Happy Christmas!

According to research by, of all things, Jarlsberg cheese company, a typical Christmas Day in the UK runs like clockwork. By 9.00 the presents have all been unwrapped, and the first (alcoholic) drink is drunk at 11.48, dinner follows at 3.24 (after the Queen’s speech) then 8 hours later everyone is in bed.

(As a child I experienced a slightly different Christmas. We were always woken up by “Oh come all ye faithful” played on the radio, then we were allowed to unwrap Santa’s presents, but we had to wait until after we had eaten dinner and the washing up had been done to open the other presents. My mother wasn’t stupid. It guaranteed good behaviour for most of the day.)