And finally...
PHOTO: JASON INGRAM. ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS MADDEN/EYECANDYILLUSTRATION
There are certain books I pull down from my shelves each year at Christmas in order to put myself in the mood for the festivities. One of them is Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. Not to devour from cover to cover, you understand, but to read Chapter 28 “A good-humoured Christmas chapter”, which tells the story of the stagecoach journey to Dingley Dell and begins with the delightful phrase “As brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as fairies, did the four Pickwickians assemble on the morning of the twenty-second day of December, in the year of grace in which these, their faithfullyrecorded adventures, were undertaken and accomplished.”