Well, what a lovely Christmas Day that was. Pretty much a perfect day from start to finish.

We got up at the usual time, in the pitch dark, rekindled the woodburner and gave the cats their Christmas breakfast, the dog his turkey Caesar, and the wild birds a special fat ball with dried insects.

We'd already had our big Christmas meal with friends on the 22nd, when 10 of us sat around the table, each bringing a dish (pork loin, nut roast, chocolate mousse...) - a lovely stress-free way of spending Christmas, so on the day itself, there was no pressure - just the DH and I, opening pressies over breakfast.

Having been married since the Ark, we tend to choose our main presents for ourselves, and he had gotten me a bottle of vintage 1985 Mitsouko, chosen by me and paid for by my sister, since we can't buy Guerlain on Ebay from France. Meanwhile, I gave him a mystery box containing something he'd ordered for himself (it turned out to be a microphone for podcasting).

Our other presents, however, were indeed surprises - for him, books and DVDs and for me, to my astonishment, a Kindle. I'm made up. I've been resisting a Kindle for a long time because I like to be absolutely certain with technology that it's really going to be worth it. But since we've formed a book club locally, a Kindle has become a more useful entity, as it enables us to pass books around more easily. First up, the first Rebus book, Knots and Crosses, and The Year of the Hare, which I'm meant to read by January 9. 

Presents from others included, as ever from my sister, items for keeping warm in our medieval house (this year, microwaveable slippers: in previous years, kalmuks, fleece blankets with sleeves and even a Billy Connolly Big Slipper); lovely Neal's Yard toiletries; chocolates; and - again from my sister - a beautiful bottle green velvet coat with a fake fur collar. Many years ago I had a bottle green velvet coat that I adored, but which my arsehole boyfriend destroyed, as he hated me in it, so it is very nice to have one back again. 

Time was, the DH and I would have Buck's Fizz for breakfast, then stagger around all day, but these days we are more abstemious people, so after breakfast I had a bath, put the chicken on to cook, and we went for a walk over the surrounding fields. Our dog Zola was diagnosed with congestive heart failure on Christmas Eve, so we were keen not to tire him, but a short walk allowed him to run around at his own pace, and then back we went for lunch - farm chicken on a bed of ginger and garlic, with roast peppers and fennel, followed by apple and chocolate ice-cream. 

After that, it was watching Day of the Jackal (one of the DH's DVDs), a natter to the family in England, and a leetle sleep, then we made our Christmas donation to microcredit organisation Kiva.org, loaning money this time to people in Georgia for animal feed, and a women's collective in Peru. For some years now, we have sent e-cards and given money saved to Kiva, and the total is now rolling over at about $300. I highly recommend Kiva as an organisation, as it helps people to help themselves.

So, several Carry On movies and one Royle Family Christmas Special later, we rolled off to bed. A fabby day, and today - hopefully - a good swim and then some gardening.

Merry Christmas, one and all.  

I'm holding a girls night in on Friday - the first for quite a while - and one idea I had for the evening was a bran tub: it's Christmas, after all. 

I've asked the girls to buy a present for the tub for one euro, or as close to one euro as people can get, with an absolute upper limit of 2.50 euros, so's not to embarrass anybody.

But I know that some people will forget, so today I decided to pop out and buy a few one-euro items to use as emergency bran tub presents.

Only one problem: I could barely find any.

OK, it's not as if my local town, sunny Gorron, is wick with Pound Shops, but really, the only things I could find in our local supermarket were the own-brand bargain shampoo (SuperU Bien Vue) at 69p a bottle, and a couple of cakes of soap. I'd been thinking scented candles (4.50, 5.60, 7.57...), hand cream (5 euros and up), packets of joss sticks (3.50) etc, but absolutely no joy. 

Really, when did everything get so fucking expensive? I mean, who really pays 3.57 for a bottle of detergent to wash your hair with? No matter how many fancy passion fruit oils and angels' wings the stuff's meant to have in it, it's still basically a petroleum by-product. Personally, I do use the SuperU 69 cent egg shampoo, because it's perfectly all right and I won't let companies take the piss in this way (I also use it for washing the dog), but it would also be nice to have something prettier to present without the price suddenly quadrupling or quintupling.

A trip around Maison Point Verte (a sort of Homebase) got me incense cones (35 cents each), but forget my ideas for little gewgaws like coasters (2.60), teaspoon rests (5.00 euros), bags of Christmas baubles (5.67) or even joke presents like a box of Whiskas treats (2.67). Even a tin of baked beans in our supermarket costs nearly 3.00 euros. 

The glory that is Lidl did fit the bill, eventually, with packets of cola chews (99 cents), gingerbread (1.57), handcream (99 cents) and pralines (1.99) coming in at under 2.00 euros, so I do now have enough for the bran tub without bankrupting myself, but how daft is it that one can't buy a few simple stocking fillers without breaking the bank? Guess I'll have to fit in a trip to Mayenne before Friday, and have a wander round Noz, where consumer goods go to die...

I decided to start putting the deccies up yesterday. It's a tad late for France - you're meant to do it on St Nicolas' Day, December 6, but I was busy scraping filth off the house that day as we were having friends over to eat. 

We used to buy real trees, but I hate the idea that something living is cut down, and of the five we've planted out, only two have taken (now over 20ft high), so for some years now, our 'tree' has been made of plastic. Christmas involves the DH going down to our dank cellar and hauling out the big white box, then slotting all the (amazingly realistic) green branches into the plastic trunk. This, for me, is also a strong memory from childhood in the 70s, after the time when my mother rebelled at still picking needles out of the carpet in February. But so good does our plastic tree look once decorated that I've even had people tell me it smells nice.

This year, as a change from my black, white and metallics-only rule when it comes to deccies, I've decided to add a little of my favourite colour - turquoise. I haven't been able to find any tinsel in this colour yet, but got a couple of packs of baubles from the supermarket.

Sadly, when hauling the decorations box out from under the stairs, my findings weren't quite so pleasant. Back in the days when we actually had money, I used to go to Heal's every January and buy huge glass baubles in the sales.  Each January I wrap these carefully up in kitchen roll and pack them away in cardboard boxes, but clearly neither cardboard nor paper are much barrier to a mouse. When I opened the box up, it was full of shredded paper and mouse shit, entailing the washing of my baubles (and endless opportunities for double-entendre, I'm sure). 

Fortunately, mice being pretty lightweight, nothing was actually broken, which is a relief, as some of the deccies are well over 20 years old now. But it was a surprise, too, to find that my new tiny turquoise baubles are also glass, which I discovered in the usual way after dropping one from a great height onto tiles. 

Right, I shall away to find a stepladder and get the tinsel up... 

A bit of glamour never did a girl any harm and this new year, I had a rare chance to really dress up.

Christmas, all in all, has been a bit flat this year, what with our internet going down for a whole month, one party on Christmas Eve being cancelled, and myself coming down with a cold on Boxing Day, and thus unable to go to a second, so it was nice to get an invite for New Year, if only to remember what other people looked like.

I enjoy frocking up, as it's such a change from my gumboot life, which is normally spent in jeans and sweaters. But the requirement for 'ballgown', along with the knowledge that the ballroom itself might have no heating at all, while the dining room would probably be sweltering, certainly meant getting my thinking cap on.

My normal evening attire is pretty easy - since most of our socialising involves dinner with friends or an occasional dinner in a restaurant, I tend to go for a skirt, dress or pants in black wool or velvet, coupled with an interesting top. But 'ballgown' is another matter.

Galloping to the rescue came a vintage dress I bought last year from Ebay without any idea of when I'd actually wear it - a fabulous thing in tooled blue irridescent lurex. It's totally over the top, but how many opportunities does a girl get to doll up with some real sparkle in the course of a year? 

More importantly, it was also a: roomy, so I could get serious thermals on under it, and b: princess-seamed, so there was no waistband - nothing's worse when you're sitting down to a seven-course gourmet meal than to find yourself sliced neatly in half. As you might guess from my red nose, the temperature was an issue, but luckily, only I needed to know that under my dress and warm shrug was also a long slip, fleece-lined tights, thermal socks and knee-length boots.

All the other girls looked splendid, I must say - H in her black lace 50s gown and pink shrug, looking like a Dresden shepherdess; a fashion designer in a vintage 70s green gown and wrap; and even two friends in identical 30-style black and white draped halterneck gowns, exhibiting considerable cleavage (brave indeed for women in their 50s, but one was so perishing cold that I ended up lending her my wrap for the evening).

Oh la, back to normality...today it's the usual ski thermals, poloneck sweater, gilet and Uggs. Time to pack the girlie frocks away until next Christmas...

After the excesses of Christmas, it's been a relief - and a necessity - to get back to eating normally.

Our Christmas turned out remarkably festive in the end, but four parties in eight days is a long chalk from our normal practice, and the late nights and overeating (and drinking) that accompanied it left us feeling totally exhausted. It was all very lovely, of course, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was time to get to get back to our normal routine. 

It began on Christmas Eve with a gourmet dinner at a friend's. S is a cordon bleu cook and for her, a few nibbles is usually a five-courser that would intimidate the most accomplished cook (amuse bouche of iced tomato coulis with avocado foam and blackcurrants, etc - you get the drift). Christmas dinner was amuse-bouche, foie gras, lamb cutlets with game chips, then pears, vanilla gateaux and creme anglaise.

So adroit is she in her little kitchen that I feel nervous at the idea of having her over, as we eat very simply, and focus mainly on vegetables and starches. Yesterday, for instance, my main meal was a simple concoction of steamed spinach, shaved Cheddar and cherry tomatoes. It barely constitutes a meal at all.

On Boxing Day we had another slap-up meal at the daughter of the above cook (and an equally good cook herself), which was based - as is the French taste - primarily on meat. Smoked salmon and caviar for the amuse-bouche, duck as the starter, great hunks of beef for the main course.

It was all fabulous, especially the orange and tomato sauce for the meat, but this is more meat than we would normally eat in three or four days, all in one meal, and it was at this point that my digestion began to protest. Our hostess lacks a freezer, so we took home the leftovers and this week they did us six more helpings with the addition of copious amounts of veg, finishing up as a curry soup last night.

Our own party on the 28th was the Black and White affair, so the foods were mostly based on caviar, black olives, white cheese and the like. Everybody brought a dish, and I had done enough food for an army, so the next day we gave away the greater part of the salads to a visiting family with six children, and lived for the next three days on leftovers: blinis, choux puffs, coleslaw, celeri remoulade, potato salad, brownies and licorice. A balanced diet this is not.

New Year's Eve was the tipping point for me. I am just not used to these multiple late-night finishes, or so much food, and I normally wilt at 10.00. After snacking on amuse-bouche and champagne all evening, we began to eat in earnest at 10.30pm and by the time we'd finished our main course, it was 2.00am. At this point, I had to concede defeat, so we left to cries of wimpishness. Our undaunted friends finished at 5.00am, got up early and headed for the coast for the day - snow and ice notwithstanding. 

Since New Year, therefore, the DH and I have given our systems some time off - especially from the booze, as I am getting too old to spend every day with a hangover - and have tried to return to our normal habits. This means croissants and coffee for breakfast, a light main meal with lots of veg at lunch, soup or a roll in the evening, meat no more than once a day, a vegetarian day mid-week, and a litre of wine per week rather than aperitifs, champagne, wine and digestifs every day.

The chocolates sent from Yorkshire have all been consumed, the posh biscuits and cakes are nearly all gone, and finally, finally my poor liver can come out of hiding.