Ah, Bedfordshire. Lovely old Bedfordshire. Sweetest Bedfordshire, and I mean that from the bottom of my Hertfordshire. I’m approximately here:

Look at all the fields! If I’d known that there were fields that near the house when I was growing up, I’d have spent a little more time gambolling across them, rather than sitting indoors typing programs into a ZX81 and listening to a Kids From Fame album. Perhaps. Note how the different hues of green change from field to field. Can you tell from this height which crops are growing in which fields? No? Well, answers below. Not really.

I arrived in my Ford Fiesta yesterday morning, Christmas Eve, after having set off from Tooting at about 8am to find clear roads all the way. During a short chat with my parents, they pointed out that the equipment to connect them up to broadband was sitting in the next room, ready for me to tackle it. A breeze, I thought, although I hadn’t counted on them using Windows XP, a computer operating system so alien to me I may as well have been handed 300 painstakingly punched data cards. After 12 hours, at 10pm, I emerged from the room wizened and grey, and admitted defeat, having reinstalled the drivers for a BT Voyager 1055 adapter so many times it became second nature, like breathing. This morning, I abandoned any notion of wirelessness and went back to good old fashioned wires. It’s working. Relief.

Presents? A big case for loose CDs and DVDs, of which I have many. The wrong Field Music album, but that doesn’t matter as I didn’t have either of them. Books on British history. A gigantic pepper grinder, the size of a healthy teenager’s arm. Seinfeld series 7. I bought my father a ticket to see Meatloaf and Wembley Arena in May, and reluctantly shelled out for a second ticket so he didn’t have to go alone. I believe that chaperoning duties may fall to me, as my mum has better things to do, and my sister has been to see Neil Diamond under these circumstance about 3 times, although I think she secretly enjoyed it.

Jenny got me a watch, although that was more to do with her accompanying me to the shop a few days ago when I bought a watch, and when it was time to hand the money over I said “Oh, could you get me this for Christmas?” We’re terrible at presents. We outdo each other in our inability to buy each other anything. One year, one of us will come up with something astonishing, at which point the other will suffer a brain haemorrhage through sheer guilt.

There’s a lot of television watching going on in the Marsden household, as per every Christmas. Thing is, I’m not being snobby or anything, no really I’m not, but I don’t really watch Strictly Come Dancing – East Enders – Corry – Deal Or No Deal, so I hide away in this room and exchange pointless banter on MSN with whoever happens to be logged in at the time. But I did just watch Deal Or No Deal. What utter bilge, what hugely compulsive drivel it is. Every single contestant is a complete and utter cretin, as are the majority of the studio audience, as are most of the TV audience, who fail to grasp the simple arithmetic of the show and thus force the format to be stretched out over 60 minutes. If it were me, I’d pick a few boxes, accept the banker’s first offer, and spend the rest of the show urging people to pick up their coats and bags and go home, handing out some textbooks on statistical probability.

Earlier I walked down the B489, which was predictably empty. Now I’m sat next to a huge Christmas cake, trying to ignore the huge Christmas cake. Maybe if I eat it, it’ll go away.

Merry Christmas.