We had Christmas gifts, somewhat too much Christmas food, and a new batch of gingerbread cookies.

I enjoy the run-up to Christmas more than Christmas Eve itself. Advent has all the good stuff – the lights, the decorations, the baking and then the eating of the baking – without the nearly hectic, keyed-up quality of Christmas itself. Christmas is tiring. Adrian is over-hyped about presents. My mum needs entertaining all day long, so I must keep up an even stream of activities and conversation, but only talk about topics that I don’t really care about because the odds are that I’ll get a snippy negative reply back.

(Ingrid took this photo.)