Merry Christmas, dear readers

It's very sad to be blogging on Christmas eve, so I'll be brief. And then I'll get a life.

We're just waiting for relatives to arrive. I managed to sneak in a bit of late Christmas shopping today, including the purchase of some more Port, which we are drinking a lot of. I found Quinta do Noval's wondeful unfiltered LBV in Tesco at a knock-down price of £9.80. It was the 2001, a good vintage for this wine. I also picked up a couple of halves of the Croft Unfiltered LBV 2004, at £3.99 a piece. It's not as good as the Noval, but it's still an acceptable drop, and halves of Port are useful.

My big regret is that we have no decent Sherry in the house. That's a huge oversight. Matusalem, for example, is a perfect wine for late morning - it would be great for opening presents to.

Earlier on today we took the kids and RTL for our traditional Christmas eve walk round Bushy Park, checking on the deer before Santa picks them to drive his sleigh (or something like that).

Now I'm trying to pick wines for tomorrow. I'm under orders not to choose anything too strange, or with too strong a flavour. This ties my hands somewhat. I don't want to have to resort to the Richard Nixon trick of having one bottle for me, and one for my guests. And yet I perfectly understand that not everyone wants to experiment with their wines, or be exposed to challenging flavours. Tricky one.