Sparkly Balls, Nigellawitch & Brown Paper Bag Sherry

It's been a truly wonderful Christmas, with all the vital ingredients: child manically bouncing with excitement, bestfriends and family, good food, too much sherry and lots and lots of sparkles.

As most of you know we also had a surprise gift on Christmas Eve Eve. Yes, this year we got Christmas Nits. NITS. Santa came a little early and obviously decided to give us a Pan European Child Whipper type warning. We eliminated the nits and I stopped referring to Nigella as the Twatful Witch That Stole My Soul & Christmas. The change to Nigellawitch removes the ungodly undertones, but still allows me to spit on the floor at every mention. Warning successfully heeded, the gifts exponentianally improved on Christmas morning. And oh my they were remarkably good: piles of Ephron, V&A Pattern book, mustard patent go-go boots, jelly moulds, Festival of Britain cushion, 6 year old sewn bookmarks and handmade biscuits in a glorious vintage tin.On the downside, to avoid further purchase of P Diddy style jewels and any more crochet toilet roll covers (a poodle), I have been forced to ban pocket money. Sometimes it is not the thought that counts, particularly when that thought is being wantonly distributed by a six year old at Christmas bring and buy sale in the suburbs of Leeds.

We're exhausted, our livers are ready to explode and our tummies are gloriously pot bellied. I haven't got much time to write as we've got more family visiting tomorrow and I am about to enter Day 5 of Nigellawitch soul sapping domesticity. I know I'm supposed to consider all her recipes a boon when up to my thighs in Christmas, but frankly I can now only read her instructions with a fag in one hand and a bottle of sherry in the other. The sherry habit has taken on parkbench tramp proportions, currently without the brown paper bag. If it gets any worse I may need to pawn my new P Diddy bling and crochet toilet animal menagerie to fund the habit.

Wish me luck, I'm going back in...

Has He Been Yet?: