Enjoying the holiday

Above: inimitable sur d’oeuvre (the glass resting on The Independent's review of something or other).

Living in a picturesque lane means that everyone within five miles with a dog is going to come walking past your house in a continuous clamour of barking and shouting during the daylight hours.

The sound of revving tractor engines over the farmyard early on Boxing Day means that the farmer has already become bored of staying at home and intends to do some ditch-clearing or hedge clipping.

The newspapers are full of “quizzes” and “reviews” and (most meaningless of all) “picture reviews”. This recycling of redundant items is set to continue until the first week of January. Most infuriating is the way the book review pages are replaced with extended “my book of the year” sections in which minor celebrities tell us their “book of the year” in tiny paragraphs of meaningless drivel.

But apart from that I am enjoying the holiday.