NEEDLESS to say most of us have come down with particularly bad cases of the pre-Christmas jitters, frantically trying to get it all done in time. Going into town is a nightmare and I think you need to set off in the middle of the night if you want to try and get a parking space. I have already got two tickets, which has left me seething with rage, as both times I was only seconds over my alloted time.

The parking at Number One shed is the worst with "parking rage" taking on a whole new meaning. If you see someone walking down Front Street with keys in hand, you virtually have to kerb crawl next to them (with them thinking that you really must be some kind of extreme oddball) in the hope that they may be going into the parking lot to free up a space.

Even if they are, you then have to drive like a crazed Formula One racing driver - oblivious of pedestrians or anything else that may be in your way - just to get to that space before someone else spots it. Usually the person who does spot it first has only just started looking for a space (whereas you have been driving around all morning in search of one). He or she is just backing into it when you come screeching around the corner to find that had you just been a couple of seconds faster (and not avoided that pedestrian) it could have been yours and your blood pressure wouldn't be soaring to unknown heights nor would you be suffering from a sudden onset of most unpure thoughts regarding this parking space thief.

Some people also get vicarious pleasure out of just sitting in their cars doing nothing; I'm sure that half the time they aren't waiting for anyone - they just get a buzz out of the fact that they have a space and you don't. How thrilling it is for them to sit there, looking at all these cars hovering around them. What control they must feel. They must get a perverse rush out of the fact that when they do decide to move (taking their own sweet time of course) there will almost certainly be a multi-car pile-up as people rush to fill their space.

Of course if you are lucky enough to have battled your way into a parking bay, you usually find that you don't have any change for the ticket machine and the laborious task of trying to acquire some begins. By this stage of the game shopping is the last thing that you feel like doing - a nice soft seat in the Pickled Onion would be infinitely preferable but as yet I have not succumbed to this temptation.

The other day I returned from town, virtually empty-handed, and felt that the morning had been slightly wasted. Well if I thought that the morning had been wasted the afternoon was a complete wash out. During my absence the rather large barometer hanging on the wall in the living room had fallen off and there were pools of mercury all over the wooden floor. Have you ever tried to pick mercury up? (It ain't called quick silver for nothing!) Chasing an entire flock of wild geese would have been easier and more preferable.

Of course mercury is hugely toxic and with dogs rushing around all over the place I had to rid the house of it immediately and what a thankless task that proved to be. I had a zillion things to do and spending two hours crawling around on my hands and knees trying to pick up mercury wasn't one of them.

I had ingeniously decided that the best thing to do was to try and shovel it along with a spatula to try and get it into one or a couple of big pools - easier said than done. When I thought I'd just about got the hang of it after about an hour and (I suppose the excitement was too much) I was nearly there when I shovelled a little too hard and it then dispersed into hundreds of tiny balls that rolled away in every direction. Luckily there are no firearms in the house because if there were they would have come in extremely handy at this point!

You're probably thinking: "Why didn't the stupid girl use a vacuum cleaner?"

Well, the stupid girl had thought of that. But as the vacuum doesn't have a hose attachment and has about as much suction power as my mouth (or probably less), I thought that would be rather a fruitless endeavour. At this precise moment in time my brother arrived on the scene. Much to his complete and utter chagrin, the arduous task of chasing quick silver was passed onto him. In the end he fared slightly better than me but what a laugh we had in the process. It took him about eight attempts to get it from a piece of paper into a glass.

Every time we thought that it was going to slide nicely into the glass back out it would slither and disperse yet again into hundreds more balls. We finally won the day and I must say that by the end of it all that comfy seat at the Pickled Onion was becoming more and more appealing!

Originally this week (after reading Martha Stewart's Christmas edition of Living magazine) I thought that it might be quite fun to do a send-up a Martha Christmas. However after getting on the Web to research the domestic diva (who is already something of a walking, talking, decorating self-parody) I was so overwhelmed by the vast content on offer that I decided it would have taken me a month of Sundays to get something together.

What got me going was reading her monthly newsletter in the magazine. I found it somewhat stomach-turning when she very smugly confessed at the bottom of her epistle that she is so well organised that she is already making her Christmas presents for her friends for NEXT year!

I mean can you believe it?

I suppose in a way she has to be a little forward-thinking these days because, as we all know, Martha may be celebrating Christmas at Sing Sing or San Quentin next year (if she is, she'lll certainly have a lot of time for making presents in the prison workshop).

What's even more nauseating is that she is making all her lady friends flannel nightgowns - the old fashioned comfy type! YUK! I know that if I gave any of my girlies one of those (and especially if I had made them) they would think that I was stark, raving mad. (they of course want to be swathed from head to foot in sheer, filmy, satiny, sexy negligees). Maybe Martha knows that she will have quite a lot of "new" girlfriends next year and is getting into practice - black-and-white striped flannel may suit be just the thing in prison couture in Winter '03.

She goes on to inform us that her equally appalling daughter (the one who dated the same cancer cure quack cum Wall Street shyster who Martha went out with) is busy baking all her friends scores of different fruitcakes (sshh, don't tell anyone) - two fingers down the throat on that one too! Chip off the old dyed-blonde block, that girl.

While perusing the Net I came across an amusing "Martha Countdown to Christmas" and thought that being the sharing, caring sort of person that I am that I would like to give you the pleasure of enjoying it as well. Of course needless to say you will naturally find it very useful!

December 1 Blanche the carcass from Thanksgiving turkey, spray paint gold, turn upside-down and use as a sleigh to hold Christmas cards.

December 2 Have Mormon Tabernacle Choir outgoing Christmas message for your answering machine.

December 3 Using candlewick and hand gilded miniature pinecones - fashion cat-o-nine tails. Flog gardener.

December 4 Repaint Sistine Chapel ceiling ecru with mocha trim

December 5 Get new eyeglasses - grind the lenses yourself

December 6 Fax family Christmas letter to Pulitzer Committee for consideration

December 7 Debug Windows '95

December 10 Align carpets to adjust for curvature of the earth

December 11 Lay Faberge eggs.

December 12 Take dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble.

December 13 Collect dentures. They make excellent pastry cutters particularly for piecrusts.

December 14 Install plumbing in gingerbread house.

December 15 Replace air in mini-can tyres with Glade 'holiday scent' in case tyres are shot out in mall.

December 17 Child proof the Christmas tree with garlands of razor wire December 18 Adjust legs of chairs so that each dining guest will be the same height when sitting at his or her assigned chair.

December 19 Dip sheep and cows in egg whites and roll in Confectioner's sugar and coloured glitter to add a festive sparkle to the pasture.

December 20 Drain city reservoir, refill with mulled cider, orange slices and cinnamon sticks.

December 21 Float votive candles in toilet tank December 22 Seed clouds for a white Christmas December 24 Do my annual good deed. Go to several stores. Be seen engaged in last minute Christmas shopping, thus making people feel less inadequate than they really are!

December 25 Bear immaculately conceived son. Swaddle. Lay in colour-coordinated manger, scented with homemade pot pourri.

December 26 Organize spice racks by genus and phylum.

December 27 Build snowman in exact likeness to God.

December 31 New Years Eve! Give staff their resolutions. Call a friend in each time zone of the world as the clock strikes midnight in that country.

There you go, that should keep you busy over the festive period! Joking aside, my illustrator Marty Hatfield and I hope that you all have an incredibly happy and bountiful Christmas. As promised I shall give you as many recipes as I can possibly fit in. I have been busy going through various magazines and cookbooks and this is what I have come up with as my current "Christmas favourites" for this year. I know that while you'll probably be a little busy bearing Martha's immaculately conceived son on Christmas day, I do hope that you will still have the time to get into the kitchen and prepare a

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