For the first time since 2011, I am, being spared and well, to keep Christmas all by myself and in my own home.

I haven’t been invited elsewhere, and no one has volunteered to take charge of my little dog.

I hate to admit it, but I haven’t seen Rommel so happy in years now his Mary Tudor of a sister has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Delightful as Lulu was to me, if he dared pad into my study, past the chair she commanded like a conning tower, she invariably fell upon him as a leopard on a goat.

In almost her last Luluesque moment, an hour before her death, she skinned her teeth at me when she caught me giving him a treat – and then declined one herself. 

I caressed the back of her head in apology.

Anyway, cooking the family feast for umpteen years straight grew less and less fun: something, latterly, always seemed to spoil it.

In my own pad, at last, I am in utter charge of the timings and in entire command of the menu.

Which is most unlikely, this December 2025, to involve an entire turkey.

Well, would that I could – but it would be an absurd expense for one man and his Jack Russell terrorist.

In 2022, a high-end, free-range Kelly Bronze bird would have relieved you of £70 – a decade before, it was barely four tenners – and it took all my diplomatic charm to ease my late father over that assault on his bank account.

Try, this week, to collar a similar bird, in almost majestic disregard for notional inflation, for anything south of at least £100.

That’s born of assorted stark realities: an explosion in feeding costs, attrition from avian flu, and that supermarkets are now far less willing to sell turkeys as a ‘loss leader’, a bargain-basement bait to lure you into their portals for overpriced this and that.

And that, in fact, we in this realm have been falling out of love with this bosomy Native American for years.

We are tired of throwing most of the carcass out – nutritious as it may be, cold low-fat turkey really isn’t that appetising, and few families can face yet more helpings by the 28th.

And, perhaps in folk memory of Covid and all that, more of us are now in the habit of tight nuclear-family festive gatherings rather than mustering extended and indeed, um, involved rellies for a potential Agatha Christie stage-set.

Nigel, in the library, with the length of lead pipe, on his half- sister’s first husband’s stepson’s gay lover… Sadder even than that are two enduring myths.

That turkey is extraordinarily dry and boring, and exceptionally difficult to cook.

Which really was, or ought to have been, decisively buried by, respectively, the studied pronouncements of Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver in the darkest days of the Tony Blair regime.

From different angles and in their own wee way, they explained two decades ago that – as long as your turkey is at room temperature, the cavity (save for scant aromatics, like a halved clementine and onion and some thin sprigs of herbs) is unstuffed, and the beast is allowed a long rest after leaving the oven – you shouldn’t need much more than a couple of hours at 160 degrees fan.

I’d respectfully recoil from Nigella’s call for prior brining – the leftover liquid is far too salty for good gravy – but enthuse wholly with Jamie about stuffing soft butter under the skin of the billowing breast.

And with him emphasise, again, that the bird afterwards must be allowed to rest for at least an hour and a half, tented under foil and a tea-towel, before carving.

The internal temperature will continue to rise, the bird will continue to cook, and even three hours after befoiled exeat will be fine.

Moreover, delicious.

Ample time to prepare glorious roast potatoes and a perfect steaming gravy – the only two other elements of Christmas dinner that existentially matter, save for very warm plates.

As Jamie has magisterially put it, serving piping-hot meat isn’t clever.

We do need stuffing – not necessarily tucked under the skin at the beast’s neck, for you could bake it separately – pigs-in-blankets and perhaps two separately cooked vegetables.

Neither of which is legally obliged to be Brussels sprouts – I much prefer minimally cooked Savoy cabbage or purple sprouting broccoli.

Nor do we need such imported excrescences as bread sauce, cranberry gloop and the fashionable but absurd addition, these days, of Yorkshire pudding.

Please, that’s for dead cow.

My preferred stuffing with warm, juicy Christmas turkey would actually be the traditional Scots skirlie as learned from my Mammy and her Mammy before her: half-a- pound of oatmeal, one large chopped onion, just over half a packet of dried suet, generous seasoning and a good scoosh of boiling water.

S AID additions will also much improve the versions of packaged skirlie that are sold in the Co-op and so on.

The pork, sage and onion variety is perfect, with reheated gravy, for the Boxing Day cold-cuts. Though unlikely to be glimpsed in any supermarkets after Wednesday next, so I’d stock the freezer now.

How might I enjoy some turkey next week?

Well, granted cunning and opportunity, I’d probably grab one of those stuffed breast-of-turkey joints – in the current insanity, you’d do well to find a fresh turkey crown for less than fifty quid – as long as the stuffing is just pork, sage and onion and not half the offerings of a greengrocer.

I don’t know about you but when I feel the need for an avalanche of chestnuts, apricots and cranberries, I’d really rather find them in my morning muesli.

I might, too, separately slow-cook a whole turkey leg for that rich brown meat and which the fly, even at this late date, can find sold on their lonesome at sharper supermarkets. (An esteemed brother hails one as the ‘poor man’s gigot’.)

But, you know, other flesh is available. Succulent pork, a gorgeous ham – I don’t think it’s the season for lamb, but rib-roast of beef will make any feast an occasion – and a range of game.

Duck and goose are of course delicious, but they yield very little meat per pound – a goose will feed but six at a push – and my go-to for New Year will probably be the finest free range chicken: well-buttered, tickled through the oven and which – if you can lay your mitts on a proper cockerel – will knock any turkey out of the park and for half the price.

After five hours on your feet, be ruthless about others doing the washing-up and – as Tiny Tim put it – God bless us, every one.