There can't have been one Christmas since 1982 that I haven't been tipsy if not out-and-out drunk. Some years ago - before my child came along and I had to learn how to behave - I got so gently and sweetly merry that I ended up sleeping in my mother's dog basket downstairs in my father's kitchen (they no longer lived together and yes, it was complicated). My mother came downstairs from toasting in the Yuletide evening with a small shot of brandy (my mother never, ever, drinks so I knew something was up) to find me happily curled up, snoring gently, in the hairy basket. Hattie and Smudge, the child-like dogs, were patiently waiting outside, their little illegally docked tails (we didn't know that when we bought them, now I dream of that cheeky duo standing there with tails three feet long, a jolly insult to the Kennel Club and their ridiculous rules), wagging benevolently. My mother let me stay sleeping, despite her desire to 'settle the dogs down' as she calls it. She now says I looked like a black labrador. I take that as a compliment.

Anyway, that was the worst of it. Since then I've done nothing more remarkable than a) sleep under the coats at my sister's house when I'd had too much Limoncello but I did have 'flu honest to goodness guv' and b) yell for hours at my former husband-type person over the telephone without realising that he wasn't in and his answer machine had switched off. What a terrible waste of bile. I shall never, ever do that again.

But some years ago - as I sat in the Firefly in Buckinghamshire, listening to a set of dullards talk about the recent occurrences in EastEnders - I realised I had to change the tenet of my Christmas. This was the year, then and there, whereby my Christmas was never going to be the same again. I decided to plan it - to care for it and shape it in a way I never had done before. I decided that I wouldn't get drunk. I wouldn't argue with my family. I wouldn't burst into tears for no reason at all. I wouldn't drink a bottle of Limoncello single-handedly. I wouldn't sleep in a dog basket. I would, instead, become focused. I've never been focused. As others stride like demon-eyed colossi through their lives acquiring happiness and husbands and wives and children and houses and smart-pat Christmases that loom before them like sturdy Doric pillars, I have weaved around going hither and thither without any form of plan, whatsoever.

So last Christmas I suggested to my brother-in-law that we do something different. He came up with 'swim in the River Thames naked' which isn't a come-on from him because he's a nudist and so is all his family.

I came up with 'drink a bottle of Limoncello and sleep in the dog basket' but my sister came up with something totally inspirational: 'Let's go to the Boxing Day races,' she said. So we did. And it worked a treat. I got tipsy on Christmas Day ( I think I can do that now my son is five and, anyway, I saw him at the brandy butter last year) and the next day it was sunny and gorgeous and we all trooped off to Kempton and watched those clean-living horses snorting in the paddock and we all felt a damn sight better for it. We're going again this year, I hope.

Next month: Don't ask...