Blimey, it's nearly Christmas!

Christmas! Yes, you noticed.

Let me guess - for the next few days you are going to leap out of bed early, check your emials, the blogs you keep up with, facebook pages, and then you're off out to do last minute shopping and ring Great Aunt Maud to make sure she's not going to be on her own for Christmas. Oh dear. She is. Someone will have to pick her up; the children will complain that the bathroom smells of Imperial Leather; you will want to spend all day by the fire while she tells stories.

Christmas Day. The children are screeching before seven. The turkey is stuffed and in the oven. You have three hours before the neighbours come round for wine and mince pies. Time to check your emails? Read a blog or two? Or fall over on the sofa with coffee and mend little Johnny's car that has somehow broken already?

You'll have time on Boxing Day? Everyone sleeps late. You can crawl down to your laptop catch up with facebook then. Or you can turn over, mumble something about how it would be wonderful if someone brought you breakfast in bed just this once.

There is a hiatus between Christmas and New Year. Every year you promise to spend this time reading, writing, making up for lost Christmas time. Except the children are tetchy; the days are cold; and you've run out of coffee.

Don't get me wrong. This is a precious time. I hope you have friends and family who love you. You will eat and drink and laugh together. It is laughter that will, briefly, frighten away these darkest days of winter; fill them instead with candles and frivolity and the smell of cooking.

I too have friends and family who love me. Just as you have little time for reading, I have little time for writing. Or for blogging.

And - as I write that - I know that there will be some who live alone (as I do) and for whom these festive days stretch in terrifying isolation. I'm sorry, I won't even be able to offer you a blogpost to cheer you up for the next couple of weeks. But I shall raise a glass to you - I do know just how lucky I am.

So - until the New Year, my very best wishes to you all. And thank you all for your support in 2011.