Well, that’s Christmas over with, time to wake up Uncle Ebenezer and put him on the train home for another year, making sure he takes his ferret with him.

The freezer is stuffed with enough turkey curry to see you through a siege and you’ve run out of Alka selzer. Never mind, there’s just enough time for a quick bath and hair wash before New Years Eve. Whoopee party time!

The glossy magazines have long finished telling us what to wear, buy and cook for Christmas. Now these dictators of style are all fired up with a new programme of instruction for us and it’s what to wear, buy or drink for a New Year’s party. From between the folds of these glossy advertising manuals we are encouraged to have themed parties and to buy dresses modelled by young women who must live on no more than a cup of soup a week. The dresses they invite us to wear wouldn’t keep out a summer breeze let alone the cold winter night. Then there’s the latest footwear with heels as high as Winder Fell but they suggest that if you pop a couple of gel pads inside them you will be able to dance the night away without any pain, fancy. So you’ve got your frock and your shoes and now it’s time to glue on false eye lashes, paint your nails and add half a dozen hair pieces to your barnet so you can hold your own with the likes of Cheryl Cole or Lady Gaga. Oh, but that’s not the best bit, at midnight to welcome in 2011 we all go round kissing each other. As an affectionate type I don’t mind this, it’s only afterwards I think - “Lor’ who did I kiss.” I get quite carried away sometimes as I move through the crowded room kissing and greeting folk and wondering if Brad Pitt or George Clooney might just drop in and make it my lucky night. This year I’m really looking forward to New Year’s Eve as I will be partying with my good friends from the Rose Community Theatre, and shan’t mind who I kiss. Happy New Year.