It’s 3pm, the clutter is cleared, the games are over and Elvis is singing about a Blue Christmas. That’s the first party over – buffet for eighteen for the group plus carers and four generations of the Rose family. Tomorrow it’s staff and various people who have helped us during the year – sausage and mash for eighteen. This, I suppose, is the start of the countdown to Christmas.

We’ve cooked for forty and fifty before, which stretches the kitchen capacity and calls for an ingenious use of space and tables to fit everyone in. Eighteen, in comparison, is just a walk in the park – just scale up a normal meal and chuck a few tables up in a line. We used paper plates. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad in ecological terms – it’s a waste of paper but it saves on hot water for washing up. However, it’s a lot easier to chuck paper plates away than it is to get stuck with the washing up.

Father Christmas came to call and was a lot more cheerful than the grumpy Santa they had on Saturday. He also seems to have put his arm round a lot more ladies than the Saturday Santa. Maybe he’s on to something…