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I am not sure why, and I fear it is related to getting older, but  I have begun to look at churches with deepening fascination. Just before Christmas I was in St Paul's Cathedral to hear my godson sing Evensong with the Worcester College choir. This was one of my finest moments as a godmother, sitting in the candle lit evening, absorbing the monumental space that is St Paul's, listening to the silence and the singing. My godson is a probationer and looked like a tiny candle, his face vivid, above his gown, concentration profound as he sang angelically in the choir stalls.  

Walking out afterwards, craning at the dome, the glitter of gold leaf from hundreds of feet above us was astonishing and exotic, and in its utter magnificence it reminded me of Christmas a few years previously when we were in Venice and went to the Basilica in St Mark's Square for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and also of a service I attended at Westminster Abbey for Sir John Betjeman who has a stone of  commemoration in Poet's Corner there . These occasions stand out for me as I was lucky enough to experience these vast Cathedrals as part of the congregation rather than as a shuffling tourist.

This time of year is the most demented of all and I have been full of Christmas spirit for the most ridiculous amount of time already, and have been having to fuel it with little more than the odd mince pie and a lot of sniffing of tangerines  while waiting for the actual day to dawn.

I am not sure what it is about this Christmas that has got me so excited, though there are some vital components, most central of which is the new sofa from DFS which arrived yesterday and upon which I am nestling to write. I like to think that, thanks to the sleekness of the Loft sofa, combined with glamorous  red and white striped cushions from Cabbages and Roses,  the drawing room of our small 1930s house is now a hymn to gracious living. It truly would be had the NOTORIOUS P U G  not just charged in like a miniature bull running in the streets of Pamplona and launched himself and his mud ridden paws all over the pale beauty of the Loft. 

Just winding down my brain after the Graceland quiz last night... Set by the pulchritudinous Liza Campbell, it was an opportunity for formalised humiliation unequalled since school. My only hope was that because she and I share the delectable Studio 69 at Great Western Studios, some of my mumblings would have come through and some of her questions might have been lying about in our mess as we moved studios and so I would have known a few answers. Huh.

The watershed came a week ago on Friday. Or the dam burst, or any wet analogy involving chaos but also change. Whatever. On Friday I realised I had to start my book all over again. I have been writing it since April. I did a lot of cursing, a bit of weeping, foot stamping and gnashing of terrible teeth like the Wild Things (I wonder what the movie will be like Where the wild things are) and took to my bed in the manner of Barbara Cartland. She wrote her books from a pink powder puff boudoir, or dictated them, but she was definitely in bed. I too was definitely in bed as I began to write the book again. Hey ho, the only way out of the hole is to write myself a ladder up to the top and to climb out and get back on my feet.

We celebrated First Story with a gala evening at Holland Park school. Four of the children who were involved in producing anthologies last year read. To my immense pride Edward, my protégé was among the four; his laid back ease on stage, and his heartfelt, honest story made me proud and also sad that his parents couldn’t be there and nor was anyone from the school present. He was among his peers, many of whom he had met and befriended on the Arvon Course which was his prize from First Story as one of the most promising voices in my writing group, but he was not witnessed by anyone from his own life, and that was a real shame.