30/11/07 My first Christmas cards arrived this morning. No advanced graphology skills were necessary in identifying Hazel Eadie-So-Called-Coe's savagely embedded scrawl. Not having heard from Hazel since September I'd hoped that she might have embarked upon some fresh fixation. Apparently not. Her annual newsletter contains its usual trite fantasies about our life together. "Hamilton has been dragging me along to his Sunday table tennis sessions," she writes. "The cheeky monster insists that I can do with the exercise! As if he doesn't wear me out enough!!!" I assume from the profusion of exclamation marks that this is an allusion to our imaginary sex life. Does Hazel seriously imagine that normal couples use their Christmas newsletters to subject acquaintances to such nauseating innuendo? At least the reference is veiled. Last year's was so hideously explicit that I took the precaution of passing a copy to Paul Jackson our community police officer.

Later I went into Stirling to collect my own Christmas cards. Last year I made the mistake of allowing Gordon Gilfeather, one of Christine's depressives to design my card. The image of a young Hamilton Coe, partially concealed from behind a couch, peering at an unsuspecting Santa Claus through a magnifying glass was skilfully enough executed, but misjudged in almost every respect. Apart from begging the question why I would require a magnifying glass to observe someone from a distance of three feet, Gordon's depiction made me look sneaky and furtive. Nobody who knows me would deny my ability to take a joke but an advanced sense of humour is accompanied by an instinctive sense of what is appropriate. When I confronted Gordon he completely failed to convey why he thought his caricature was funny. Nor could he adequately explain why Santa Claus was included despite my explicit instruction that the American icon of greed had no place in a Hamilton Coe Christmas. "But that's why you're investigating him," he stammered, a feeble improvisation that failed to convince me that he was deserving of anything more than half the originally negotiated fee.

This year's card features a photograph of me with Christine and Muriel. Muriel, whose obnoxious phase is now entering its second year, has already protested that I can't distribute her image without permission. She's not so much worried about the picture falling into the hands of perverts, apparently, as the notion that some of the card's recipients might assume that I'm her father. After seeking legal advice, I asked the printers if they could blur her features. The effect is slightly ridiculous but, as I've no intention of wasting Foundation funds on an unusable card for a second successive year, it will have to suffice.