• The emotional load on women piles up at Christmas. Suddenly domestic relationships fall back into even more gendered roles.

• The Victorian story about Xmas was about hunger. Sitting behind the food piled high on the tables was a fear of starvation.

• British life expectancy is falling. Unlike in most other countries. The reason is austerity.

• I try to avoid the B-word here. But this Brexit pastiche, in the style of the great Irish humourist Flann O’Brien, is a thing of beauty.

• In the half-light. Gorgeous photos of Dartmoor at dawn and dusk.

• Need to get this sorted out once and for all. Say after me, Die Hard is a Christmas film.

• “Wish it was Christmas every day, etc”. Actually I don’t. But here’s my off-centre seasonal playlist, on Spotify. Mostly not the songs you hear when out shopping.

This is the last Sixes or Sevens of the year. The next one will be out on January 3rd.

“The whole world’s at sixes and sevens, and why the house hasn’t fallen down about our ears long ago is a miracle to me.” (Thornton Wilder)