Thank God that’s over, I say, and certainly not for the first time. I refer, somewhat belatedly, to the Festive Season, that time of year from August when you can’t open a newspaper without reading how to drop a dress size in ten days, presumably so you will confidently drop a dress in ten minutes at the office Christmas party.  Plus the endless sanctimonious whining about the commercialisation of Christmas – as if the visitors to  Baby Jesus all turned up empty handed, did they?

I will admit to loving the run-up to Christmas and my house is decked with enough lights to outshine a hotel in Las Vegas as soon as the clocks go back but by the time the Big Day itself arrives, I’ve had enough.

A particularly stupid mistake one year was to give my teenage son a large sum of cash so he could choose his own presents.  Ho, Ho, Ho shrieked Santa when there was nothing to wrap on Christmas Eve and an emergency dash to the shops was needed on a day when I venture most women already have more than enough to do.

Yet again having to down two mince pies, a carrot and the half pint of sherry left by the chimney (My boys are sticklers for tradition) suddenly remembered at three o’clock on Christmas morning finally tips me over the edge. Faced at that point with the prospect of two days of close confinement with my family, visions of ‘The Great Escape’ starts looping round in my head and I have started planning a tunnel whose purpose is most definitely NOT to have anyone home for Christmas.

Add to the mix that there is only January to look forward to with its awful weather and the fact that everyone else is in the West Indies (Incidentally horribly vulgar nowadays – we are never going again) and the shops are full of dreadful tat, mostly returned unwanted gifts and brought-in sale rubbish. The final nail in the coffin of the Will to Live is, of course, the New Year Resolution, all of which will by now be but a faint memory having been abandoned faster than a baby girl in China.

So, dear reader, a few life affirming, positive and achievable thoughts to see you through to February.

Firstly, resolve to carry on drinking.  Dry January?  Are you mad?  Ditto smoking.  Remember that nicotine patches are almost certainly made by war-mongering  multi-national drug companies and should be shunned.  Fall shamelessly asleep at yoga or Pilates – isn’t it supposed to make you relax?  Snore. Resolve, given the opportunity, to drive slowly in front of caravans and boast as freely about your knowledge of daytime TV as you did last year about your kale consumption.  And possibly aim for my own personal favourite – achieve a life-long ambition to make a periodontist cry.

Happy 2016 people.