I WOULD cheerily have taken a shotgun and blasted the burglars who came in the night to steal our children's quad bike - in my dreams.

In reality, we just sighed and upped the security - as we have done every other time, when they have taken lawn mowers, bicycles and whatever else they could get their filthy hands on. And so we have floodlights and alarms and a fortified cast-iron lock up.

Now Britain's most senior police officer says householders should be free to attack intruders without fear of prosecution and a Private Member's Bill calls for much the same thing.

Well, if I wasn't scared before I am now. Won't burglars just come better armed and prepared for a fight? I don't want to kill burglars, I just want them to leave me alone. If only the police and the Home Office devoted their vast resources to protecting us from such intrusions in the first place. Having the power to attack lowlife criminals in our own homes is hardly cause for celebration.

ISN'T it a bit arrogant to knock the baby Jesus, or even Santa Claus off the front of your Christmas cards to give yourself star billing instead?

Thanks to computer technology, more people are doing this now. Pictures of children are acceptable, because everyone loves seeing how they've grown. But posing on the front of your own card - as the Blairs have done - is pretty tasteless. We may all enjoy sniggering about how he looks like a badly-dressed catalogue model while she clings onto him for dear life. But otherwise, I can't see the point.

THOSE of us caught in the frenzy of Christmas, stressed out by lists of things to do and dreading the thought of all the hard work involved, would do well to stop a moment and dwell on the words of TV presenter Gabby Logan - whose teenage brother collapsed and died suddenly a few years ago - interviewed in The Northern Echo's style magazine this week about her best Christmas.

"The last Christmas my brother Daniel was alive was incredible. It was a really lovely family Christmas and the last we would all have together," she said.

So what if the turkey's overcooked, there's been a mix-up with the presents and the Christmas tree lights have packed up? Gabby sums up what really is important about Christmas - and it doesn't cost a thing.

I AM concerned the local Women's Institute, having asked me to speak at its January meeting, has got me mixed up with someone else. They have billed the event in the local parish magazine, describing me rather grandly as "the journalist and author", which is a bit of an overstatement.

Apart from writing this column and doing a few odd bits and pieces for a publishing company, as a mother of five I spend most of my time doing laundry, school runs, supermarket shops, and loading and unloading the dishwasher.

I am reminded of the time I contacted the National Farmers' Union to ask if they could help me find three generations of a farming family to interview for a book on life in the Yorkshire Dales. They were extremely helpful, got back to me immediately and couldn't do enough. But when I rang later to check something, they didn't know who I was. "I called you earlier, about the book on the Dales," I said. "Ruth Campbell? We thought you said Ruth Rendell," they explained.