THIS is about the time of the year I find all last year's Christmas cards in the back of a drawer while I'm searching for such things as gloves and the can of de-icer I know I bought last March.

I'm tempted to send them out this year but there's always the chance that I included a merry little millennium message in each of them, which would give the game away, or at least make everyone think I'm finally going bonkers.

To be honest, the older I get, the more I feel that Christmas cards are totally unnecessary. Or at least cards you send to people you see every day. Even members of the family who are sitting half a metre away when you are writing the things out.

I have, it has to be admitted, got into enormous trouble for putting this opinion into practice.

Take the grandchildren. I could never see the point of sending a card to a two year old. They usually open them, glance at them, check inside for anything edible (later on it's anything spendable) and toss them on one side. As they can't read they miss the 'To my dear little Grandson at Christmas' printing on the front, a message which has added at least £1.20 to the price of the card.

It's the thought that counts, I've been told. Just because you spend the whole of the festive holiday within earshot of all the family doesn't mean you don't need to buy a small pile of tinsel dripping personalised individual cards for everyone.

I suppose Christmas cards are really a status symbol. Which is why people line up their cards on every flat surface in their sitting rooms or hang them all over the walls and leave their curtains open so that people can see how popular they are. It's telling all of us who only get a dozen or so, and that includes one from the gas board and another from Sky television trying to get their business back, that nobody loves us. Personally I think they keep all the cards from the last few years and use those as well. I mean, who's going to be churlish enough to check that the big silver card with the frosted Santa on it didn't arrive five years ago from a now dead auntie?

In a few weeks time there will be the annual hunt for the Christmas tree lights. I have probably mentioned this yearly task before.

It usually starts off with one person saying they know they put them in the attic with the rest of the Christmas decorations and ends with finding the rest of the Christmas decorations sans lights.

I don't know whether going into your attic is anything like going into ours but in ours a trip to the attic always draws a crowd.

For a start the two cats always appear like rabbits out of a hat the second the loft ladder comes down because they just know that the Promised Land is up that ladder because nobody has ever let them go up before.

There follows as furry battle to prevent both learning ladder climbing in double quick time and a fairly vigorous tussle to get them shut into a bedroom.

My grandson has the same idea and no matter how often he is told he's not going up there he always starts to climb and then gets his fingers trodden on as the person in front of him comes down to stop him climbing the ladder. What with those of us who are applying Elastoplast to the scratches from the cats and soothing a small child with trodden on fingers we're all well past the time when we want to find the household's equivalent of Blackpool illuminations.

At least we have a loft ladder. In the last house I had there was just a trapdoor which involved someone standing on a small table on which a chair was precariously balanced and then trying to heave themselves up into the loft, which certainly sorted out the men from the boys, or at least the men who had kept up their press-ups from the flabby armed brigade.

The attic was also not boarded so the unfortunate person who had to find the box of lights, which somehow had always mysteriously found its way to the very back of the attic, had to tightrope walk over the joists. Now tell me, why are houses built without a boarded attic? I mean, they must know people are going to want to walk around the attic, otherwise they wouldn't put a trapdoor in to give them access, so why do they just leave narrow bits of wood for people to teeter over with the ever present danger of a foot going through the ceiling? Stupid.

There was also the danger that the person who did manage to manoeuvre across the joists would accidentally knock the television aerial which would mean at least another 22 trips across the attic floor, a lot of shouting and a certain amount of bad temper before BBC2 came back into focus again. All for a string of lights which inevitably didn't work when plugged in.

Our attic is fortunately boarded. It is also the recipient of everything we didn't want during the preceding 12 months, all of which are balanced precariously very close to the top of the ladder. It's a bit like the piles of washing-up almost all men do, touch one tiny plate and the whole lot fall into the sink. In this case, touch one out of favour standard lamp and you're likely to be brained by a three legged coffee table, at least one curtain pelmet (sometimes with curtains attached) five cardboard boxes apparently containing lead, a black plastic sack of old shoes, five suitcases and granny's old sewing machine.

Then, just as the box of decorations is finally located, and dragged unwilling from the corner where it is firmly wedged, someone lets the cat out of the bedroom and a ginger streak shoots up the ladder like a greyhound out of a trap and disappears into the darkest corner of the attic and no amount of cajoling, or threats, is going to get it down until it's good and ready and you're going to have to leave the loft ladder down all night and just hope it went to the litter tray before it ran up there. Of course most cats who learn to climb up ladders instantly are totally incapable of coming down them, or so they say, so you'll be woken at 3am by piteous cries from the top of the ladder.

This, by the way, is not the time to remember that you actually didn't put the lights in with the Christmas decorations, you put them snugly into the bottom of an old brass coal scuttle and covered them with bubble wrap and an old pillow to keep them safe and that coal scuttle is actually in full view sitting on top of the old bureau in the garage (the old bureau which was too big to fit through the attic trapdoor}.

If you have any sense of self preservation you'll keep your own trap firmly shut.