This year I’m ‘doing’ Christmas for the first time in ages. I’m really making a huge effort to try to make it a good one. Today, our home has made a couple of leaps forward towards Christmas - the first is that we have a table being delivered so we can eat our Christmas dinner at a table rather than on our laps. Hurrah.

Better still, it’s being hand-made for us less than five miles from here by an independent craftsman who runs an amazing workshop, a real Aladdin’s cave. What a find. Better still, it’s no more expensive than one in a cardboard box from Ikea or wherever. That’s a result in my world. This chap is so nice that he’s going to deliver it specially for us.

The other ‘leap’ was doing the non-fresh food shopping. We braved the deeply unpleasant Morrisons (the supermarket equivalent of the Russian Vine - invasive, growing rapidly and with no intrinsic value whatsoever) to buy all of the stuff that will keep until the big day. I’d been meticulous in my list - everything we needed was on it.…. I got through the door and the first things that went into my basket were two poinsettias (no, they weren't on my list!!). These plants are truly horrible in as much as most of the ones for sale in the build up to Christmas are on their last legs - my experience is that they look wonderful in their sellophane wrapping but when you take them out, their leaves and bracts start to fall almost immediately. So, I stood in the middle of the shop, took them out of their sellophane and gave them a good shake. They didn’t shed any leaves so I took a risk.

After a day of ‘doing stuff’ we got home and ‘did more stuff’ (unpacking shopping, making pizzas and a load of other stuff) and only at 8.30pm did we eventually get around to potd. DM shot a masterpiece and I shot this load of old crap. I’ve not seen any other photo a day pics this week but I’ll bet I’m not the first to photograph this utter cliché of the Christmas season. Mind you, that’s about par for the course really, David shoots something sublime and I shoot something ridiculous.

Oh and I get a cruelty award because I singed the leaves of this one while photographing it.