wrapping paper...

I decide that this is the day to start the Christmas gravy. I like doing this early, so the flavours may mature. Then it’s just a question of adding all the lovely juices from the bird, on the actual day. This is such a domestic goddess plan that I practically fall over.

I run to the village shop to buy Madeira and Marsala. I’m not taking any chances. Actually, I can never quite remember which of them tastes more delicious so I generally throw in half a bottle of both. This year, I may also add some tawny port, for a certain je ne sais quoi. I explain some of this to the man in the shop. He seems marginally less fascinated by the subject than I.

All the time I am running around the village, the following things are running through my head:

Must get present for great-nephew. Can a boy have too many tractors? Answer, in his case: almost certainly not.

Must write Christmas cards. Must find out last posting day. Why am I even writing Christmas cards? I never send Christmas cards. I am up against a hard deadline, for the 3rd of January. Why I agreed to that date I do not know. I shall be writing chapter eighteen first thing on Christmas morning. There shall be no getting drunk on dry sherry and lying in. What was I thinking?

Parcels for the godchildren. Have to do parcels for the godchildren.

That present I got for my sister suddenly seems all wrong. I thought it so marvellously clever and delightful at the time, but now it looks somehow not quite right. This is the problem with doing Christmas shopping in advance. I did mind in November, believing myself to be gloriously organised and what my mother calls Ahead of the Game.

In fact, it is fatal, on two levels.

First of all, it lulls one into a false sense of security. I think, because the presents are bought, that I have got everything done. Then I end up running round the village in a panic, buying Madeira and thinking about tractors. Second of all, the object that looked so shiny and alluring a month ago may, with the simple passage of time, appear gimcrack and shoddy. Bloody hell, I think, what have I got in the present cupboard? (I will do anything not to go into Aberdeen which is, according to all reports, a zoo.)

Should I get a nice holly garland for the mantelpiece? I’m not having a tree so perhaps a garland will give the feeling of decking the halls. But what if one tiny spark from the fire shoots upwards and sets the thing alight and then the house burns down? I realise that, far from being in the proper Christmas spirit, I am catastrophising wildly.

Must make a special Christmas list. The To Do list is spawning itself in my head like one of those creatures on nature programmes which may have eight hundred babies at once. At least if I write it down, it might seem more manageable, and less like a hydra. But then I have to decide which of my forty-seven notebooks the Christmas list should go in, and this creates another impossible decision of its very own.

Must, for no known reason, buy panettone. I am suddenly convinced that Christmas is not Christmas without special Italian cake.

Must: write book, do blog, tidy house, feed horses, walk dog, wrap presents, go to post office, buy red roses (again, nobody knows why), get a ham, make watercress soup for strength, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and generally go faster.

Christmas, I think, I am exhausted just contemplating it. And all this is just me and a horse and a pony and a dog. I do not have four over-excited children, or a gaggle of parents-in-law, or even a husband to worry about. I have created this insanity in the privacy of my own head. I do not even read those publications which insist that if your house and your Christmas table do not resemble something in a glossy magazine you are officially a Bad Human. I have absolutely no idea where it all comes from. Perhaps it is a lady thing; perhaps I am biologically programmed, after all. Still, I suppose that at least it keeps my mind off the weather.

This week I attended my very last primary school Christmas concert. (Until I have that accidental late baby that my sister insists is going to happen just before I’m forty.)

My youngest is now ten, so gone are the days of the tear-jerker nativity, complete with shepherds stumbling over their costumes and a Mary who sucks her thumb throughout and carries baby Jesus around by his feet. Instead we had a carol concert, with minimal fluffed lines, and only one boy who kept dancing in the opposite direction.

My best bit though was the final ten minutes, where the mums and dads were allowed to join in with a rousing rendition of Hark the Herald Angels and Jingle Bell Rock.

I do like an excuse for a dance.

I ignored the faces Belle was pulling at me from the stage and the sniggering from her friends, and instead threw myself into the Jingle Bell Rock routine. Legs kicking, jazz hands on full power, I was the very picture of Christmassyness.

“Well done!” said the headteacher to me afterwards. “You’re the first parent who has joined in!”

I could tell she was impressed. Belle less so though.

“Mummy!” she hissed at me afterwards, “you were so embarrassing!”

“I know,” I said, “it was great wasn’t it?”

Happy Christmas!

They're a picnic classic.... but pork pies are also the perfect finger food for your Christmas celebrations.



Ingredients

Hot water pastry

• 375g plain flour
• 1 large egg yolk
• 125ml water
• 110g butter
• 1/2 tsp salt beaten egg for glaze

Pie filling

• 450g minced pork
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sage
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp parsley
• 1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper

Method

1. To make pastry, slowly heat water and margarine/butter in a saucepan. Once the fat is melted, boil for 2 minutes. Put flour in a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the seasoning and egg yolk into the well, cover with some flour and quickly pour in the contents of the saucepan, stirring continuously. Once cooled, knead into a ball then leave covered for 30 minutes in a warm place.

2. Separate about two thirds of the dough into five balls, each around the size of a billiard ball. The other third of the dough will be used later for the lids. Make each pie casing by moulding a ball around the outside of the bottom of a pint glass. Stretch the dough up the glass for around 1.5 inches so that the pastry is reasonably thin. The pastry is easier to remove if the glass is coated in flour first.

3. To make the pie filling, simply mix all ingredients together.

4. Fill the pastry casings with the pork mixture. Roll out the remainder of the pastry using the pint glass if you don't have a rolling pin. Cut out lids using the top of the pint glass as a pastry cutter. Place lids on pies, sealing around the edges with some water. Using the point of a knife, make a hole in the centre of each lid to allow steam to escape.

5. Cook at 180 C / Gas 4 in the centre of the oven for around 1 hour, glazing with a beaten egg yolk occasionally.

6. After cooking, leave to cool before eating. For a special touch, pour a small amount of warmed, reduced stock into the hole and cool in a refrigerator to allow the jelly to set (To make the stock, try boiling some pork stock bones for a few hours until most of the water evaporates off. After cooling a jelly should form, this can be poured into the pies).

The ultimate Christmas staple, always better when they're homemade!



Ingredients
350g plain flour
Pinch of salt
225g butter, diced
1 whole egg
1 jar of mincemeat
Dusting icing sugar

Method

1. Heat the oven to 400°F/205°C/Gas 6
2. Place the flour, butter and salt into a large bowl.
3. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs,
4. Add the egg to the mixture and using a knife stir, add cold water a teaspoon at a time until the mixture binds together.
5. Choose a muffin or bun tin for the size of the pie you want.
6. Dust a work surface lightly with a little flour and roll out two-thirds of the pastry to 1/8"/3mm thick. Cut circles to line the cups of your tin.
7. Fill the pastry lined tins 2/3 full with mincemeat.
8. Roll out the remaining pastry to the same thickness and cut smaller circles to fit as lids or cut out star shaped lids to be decorative.
9. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 mins or until golden brown.
10. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the icing sugar.

There are times in life when it is perfectly acceptable to revert to a state childish excitement no matter what age you are. And this week I have spent a large proportion of time being childishly excited about Christmas.


But it's still ages away I hear you cry. Well that may be the case (although 45 days isn't a huge amount) but after attending the switching on of the lights in Covent Garden and the Disney store VIP Christmas party, I hope you will understand why for me, Christmas is very much here.


The London Gay Men's Choir filled the air with festive carols and as the sung Mariah Carey's classic All I Want For Christmas, Covent Garden was lit up by more than 150,000 twinkling fairy lights which sparkled as the crowd cheered and sung along.


As if it couldn't any more delightfully festive than that, we young ladies about town then attended the Disney store VIP Christmas party. With a gospel choir singing carols, mini Christmas pudding, snow cones (for the kids...and adults), cookie decorating and whole shop full of toys it's no wonder that the adults were just as excited as the children that were there.


On top of that we also got to chance to meet both Mickey and Minnie mouse, thankfully the queue to meet them consisted of four children and many more adults- it would appear I am not the only one the indulges in reverting to a state of childish excitement.

With 45 days to go until the big day and lights brightening city centres all over the UK I think it's fair to say it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.