I'll still be smiling.

That Day Happy Boxing Day, or what's left of it. It's difficult to really describe the past couple of days. A sense of routine, perhaps, but also the rest I needed. Even at the age of thirty-four I'm like a child at Christmas. We still have loads of presents under the tree and it takes us a couple of hours to unwrap them, one at a time so we can see what each of us have got. I like that; after months of preparation I've never understood why people would want the best part of the season to flash-by so quickly.

My new Sony CD Walkman (not a discman these days apparently) is much better than the Goodmans which died recently. Accompanying cds? A couple of Doctor Who soundtracks, Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A Changin' and Highway 61 Revisited and exotically a three disc set of Gospel music because "We know you'll listen to anything..." Which it turns out is true; no matter how cheesy the synthesiser backdrop, the 103rd Street Gospel Choir have predictably turned out a half decent version of Down By The Riverside.

And now it's nearly over. Except it really isn't. I realised a couple of years ago that the best way to deal with the usual festive anticlimax is to not think of Chrimbo as finishing at midnight on the 26th. There's still new year to come and plenty of time to catch up on the usual backlog of films and food and the holiday isn't really finished for me until the 10th when I go back to work. True, the tree will come down, and the decorations, but iuntil I'm back behind that desk or counter, I'll still be smiling.