That was Christmas - now for the recycling

That’s it, then. You’ve opened your presents, you’ve stuffed your face, you’ve marvelled at the new 3D Queen, you’ve been for a walk in your festive jumper and you’ve not got washed away in a flood.

Kiss me quick before it goes into the compost

For you, Tommy, ze Christmas ist over. 

But before you can start to think about getting back to work, or making any New Year resolutions, or paying off all the bills, or planning next year’s holiday, there’s one thing you’ve got to do: sort out all the leftovers.

Just as busy hospitals operate a triage system to decide which incoming patients are worth saving, you’ve got to take a robust, unsentimental approach to the Trimmings that Time Forgot.

Here, then, completely free of charge and printed on the finest recycled paper, are your top five post-festive Reuse It or Lose It Tips.

WRAPPING PAPER: easy one, you’re thinking. If you’d opened all your presents really, really carefully, you could by now be folding up the paper, giving it a quick iron, and putting it away in the loft ready for next year. As if. Most of it is scrumpled beyond redemption after an over-enthusiastic three-year-old ripped into it on Christmas morning. The rest has been used to wrap triangular presents and has a entered a spatial distortion field from which no amount of ironing will ever rescue it. Recycle.

BLUE QUALITY STREET: long after the green and purple ones have gone, and long after the last toffee penny has yanked at your fillings, you’ll find a small pile of blue coconut-flavoured uselessness lurking at the bottom of the tin. Not even hungry magpies are attracted to these, and they won’t burn. Send them for landfill.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS: did you know that they recently discovered the gene that codes for not liking these unlovely offshoots of the brassica family? People who have the gene are what are known in medical parlance as “normal”. People who don’t have it, and like sprouts, are... well, it’s not their fault. Sprouts are dangerous things, though. Just before Christmas there were reports about a man from Ayrshire who overdosed on Brussels sprouts. So if you have a any left over (and you will have), encase them in lead, bury them at least six feet deep, backfill the hole with nuclear-reactor-grade concrete, and set up an exclusion zone dotted with Vitamin K detectors. You can’t be too careful.

SPUDS: donate them to science. Yes, seriously. Another pre-Christmas TV news item reported that top plane-maker Boeing is using bags of potatoes to test wi-fi transmission in the passenger cabins of new aircraft. This raises lots of questions – not least of which is: “What were they on at the BBC Christmas party, and where can we get some?” But there’s always life in an old King Edward. Keep for later.

BATTERIES: you mean you remembered to buy batteries before Christmas Day? So all those toys and electronic do-dahs worked straight out of the box? If you’re that well-organised, you don’t need anyone's help getting rid of the old ones – have a fantastically green New Year.

The ultimate last-minute Christmas survival guide

Ultimate. A much-misused word. A word that doesn’t mean “best”, or “finest”, or “taste the difference”, or any of those other tempting phrases the supermarkets use to package fancy-looking ham or overpriced chicken gizzards.

No, “ultimate” means “last”. It means “final”. It means “done”. And it means “dusted”.

So, if you’re one of those people who idly leafed through the so-called Last-Minute Gift Guides that fell out of the posher daily papers a couple of weeks ago...

And if you’re one of those people who laughed slyly, used the supplement to line the hamster cage and said to yourself “Ha! There’s tons of time left till Christmas...”

And if you’re one of those people who really does wake up on Christmas Eve and realise you haven’t bought a turkey – then this one’s for you: the Ultimate, Final, Left-It-Too-Late Guide To Those Last-Minute Christmas Conundrums.

Q: When I look in the window of a jewellers’ shop, why are all the price tags always face-down so I can’t read them?

A: Because if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. There are, even here in Bath, some lesser jewellers who do show the prices of the trinkets in their displays. But you probably can’t afford them either.

Q: What is the point of Brussels sprouts? Be honest, I can take it.

A: The Brussels sprout is a symbol of seasonal regeneration, a green shoot amid the murk and mire of darkest December, a token of Dame Nature’s infinite bounty...

Q: You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?

A: No. Oh all right, yes. Ask me an easier one.

Q: Why do they make blue Quality Streets when no one eats them?

A: To fill in the spaces between the purple ones.

Q: All, right, I’ll come clean. It’s Christmas Eve, I haven’t bought a turkey, and the whole family, including rich Auntie Agnes, is descending en masse for lunch tomorrow. What’s my next move?

A: Run for your life. Alternatively, invest in one of those four-bird roast things that are all the rage this year. As an added bonus, you’ll have enough unidentified avian leftovers for at least three weeks’ worth of sandwiches.

Q: Right, I need to get back to the shops. Most of them have double doors, don’t they? So why do the people who are trying to get in always use the same door as the people going out?

A: What’s that got to do with Christmas?

Q: Not a lot really, just idle curiosity. And how come you’ve started asking the questions and I’ve started answering them?

A: Good point. Ask me another one before anybody notices.

Q: What should I buy for the man who has everything?

A: Nothing. But he won’t thank you for it.

So there you are. The gold mines may be empty, the frankincense trees may be wilting and the myrrh bushes may be down with the blight, but for you, Christmas is ultimately sorted. Have a good one!

Sprout me no sprouts

A report from the BBC earlier this week suggested that the rather chilly weather we’ve been having may lead to a shortage of Brussels sprouts this Christmas.

No real surprise about that, you might think. What is a bit surprising, though, is that the Beeb should have presented this as if it were bad news.

Anything that hastens a sprout on its journey between field and dustbin is a good thing as far as this blogger is concerned.

And cutting out the intermediate stages of boiling them and dishing them up for lunch seems like just the sort of energy-saving measure we should be embracing in these sub-zero days.

Mrs D takes a different view. One of the few things left growing on her allotment after the summer gluts are several sturdy purple sprout plants, which are hanging on to their treasured leafy globules like grim death. So perhaps there will still be the chance for us staunch anti-brassicans to refuse even a “token sprout” with the big bird.

There should be a few parsnips coming home too: another festive vegetable more honoured in the breach than in the observance. What’s so wrong with a handful of frozen peas to go with your turkey and trimmings?

As you may have gathered, Christmas preparations are well under way in the Dixon household, and to keep us on schedule we have all been issued with advent calendars of various designs.

Only one of these has the traditional religious motifs: seraphim and cherubim and kings on camels peering out from behind the windows.

We also have a robustly secular version, with a half-eaten mince pie, an pair of oven gloves and a box of hankies among the treasures behind the cardboard flaps. This acts as a salutary reminder that Christmas isn’t just about the fun things, it’s also about tidying up the mess afterwards.

Guess who got that one?

Then there’s the posh chocolate one, with the numbers printed in pale gold on a multicoloured background, making them even more difficult to find on a freezing December morning than those on the common-or-garden picture-only Advent calendar.

For the younger brethren (or sistren, to be more accurate but less grammatical) we have the gigantic pink Japanese cat calendar complete with even more chocolates in vaguely festive shapes.

And of course we all share that regular Christmas treat: the Advent Candle That Doesn’t Burn Properly.

It has the days of the month printed down the side, and the idea is that you light it in the evening and burn down one number a day.

So chunky is the candle, though, that the burning wick vanishes into the centre, leaving a waxy crust of unburned numbers on the outside.

It offers the perfect excuse for being late with anything from buying presents to writing cards to wrestling with a seven-foot refugee from a Norwegian pine forest: “But it’s only December the fifth – we’ve got tons of time.”

It isn’t, and we haven’t. Best look busy before it’s too late.