Monday 5 January

Thank heavens! Normality has returned! That odd period of offices and businesses being shut for two weeks has come to an end. Never did I think that I would love the traffic jams outside my front door or the crowding on the buses and tubes as much as I do today! Many parts of London have become like a ghost town for the past few weeks. My local small supermarkets, for example, have been stocked with shelves of small simple items rather than the more normal produce. I really don’t know where this two-week shutdown originated from but it is serious enough for Capital Radio to be running competitions where listeners could nominate any friends or family who were working to win a big prize! It’s all becoming rather like the French closure during August, which equally seems to be affecting much of the UK.

One of the benefits of people returning to normality is that you get to hear about the wretched times they had over Christmas and the New Year. All the arguments and disputes with family members, all the cases where intoxicated relatives - particularly elderly ones - severely embarrass both themselves and all the guests, and gruesome tales of inedible food or over-indulgence. A friend returning from a festive sojourn with in-laws in Cardiff, tells me that they tried to go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve night only to discover that the parish priest had dropped dead of a heart attack that morning, and how on Christmas Day oysters had been served up as a special Welsh delicacy, only to result in all of the party being admitted to hospital on Christmas night with severe food poisoning!

Another friend recounts the ghastly experience of visiting parents in Nottinghamshire, where a motley selection of aunties have been assembled. At present-exchanging time on Christmas morning, it seems that one aunt recycled a gift from another aunt in a previous year, presenting it to another aunt, also present. Seemingly, a very frosty atmosphere lingered for the duration of the holiday.

And another returning friend tells of the tragedy of her best friend’s brother - who very drunkenly took a short cut home across some railway lines in the early hours of New Year’s Day - and was killed by the express train that he failed to either see or hear.

It makes you realise that however bad your own Christmas and New Year was, it was worse for some other people.

Now is that time of year when we celebrate the coming of the Kings, the Wise Men, to see the baby in Bethlehem. I wonder what we would do today if we had those gifts of fold, frankincense and myrrh to offer and to share?