Xmas is definitely over, after a busy, festive and highly enjoyable week involving presents known and surprising, friends old and new, children who have grown astonishingly since last seen, NONE of my good wife’s innumerable siblings and their offspring (for a mercy...) and very little tv (although I did see Carols from Kings College and St Paul’s at various times).

But it’s back to the world. I usually reckon it an important milestone, the first evening of tv involving various ill-mannered people, rushing in and out, shouting at each other, depicting supposed dramas of which I care absolutely nothing.

No 2 Son is over at his brother’s, supposedly helping him in some undefined way but really fussing over my ridiculously spoilt grand-daughter and playing video games.... he has a point...

Still, it’s good to be away from the stresses of work, and Plymouth’s rain-lashed streets swarming with bizarrely-dressed students, more resembling a Big Issue sellers’ convention than my recollections of Higher Education.