2003-12-29 - 2:15 p.m.

Today�s completely unnecessary day at the office is being sponsored by the phrase: �Did you have a Nicechristmas?�

I think we�re the only people at work in London today apart from the odd surgeon performing emergency appendectomies and the guy who drove the tube this morning. So there�s a tangible sense of festive solidarity, punctuated by this interminable Yuletide prying.

The highlight of the day so far has been remembering that I still had my Secret Santa present to open, my covert philanthropist going for the tea-containing crockery novelty of a mug with my name on it. It also has a word about my name�s origins. Paul means �little�, a fact that I�m not buttock-clenchingly overjoyed about broadcasting as I have my morning caffeine. But there could be worse presents, and there are people in the world without novelty mugs that give embarrassing definitions of their names, so I should be grateful.

As a classified ads paper, we�re really entering into the spirit of things here, and are running front covers that invite you to offload your surplus Christmas tat onto the general public, presents still warm in their box but that would never otherwise see the light of day. In essence it�s exchanging unwanted gifts for a fraction of their cash value, but people seem happy to do this.

But I DID have a Nicechristmas, thanks for asking. My family may well be short on divorces, trial separations and relatives who once sliced up half my cousins before trying to turn the knife on themselves, but we can hold our own when it comes to bitterness, recrimination and outright petty squabbling, thank you very much. So at least the festivities had a warm feeling of familiarity about them.

Strangely, though, the whole time I was up at the family home, I had this weird sense of foreboding, like I�d forgotten to do something really, really important before I left London like stabilise that thermo-nuclear reactor or firm up that Middle East peace process, but of course the facts of my life point to the inescapable truth that the most important thing I forgot to do was, well, open my Secret Santa present.

I need to formulate New Year�s resolutions that intensify the illusion that my life is somehow important.

Oh, it just started snowing.