So, after jumping the starting gun and putting up the Christmas decorations in November, I’ve become somewhat obsessed.

Realising we were short on time, we’d put one fake tree up in our dining room and a few decorations outside to make sure we at least had a smattering of festive cheer.

But we’re hosting the big family lunch this year, so with a bit of unexpected spare time on our hands, we pushed it to the next level.

Operation Two Trees began.

Hubby set off in search of a real tree (“Make sure it’s bushy from top to bottom, and don’t buy a seven-footer – we always have to chop the top off”), and the extra decorations were brought down from the loft.

Our only dilemma was that we’d bought new lights last year, and had yet to use them. After keeping our fingers crossed they worked (they did), we started piling them on the branches. And piled some more.

Is there such a thing as too many lights?

I haven’t looked at the box they came in, but I think we’ve somewhere between 800 and 1,000 lights on our tree and they are, how can I describe it? Dazzling.

We won’t need to switch any other lights on in our lounge for the next few weeks.

By now, I was on a roll. On to the outside. We had a few lights on our hedge, but once our neighbours had put up their beautiful, multi-coloured twinklefest, our home was looking a bit sad.

Our problem with decorating our garden has always been access to a plug socket, but no more. Hello battery-operated, timer-controlled outdoor lights. All 1,000 of them.

I’ve well and truly caught the festive bug this year, and for those of you who were wondering how the village panto went, well it’s fair to say the carefully crafted script wasn’t stuck to, even though all we had to do was read it.

Well that’s my lot for 2016. Have a peaceful Christmas and a sparkling New Year.