I DON’T know about you but I am in no rush to take down my Christmas decorations. The house looks so naked without them and though we don’t go especially mad, the tree brings a bit of cheer flashing and sparkling away in the corner of the hallway and I love my giant furry reindeer head and can’t bear to pack it up in the loft.

We must concentrate on the positives of course – that the shortest day is out of the way and now we have ever more minutes of sunlight tagged on to the beginning and end of each day.

Soon we will be able to see snowdrops poking out of the ground and I always get a hyacinth to perch on my windowsill.

They always remind me of happy days in Aggy Road primary school when they’d have a hyacinth beauty competition.

They’re lovely and a little harbinger of the spring to come – at least until their heads get too big, they topple over as if drunk and start to smell of wee (I’ve had a few boyfriend versions of those over the years).

So I hope that for those of you who had a trying 2024, that 2025 brings you much better.

I read in horror the report in last week’s Chron about Hunningley Grange, the Stairfoot care home that has been put into special measures.

The cost of keeping the elderly in a care home is astronomical and it is often sheer greed by the owners of these homes that they are more concerned with their profits than their paying guests.

They must cream off an absolute fortune and the annoying thing is that they could still plunge a lot of the money they earn back into the home and STILL cream off enough to go and buy a yacht.

But too often they don’t. There is NO excuse for a care home to be visibly dirty, for the old people to be unsafe and unkempt and with no activities for them to do.

There is no excuse for warning notices from the previous inspections to be ignored. Too often skeleton staff on low wages are employed to keep costs down and profits higher.

I’d be livid if one of my parents were in there and I’m only glad they never had to be. I do hope that the Care Quality Commission stay on this and keep staying on it.

The owner should be ashamed but I’d like to bet he isn’t and sees it all as a major inconvenience.

He should be fined some of that fat fortune because his wallet is obviously more tender to a kicking than his heart is.

We had a Slimming World leaflet shoved through the door the other day. I took it through to the other half and said: ‘It’s for you.’ ‘G’is it here,’ he says. ‘I’ll eat it, I’m starving.’

Made me laugh anyway. How many of us are now signed up for the gym?

How many of us have gone mad in the supermarket buying all the low calorie frozen foods while they’re on special offer?

How many of us still have our list of New Year’s Resolutions unbroken? Mine used to be in tatters five minutes after midnight which is why I don’t do them anymore otherwise I start the year off with failure following me.

I figured I was setting myself up for disaster planning a dry January or a diet when the house was busting at the seams with bottles of Bailey and Ferrero Rochers. And who wants a salad when it’s freezing? Best to aim lower: ‘damp January’ and ‘try-et’ are more doable.