PICTURE the scene. It's not even 4am on Christmas morning and I'm hiding behind the sofa in the living room with the camcorder aimed at the door.

Once they start ripping open their stockings in their bedrooms, I know I have about four minutes to get downstairs and into position before they burst in.

I would rather lie on in bed, leave them to get on with it, let them show me what Santa brought them later. But I was foolish enough to start doing this seven years ago, when the eldest was two.

He was so thrilled with his little tricycle, he ran around in circles, screaming and flapping his arms. So we filmed him and his little brother the next year, and the next. Now I'm condemned, like the character in the film Groundhog Day, to keep repeating it over and over again.

And I'm beginning to feel that I've viewed some of the most moving moments of our family Christmases slightly distorted, through the eye of a camcorder lens.

The same goes for school concerts and nativities, cub and beaver scout investitures, sports days, Christenings, football matches, holidays and birthday parties.

Because once you get sucked into chronicling such historic, if at times banal, family events, you just can't stop, in case you miss something or someone. And if you do it for one, you have to do it for the lot.

But at times I feel a fly-on-the-wall documentary team following us around might be less intrusive.

This year's opening shot shows four beaming faces. Then yells of delight as they delve into the piles of toys and games. The eldest grabs a football and runs round the sofa, cheering. I zoom in on the toddler, sitting on top of his farm, quietly playing with his little tractor, then fade out.

Afterwards, the eldest takes me to one side: "Did you get the bit with me cheering and waving my arms in the air?'' I have the camera at the ready for the rest of Christmas day but it's clearly not as spontaneous, natural and unaffected as I would like.

The American writer Susan Sontag once said the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own. I'm beginning to understand just what she meant.

And as the one who is always behind the camera, I can't help wondering if anyone will ever ask in years to come: "Where was mum when all this was going on?''

WHO can blame the thousands of shoppers who arrived at Gateshead's MetroCentre on Boxing Day, expecting it to be open? Of all the places in the country, this is the last I would have expected to stay shut while cash tills were ringing in the winter sales elsewhere. Those who did travel to Gateshead must have felt like they'd turned up at church on a Sunday to find the door bolted.

NORTH-EAST TV star Declan Donnelly has offered to move his parents into a new luxury home. But they prefer their rented three-bedroom council house in Newcastle, where they have brought up their seven children over 32 years. "It is seen as a bit rough round here but we love it, all our friends are here. This is home to us and always will be,'' says his mother.

Dec, who just signed a £2m contract with TV partner Ant McPartlin, even stays in his old bedroom when he visits. Let's hope he doesn't push his parents too hard. Because they know a home is much more than bricks and mortar. And what they have built up over the last 32 years is clearly worth more to their family than any seven-bedroom mansion in a posh part of the city - something money just can't buy.

A very happy New Year.