The most wonderful dine of the year!

THURSDAY was my final fast day before Christmas. I say fast. What I really mean is I had an enormous meal for breakfast, a few oatcakes at lunchtime and a protein shake for dinner, and possibly a couple (OK, nine) chocolates from the tub of Roses in the kitchen. It’s basically the 5:2 diet as sponsored by Cadbury.

It’s just so difficult at this time of year though, isn’t it? Everywhere you look there are images of food, glorious food. Shiny roast turkeys, mountains of crisp roast potatoes, oh so many pigs snuggled up in their bacony blankets.

TV adverts goad us into over-eating, tables groaning with moodily lit platters of smoked salmon and pork pies as big as house bricks. It is many a long year since I crossed the threshold of an Iceland in search of nourishment – but its caramel ice cream trees with popping candy might just clinch it this year.

Then there are the bizarre foodstuffs that only make an appearance at Christmas, such as Bucks Fizz-flavoured crisps with edible gold shimmer (really, they sell them in M&S) and hot and sour prawn doughnuts (also M&S).

This is not just food, this is a phantasmagorical, inescapable, dreamt-up-by-Roald-Dahl orgy of food. And I haven’t even got to the booze yet.

It doesn’t help when those around you are already getting in the mood, either. A couple of weeks ago, my significant other introduced me to the most ridiculously over the top festive dish I’ve ever eaten – Christmas cake with a slice of stilton on it.

It sounds ghastly – but just you try it. It is everything wonderful and terrible about Christmas food wrapped up in one cheesy, cakey, calorific mouthful. I promise you’ll thank me, even if your doctor doesn’t.

Meanwhile, the health police shake their heads and tut disapprovingly, all the while reminding you a large glass of mulled wine takes 44 minutes to walk off, while a mince pie requires 37 minutes of frenetic ice skating to burn away. Frenetic ice skating? Honestly, who comes up with this stuff?

There are po-faced suggestions about a ‘healthy Christmas dinner’ with helpful hints about boiling potatoes instead of roasting, substituting parsnips for spinach and putting crème fraiche on the pudding instead of brandy butter.

I’d rather stick Christmas tree needles in my eyes and be done with it, quite frankly.

Apparently we will eat an average of 6,000 calories on Christmas Day, which is what I consume on five average weekdays when I’m being good.

But you know what, sod it. I’m good most of the time. And Christmas isn’t most of the time. It’s once a year and it’s completely and utterly worth it.

This year I will be having champagne at breakfast, two helpings of turkey, a Munro’s worth of roast potatoes, and two spoonfuls of brandy butter with my Christmas pud. I might even splash out on one of those caramel ice cream trees with the popping candy.

After all, it is Christmas.