Highly Rated

I counted 16 bottles of wine, including two of champagne, into the garage this morning ready to be recycled. The dining table after last night's supper looked as if the debauched scene from And Then There Were None had been filmed in my kitchen. If you can rate a Christmas by the amount of booze consumed then this one was a cracker, no pun intended. Mostly the weather was great, and we had lots of shortish walks including a brilliant one along the beach at Walberswick where the wild waves crashed from a hundred yards off the waterline. But the best one was yesterday when we took a packed lunch to Dunwich Heath and hiked for several miles across sandy, woody terrain, then along the dunes and finally through Minsmere Bird Reserve and the lane back to the car. We had half of our turkey sandwiches and half a bottle of Cava before the walk, and the rest at the end.

Back in the house we lit the woodburner when the room turned cool enough to stand the heat, and played endless variations of charades and the name game. The best of the former were a seamless stream of Hitchcock films including Rear Window, The Lady Vanishes and The Birds. Sometimes we choked with laughter and were unable to speak. Torchy, Torchy the Battery Boy will go into the family annals. The house stretched itself to accommodate everyone, and the new bed was a great success. Unspeakable quantities of food were consumed, and the Christmas cake survived the pressure. Everyone left with a goodie bag filled with turkey, cake, mince pies and sausage rolls.

When they had all gone I power-washed the car and then got to work in the garden clearing the front beds of dead stems and leaves. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. Mark, my ever-obliging neighbour, came to look at a bad leak in the cloakroom but was baffled as to the cause. He stripped back several roof tiles but found nothing. I hope it's not serious. I've just paid my huge credit card bill off four weeks early, but I want to start the year with a clean slate (another pun, inadvertant again). I hope this latest hiccough isn't going to knock my new year's resolutions into touch. But there are floods and floods as we all know. I won't let it get out of perspective.