OH Lordy, but I'm sick of Christmas already... Now that's an awful thing to say. And I hate people who moan on about Christmas because even among all the work and commercialism and greed, there is still something precious, worth thinking about, worth saving.

It's just that it all seems to have become such a production.

Once upon a time, you bought your modest presents, made a few mince pies, a cake and pudding, ordered the turkey and got last year's decorations down from the attic. You bought some extra booze, some rum for Uncle Jim and port and lemon for aunty. And that was it. It was a few days of preparation and a few days of jollity with a nativity play and a few carols in the middle. And then back to work the day after Boxing Day.

But now...

It has become a campaign to be planned. We are bullied, blackmailed and brow-beaten into spending far more than we want to on things nobody needs. Our children have to keep up with the high-spending Joneses. Our decorations have to make a fashion statement. Our food has to be daringly different. Even our leftovers have to be luxurious. Worst of all, we should have started planning sometime around March.

But there are signs of a backlash. In America of all places, where on balance Christmas is a shorter festival than ours but where there's no limit to Christmas spending, a growing number of people are opting out of the glitz and glamour and - without being po-faced and boring about it - are keeping things simple. Because they are wealthy trend-setters, there's some chance it might catch on. Wouldn't it make life easier?

My own stand is to refuse to buy anything that's plugged by a twinkly tinselly advert placed before Bonfire Night. Come to think of it, any tinselly twinkly advert usually just drives me into Scrooge mode, whenever it's played.

And it's still only November.

No doubt the Christmas spirit will creep into my flinty old heart any day now and I shall be battling my way round the shops with the best of them.

But as you do, just think. Are you spending a lot of money because you want to give your family pleasure? Or have you been cunningly manipulated by big businesses who want even bigger profits from you for their already wealthy shareholders? Just so you know.

DON'T BE BULLIED.

See you in the shops.

Pick Patsy for a role model

PENSIONERS are sick of being stereotyped on television. According to a survey by Age Concern, they are fed up of being typecast as grumpy old men or sweet old ladies.

Now Victor Meldrew I can recognise. But sweet old ladies? Think Blanche in Coronation Street or the Royles' Nana. Old ladies certainly, but sweet?

The trouble is that everyone on television is a stereotype. All teenagers are Kevins. All thirty-something single girls are a cross between Bridget Jones and Ally McBeal. All policemen are either hard old school who don't obey the rule book/eager young innovators/plods. Most television drama is as simple as cartoons, only with real people being one dimensional instead.

And as for middle-aged women. We're either menopausal shop lifters or wittering mothers maundering on about vests and eating properly.

Which is why we all loved Morse - when middle-aged women either had a dalliance with our hero or got to commit a juicy murder. Probably both. Beats knitting.

My own favourite was Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. Fag in one hand, bottle of Bolly in another and a glint in her eye for a toy boy. Not so much a stereotype, more I like to think, a role model.

Cheers Sweeties.

A strong whiff of double standards

BY Christmas, the morning-after Pill could be available over the counter for £10 a throw. There is little to stop it being available to under-16s who will, no doubt, be much relieved. But probably not relieved enough to think sensibly about proper contraception next time.

Health Secretary Alan Milburn - who will also no doubt be much relieved in the consequent drop in teenage pregnancies - says there's no clinical reason for barring its sale without a prescription.

Yet, when it comes to a simple headache pill, such is the state's concern for our welfare, that we are limited in how many we can buy at one time from the supermarket.

There is much to concern us in the easy sale of the morning-after Pill - not least a strong whiff of double standards.

SOARING London property prices mean that a friend who lives in the other Richmond, in Surrey, now owns a fairly ordinary house that's worth well over a million pounds.

But when she visited our much, much cheaper, house at the weekend, she was in ecstasies. "You've got space to park," she enthused. "You can just drive down your road without sitting in a queue for half an hour." As she's often out at night, when public transport is (a) inadequate and (b) like a casting session for a psycho movie, she sometimes has to park nearly a mile away. It's so bad that she's thinking of knocking down the kitchen extension she built 20 years ago, just so that she can have somewhere to park the car. "But someone would probably block it in anyway," she said glumly.

If there is a North/South divide, I can't help thinking we're on the right side of it.