Christmas – it’s all over, Rover

It ended in a choking cloud of talcum powder, my teeth sweetly aching, my feet soaking in a powder, blue miniature spa bath filled with a strangely scented salt from somewhere like the Dead Sea. Sound familiar?

Should do.

This was me last year too, once again lacking the ability to ban certain gifts – among them talc, so much chocolate and foot baths with salt.

All should be outlawed, contributing as they do nothing to well being, health and happiness. That dusty talc is everywhere. Rumours were spread this year, probably by fed-up mother people, that it contained-asbestos.

Last year’s spin was that it is stuff left over from some chalk-making process.

The truth is that Johnson & Johnson made beautiful talcum powder for our beautiful babies but now there are nowhere nearly enough babies to use it.

Imagine if you will, how much talc it takes to weigh a tonne and there are tonnes of it waiting.

So they’ve re-packaged the lot, called it names like

Desire and Midnight in

Paris and sell it to lads who vaguely remember their mothers and something pleasant about talcum powder and so put the two together for Christmas.

It clouds and chokes but all our treasures hear is thank you darling, just what I wanted.

So they are happy they have made the right choice and know they’ll get it right again next year.

OK no-one pushed me to eat so many chocolates that my teeth, my whole mouth aches with that sweetness.

No self respecting woman wants to be caught stuffed with chocolate, choked by talc, her feet soaking in salt.

It happens. It is a Christmas hazard but now we are onto a New Year, the last few days of the old spent, so they say, pondering what changes might be made in the new.

This year, as last I guess, I am catching up on things I once swore to do regularly so now fit in as seasons, well years, pass.

Before New Year I will have chucked out all old cosmetics and best- by passed sun screen lotions and our comfy flattened toothbrushes and replaced them with new more efficacious models.

We wish you a happy and safe New Year.