SO! I have checked the Christmas present list, which seems to get longer year by year.

And I have decided that I am going to be generous this year.

No, just a minute, I will correct that.

What I really mean to say is I won’t be quite so Scrooge-like when it comes to buying stuff - that’s if I really need to buy anything at all.

For I have a front room full of stuff, that I have either been given, won from raffles, or are one of those impulse buys that I seem to be somewhat addicted to.

I have a rather large screen that stands in the corner and it used to hide the bits and pieces that I impulsively bought.

Now, though, I’m afraid my addiction has got beyond that and my best three piece suit is covered with the boxes and bags of my stupid impulsive shopping habit.

But there is an upside, because over the next week I shall find gifts that I know and sincerely hope will please the recipients.

Bill says that, although I think I have bought these items for no real purpose, the real reason I got them is that I had a recipient at the back of my mind all the time.

On reflection, I think he could very likely be right about this one.

Don’t these blinking clever clogs aggravate you?

I’ve trimmed the little privet hedge that separates my garden from the farmer’s field and usually over the autumn and winter, it stays tidy till the spring.

This year, however, with the weather being so mild, it’s started to sprout again, so I’ve to decide whether to cut it now or whether to leave it for another week or two.

In the field the sheep are proving the old saying, ‘Following each other like a flock of sheep’.

While I have been writing they have been up and down the field, all trailing after the main man.

I’m saying main man but I cannot tell one from the other.

Oh yes, now I recall the ‘man’ is only put in when they want the sheep to have lambs.

Silly me.

As a youngster we had no television, no laptops, no phones, no electricity, and not much money.

Oh ye, they certainly were the good old days!

But funny enough we were happy without all that stuff!