This week between Christmas and New Year always seems rather odd. The increasingly mad pre-Christmas rush is over, the big day itself is behind us - and Boxing Day is all about enjoying the calm.

Unless you're a masochist and will be spending today fighting over cut price clothes/televisions/whatever in the sales, it's a day of turkey sandwiches, traditional trifle and catching up on the seasonal television.

For me, all bets are off over the Christmas period and normal service will not be resumed until January 2.

Which is why I'm writing this accompanied not by my usual cup of tea, but by a festive glass of wine and Home Alone on pause on the telly.

Quality Street for breakfast? Oh, go on then, it's Christmas. Cracking open the booze by noon? What the heck, Bailey's has cream in it - it's not that much different from having a glass of milk. Endless repeats of sitcom classics and festive films? That's what Christmas is all about.

And it is: in my house it's not Christmas until I've watched Home Alone, Love Actually and Die Hard each for the squillionth time, Love Actually being surely the best of the crop - apart from the irritatingly precocious rendition of All I Want for Christmas is You by the kid at the school nativity play.

I can't say our last Christmas as members of the EU (if, indeed, that's what it was) felt any different from the previous 40-odd.

As we possibly hurtle towards the threatened Armageddon of a World Trade Organisation Brexit, the only source of sustenance I've actively stocked up on over the past few weeks has been chardonnay.

Unless a couple of extra packets of ibuprofen counts as stockpiling medicines.

Whatever happens comes March 29 next year, the Christmas respite from all things Brexit has been very welcome indeed.

I don't go in much for predictions - although to our shame, my best friend and I whiled away a guilty half hour a few days ago musing on which famous people will shuffle off this mortal coil in 2019 - but I can't help feeling that the doom-mongering regarding the possibility of a no-deal Brexit will not stand scrutiny.

There will be no plagues and pestilence, the lorries and trains will keep moving, our hospitals will keep functioning, and businesses will do what they've always done: adapt to meet the challenges ahead.

I'd add to that that the planes will keep flying. But after last week's pre-Christmas chaos at Gatwick airport, one really does wonder how equipped we really are to deal with the unexpected. Let's just hope no one bought Jean-Claude Juncker a drone for Christmas.