Christmas is coming - oh dear

Ten things I would like the Christmas fairy to do.

Well, there’s bringing my children home, but apart from that:

1. Put up the Christmas tree, preferably without sighing and puffing to excess, and decorate it, making sure that the lights work.
2. Drape tasteful seasonal thingies in appropriate places round the rest of the house.
3. Clear up the resulting pine needles, bits of tinsel etc.
4. Put the empty decoration boxes back into the atticky space off Daughter 1’s old room.
5. Buy some inspirational presents for my dear ones.
6. Wrap them, ideally not at 1 am on Christmas Day.
7. Fight her way round Marks and Spencer to buy some festive fare for the fourteen people who are confidently expecting to eat it on the Day and beyond.
8. Do splendid things with brightly berried holly and stuff.
9. Wave her wand very vigorously at the extremely unacceptable weather.
10. Create an extra week – but, crucially, not a working week and not a week that the offspring aren’t here – between now and Christmas Day.

Anyone seen that fairy?

(Actually, she looks discouragingly like me. She's even got the wellington boots for the snow, though mine aren't actually pink. Mine are black and have my initials on the outside, in white correction fluid. I am sometimes mocked for this, but the boots were originally Son's when his feet passed through the size 5 phase, and they needed to have his initials on them for school purposes. It just happens that my initials are the same. My feet are a bit smaller than 5 but near enough. And wearing these boots, I'm less likely to forget my name. Or at least my initials.)