I received a withering text message from Leighton last night saying “I’ll be at World Of Leather tomorrow morning at 9am – sale starts Boxing Day.” I didn’t join him, but I did celebrate the completion of my arduous Christmas duties (and England’s monstrous failure on the 1st day of the 4th Test) by going out and buying myself a long-lusted after Samsung LCD television on my credit card. It was advertised as being in “the sales”, but it was the same price it was at on Christmas Eve. I don’t think Christmas sales really exist anymore. They used to be the January sales, didn’t they, then the Christmas sales, and now they’ve been moved back so far that they now start at some point in the mid-18th century, with bargain prices on having your horse shod or something.

On the way back from Currys, my sister and I went and visited the semi-detached house where the family lived from 1973 until 1980, about a mile from where I’m writing this. “It’s small, isn’t it,” said Susannah, not so much in comparison to the palatial mansion in which we’re now spending Christmas (another semi-detached house) but more to do with the fact that she remembered it as far bigger than it actually was, on account of her being about 4 foot tall when she last saw it.

Susannah peered through the bricks at the front and saw a heap of old wooden doors in the yard – doors that we had once pushed open with tiny little hands, thrilled at being able to manoeuvre ourselves from one room to another. “They’re getting rid of our doors,” she wailed. I pointed out that they’d had 26 years of use out of the bloody things, on top of our 7, but this was of little comfort to her. We went around the back…

…to a paved area on which I spent most of those 7 years practising bowling a tennis ball against a wall with 3 cricket stumps chalked on it. Susannah remembers the wall more vividly because she slammed her face into it when she was 5, causing a grim mixture of blood and tears to soil her dress. She re-enacted the scene, without sustaining serious injury this time:

Then we came back home and played Trivial Pursuit. This is the fourth board game the family has attempted this Christmas; I’ve been doing well in the ones that don’t involve general knowledge, but yesterday I mistook Lord Of The Flies for Lord Of The Rings, which gives you some idea of my frazzled state of mind these days. I’d insert a suitable joke here about a confusion between Lord Of The Flies and Lord Of The Rings, but I’ve not read or indeed seen Lord Of The Rings, and I can’t be arsed to do the research, what with it being Christmas and all.