Brown sugar...

Three more days till I can legitimately have chocolate for breakfast.  Whoever invented the chocolate Advent calendar, my waistband salutes you. 

It always heralds the start of the festive nonsense for me, although this year I officially went early with a trip to Waddesdon Manor's Christmas Fair.  We were a happy band of travellers who tipped up there on Saturday morning.  The mother, my sister, Miss R and her future mum-in-law, Mrs L.  We had between us one wicker basket, one Sainsburys carrier bag and a  Nerdy bag (see Friday's offering) and were determined that we would consider very carefully what we bought.  As we all know, there is a terrific amount of tat to buy at these fairs, so some level of restraint was needed.

Of course, this all went out the stained glass window at the first stall which was selling hot chocolate bedecked with double cream, Baileys and marshmallows.  'It'll warm us all up', said Miss R, looking for any excuse to chuck around 750 calories down her neck.  The problem with this is that by the time we'd finished our hot drinks, the alcohol had kicked in around stall number three and our bank balances were a distant memory.

This explains why by the end of the first row of stalls, we had on board three bobble hats, a set of knives, nine gadgets to do something I can't talk about in case the kids are reading this, four candles (yes, four candles) a bag of coconut ice, a bottle of black cherry gin liqueur (that will never make Christmas) and four hot dipping sauces.

We then stopped for lunch and made the excellent decision to get back on the hop on-hop off bus, head back to the car and dump all the bags in Miss R's car, leaving us free to buy even more tat.

Second round saw a sausage dog, a bracelet, two pairs of gloves, another bracelet, two vintage soup spoons engraved with something highly inappropriate and a pair of candlesticks make their sorry way into the bags.

Getting back home on Saturday afternoon, the husband looked up from his pizza (yes, I'd been gone that long).  'Buy anything?' he asked.

Now there are several options when confronted with this question...

I could have said that I'd bought some brilliant Christmas presents taking much thought as to who gets what.

I could have hidden all of the bags, and told him that my bank account had survived the day intact.

I could have come clean, and told him that the drink made me do it.

But I didn't do any of these.  Instead, I held up a fluorescent green plastic tube and said to him, 'Have a guess what this is',

It's a question that's kept him awake the last two nights...