OH the joy of customer service at this time of year. Do you think they make it as difficult as possible to get hold of someone in the hope that you’ll give up? I do.

Once upon a time, you’d ring on the phone, get through to someone without having to hang on for half an hour listening to some automated bint saying: ‘Your call is important to us’ – er, no it isn’t otherwise you’d have employed enough people to answer those calls.

These days you have to converse with a ‘chatbot’ – in other words a robot who can’t answer your query and then sends you a mini survey of how did we do and there’s no option to write ‘totally ***t’.

If you do get through to a person typing, I think they must have about twenty other people to deal with as well because you’ve just about lost the will to live and think they’ve gone off to do their shopping, when they come back to you and tell you to do what you’ve already done because they haven’t read through the previous notes as they said they have.

All in all, the customer is no longer king… they are merely a ‘king nuisance.

Then you get another survey asking how they did – and you fill it in – and it goes into a great big customer service bin somewhere. They’ve got your money and they don’t give a monkey’s. Bah humbug.

Talking of sweets, I realised, when I was writing a speech recently, that I used to exist on two food substances over Christmas, give or take the big dinner.

The first was Quality Street, in the days when they lived in a proper tin and when you opened the lid, the aroma of Christmas was released.

You would peer down into a tinful of jewels. And you can age people by what flavours they remember – old farts like me can remember the gooseberry cream.

And the second was After Eights. But, and I know I’m not alone, can someone tell me the logic behind never throwing away the little envelopes they came in, but instead we put them back in the box and when the stocks of chocs were dwindling, it became like a treasure hunt to find the envelope that still contained that divine soft minty square. Oh happy days.

Once again we are bereft of not having the usual Christingle service up at St Edward’s church on Christmas Eve.

Since Covid, it stopped and I wish someone would put it back on again. I wasn’t bothered about the souvenir orange with a candle stuck in it and decorated with dolly mixtures but leaving church after bursting our lungs on the carols, and going on to my pal’s house to stuff our faces with port, mulled wine and cheese is where Christmas really began!

Christmas is a joyous time, but it can also be a proper bugger when you’ve lost someone at this time of year.

There is no good time to lose anyone but somehow being bereaved at Christmas is harder still.

So to all those people out there in this position, my fondest and best wishes. To those going through the ‘year of firsts’ – that first Christmas without a loved one, raise a glass to them but find the joy for yourself, as they would want you to.

Don’t compare last Christmas with this one, or try and forecast what the next one will be like.

It’s called ‘the present’ for a reason – because the here and now is a sure gift . Merry Christmas.