I've never been one for New Year resolutions, or Wifey for that matter. However this year Wifey has made a strict and solemn resolution, that I should go on a diet. A strict limit of only one breakfast a day, no puddings, no cheese and crackers in front of the telly, and although she denies she ever said it, no biscuits.

Yes I was shocked too. However, in order to keep the punishing schedule of sporadic biscuit reviews that you've become used to I will use the clever calorie counting exercise machines at the gym to ensure that biscuit consumption is mitigated by simulated cross country skiing.

Thus all reviews in the coming weeks will be have to 'waistline neutral' until such times as I reach my target weight. Of course my big worry is that my biscuit judgement may become impaired, as any biscuit no matter how ropey will taste like manna from heaven.

Now you may be wondering what incentives Wifey has promised for me hitting my targets? Well obviously most of them are of a distinctly personal nature, apart from the sneaky week long lads ski holiday. So if you happen to be in a French mountain restaurant in the Trois Vallees between the 12th and 19th of this month and see a man eating cake and drinking tea who really should be drinking beer, that'll probably be me.

As for the picture I didn't really have anything appropriate, so here is one we took on Christmas Eve in a small Welsh village. No they don't all live in mudhuts, it was the Celtic village at the open air museum of Welsh life near Cardiff. For some strange reason we were the only family there having a picnic.

Are you sure it's Christmas again? It doesn't seem like a year ago since we put up our last Christmas page. Well no sense in burying our heads in the sand, the calendar doesn't lie and so we proudly bring you this years Christmas page which much like last years we'll cobble together as we go along.

Rather than spend the best part of a week painstakingly creating a three dimensional computer modelled piece of yuletide fireside imagery as I did last year, I thought I would just raid the younger members of staff's Santa letters.

The pics were taken from their second attempts, the first which were vetoed by Wifey for being nothing more than a list of demands. The second attempts were much nicer, thanking Santa for all his efforts last year and full of 'please', 'may I' and 'thank you'.