THIS is the time of the year when the larder begins to groan with overload.

Every shelf is stacked with packets and boxes of sultanas, currants, Californian raisins, Turkish dried apricots, pine nuts from Greece, almonds from Italy, walnuts from wherever walnuts grow in profusion and any amount of dates, figs and exotic fruit floating in various livid coloured alcoholic mixtures.

There's glacéd fruit aplenty, stacks of icing sugar, boxes of jellies shaped like glacéd fruit, tins of asparagus, tins of artichokes, ditto crab, salmon, tuna and smoked oysters. In fact if you reach for a tin of beans you are likely to be brained by a falling duo of marron glace cans and herrings in dill and Pernod sauce.

But you won't, of course, find a tin of beans, because there isn't one. Not unless they've started making baked beans in red wine and Cointreau confit. Nor will you find a tin of sardines, spaghetti hoops or tomato soup. Because this is the Christmas larder and the Christmas larder contains food for Christmas and not the two weeks before.

It's the same with the fridge and the freezer. You can poke around to your heart's content amongst frozen sweetbreads and smoked fillet of Scottish salmon; You can fruitlessly move aside containers of duck liver pate or larks' tongue in aspic; heave around turkeys and geese, joints of sirloin and legs of pork, boxes of Italian desserts and piles calorific ice creams but you won't find anything to eat NOW. Not so much as a fish finger or a spare sausage.

The chant has probably already gone up. DON'T TOUCH THAT, THAT'S FOR CHRISTMAS.

Every single item in the kitchen seems to be for Christmas. As the day draws near you can forget normal meals. Fancy eggs and bacon for breakfast? 'Don't touch the eggs, I'm making a gateau and two meringues.' 'Don't touch the bacon, it's to wrap round the chipolatas - NO you can't have chipolatas. Why don't you have beans on toast. 'No, you can't have that bread that's for the breadcrumbs for the stuffing.'

Should you manage to find any bread not destined to be stuffed up the nether end of a bird you can forget finding a bit of cheese and some pickle to go with it.

'Don't touch the pickles, they're for the cold cuts on Boxing Day. Don't touch the pickled walnuts, I bought them for Uncle Fred. No you can't open the pickled onions, they'll go brown.'

It doesn't really matter because even though the fridge holds a selection of cheeses which any French deli would be proud to display none of it can be opened until around 2.30pm on Christmas day and all the Cheddar is encased in posh wax coating so you can't even sneak a bit off the end. You may be lucky to find a half empty box of Kraft cheese slices but I wouldn't count on it.

I suppose Christmas Eve day is the worst. The whole household is revolving around food. Every surface is covered with something edible. There's probably more food in the kitchen than's left in Harrod's food hall and yet because there's still 15 hours to go there's absolutely nothing that anyone's allowed to eat. Not a crispy sesame seed topped sausage roll, not a nibble of parmesan twisty cheese straws, not even a misshapen mince pie. Touch the Christmas cake at your peril. Poke the Yule log and you'll get a swift clip round the ear with a palette knife.

If you're lucky, there might just be a Christmas Eve meal waiting to find it's way into the oven, if it can be fitted into a very tight time schedule between the Black Forest Gateau in the making and the trout and white wine terrine.

If not, it's down to the fish and chip shop and bring your own vinegar back because ours is all destined for the red cabbage tomorrow morning.

Of course none of us are quite as bad as the above, are we? Sadly, I can remember a Christmas Eve of tension and interrogation on the little matter of who had had a slice of the pork and venison pie. Nobody owned up, but I had my suspicions.

And it wasn't all that fair to try to blame the cat, who although an intelligent beast had not, to my knowledge, perfected the art of cutting a perfect quarter from a pie and shutting the fridge door afterwards.

All this is to come, however. At the moment I'm in the throes of the annual Christmas clear out, which this year has involved the heartwrenching decision to re-cycle an awful lot of clothes before the wardrobe collapsed.

I have chucked out all the clothes I can't get into but had kept just in case, having finally realised that size twelve is never going to be me again.

Out have gone unfortunate mistakes (crop tops are not for grannies). Out have gone any skirts with a frill round the bottom, which I have had to admit make me look like a fat lampshade. Ditto anything with a fringed bottom (fat standard lampshade). I reluctantly parted with any t-shirt which bore any kind of message on it, because at my age it really isn't very mature to wear clothes which state 'S... happens' or 'Life's a bitch then you die'. And finally, I have come to the conclusion that mohair may look good on a goat but it makes me look like a technicolour haystack.

I took 12 bags of clothes down to the clothing bank in the car park and dutifully pushed all of them in. As the last one tumbled through I got a sudden surge of regret.

Was it too late to change my mind? Did I really want that orange silk pencil skirt with the slit up the side in case I lose five stone next year?

Just how difficult was it to get into that clothing bank and was there anyone around who might notice someone's legs sticking out of it should I reach just a little too far?

No, it would be hard to recover any sense of dignity should you have to be have to be hauled out of a clothing bank by the fire brigade one cold December night. So I went home.