It's beginning to look a lot like you-know-what...

I have a big issue with the way the Christmas madness seems to start earlier and earlier every year.

Yeh, I'm one of those people who gets cross when the back to school ads start appearing at the beginning of the summer and the plastic pumpkins and bats start appearing before the kids have actually gone back to school.

In the last couple of years, though, the shops were inclined to completely take the mick and have the festive cards and wrapping paper and jingle bell musak out before Halloween had actually passed, which really drove me (Christmas) crackers.

That didn't seem to be the case this year, however, so sure maybe the R******** is good for something.

Don't get me wrong, now. I love Christmas. I love the boxes of Celebrations and Roses and even Black Magic. I love the tins of biscuits. I love the mince pies. I love the Baileys coffees. And obviously I love The Christmas Feed itself. Although this year, we will be having dinner in Himself's mam's gaff - it'll be my first Christmas away from home and I'm considering bringing an emergency stash of Mammy's stuffing with me, just incase. It will also be my first Christmas Day in a long time to be spent in the company of childer, which I know some people think is the essence of Christmas but I have mixed feelings about it. Himself's nephew is four-and-a-half and his niece is two-and-a-half, and the last time I saw them I spent the day trying to be cool but actually getting a headache from the squealing and the fighting and the noise.

Maybe I'll learn how to mix Christmas cocktails and offer to be drinks monitor for the day so I can make sure my own glass is always topped up without looking like a total alco.

Today, I heard Fairytale of New York for the first time and got to the second layer of our first tin of USA biccies of the season. And only a day before December 8^th, which is when I personally feel it's acceptable for the festive season to kick off in earnest, whatever the shopkeepers think.

So I am now primed and ready for Christmas. And hey, at least dinner's not in my house on Christmas Day, so I won't have to be freaking out about indelible marker ending up on my white dining room chairs or my lovely Laura Ashley wallpaper or fruit juice winding up smeared across my TV.

Bring it, baby!

Fairy lights in Nigella's Christmas kitchen - *totally* stealing this idea!