FOR homework last week my children were designing Christmas cards for school. I was surprised to see Rudolph and Father Christmas leaping from their book bags so vigorously in Indian summer sunshine, but when I pointed this out, The Daughter slapped me down with a “you’re a fine one to talk – you’re already halfway through 2012.”

And she’s right. Plans for Oxfordshire Artweeks 2012 are proceeding apace and if you’re an artist and would like to open your home or studio to the public next May, then now is the time to act (www.artweeks.org). And I don’t mean get thigh-slapping in a Christmas panto.

It’s always important to think ahead and in this house the importance of family planning is paramount, which, with three children under my belt, is no longer a reference to hormone manipulation, medical devices, creams and coils. It’s a long list on the fridge.

Quite aside from the fearsome financial implications, I am not that big on after-school activities. It’s partly that I don’t fancy spending hours waiting with two other children in the draughty entrance of a church hall while Lyrical learns the lute or Pythagorus practises polo. I’m also in favour of the Just William approach to life. Surely it’s good for children to have time for a bit of ‘ferralling’ which is rather like ferreting but without the ferret, putting their healthy complexions against caked dirt and poking a favourite stick into an ant hole. As far as I know, Gerald Durrell didn’t have a black belt for badminton and wasn’t the 500m champion at tambourine and he seemed to do alright.

I still seem, however, to become immersed in a never-ending medley of after-school activity with a gaggle of Boy Scouts to deliver to pitches and pools up and down the village, the coordination of which requires a diary the size of a flat-packed filing cabinet.

The upside of this is that the mere hint of year-end means it’s time to choose a glossy new diary for 2012. It’s terrifically exciting: what else can you live with cheek-to-cheek, day-in day-out for a year and then switch to a fresh and cheerful replacement without a cross word or backward glance? Over the past few years I’ve enjoyed the minutiae of everyday life with Charlie and Lola, travelled round Spain with Antoni Gaudi and had meetings clutching Colin Firth.

And I love stationery. How can you fail to be excited by Paperchase, with those tantalisingly new notebooks, colourful pencil cases just asking to be filled, and other exorbitant things you didn’t know you needed until you saw them? And now, I hear, the latest must-have is multicoloured staples, the height of office cool. Surely this is the perfect present for someone whose ultra-organisational skills and immaculate colour-coordinated spreadsheets keep a major Oxford enterprise afloat? So please don’t tell my friend Cath or you’ll spoil her Christmas surprise.