WELL it’s been well over a week now and I still cannot move in the living room for all the toys, books and general siren-wailing clutter.

Stumbling around in the semi-darkness, that is much of the mornings these days, I can guarantee I will stub my toe, fall over or step on a car of some description.

And it’s not just land-based vehicles. He got a police helicopter this year, complete with rotating blades, siren and lights. Where on earth do you stash that?

Coming back home from visiting an array of relatives over the holidays, our car resembled Santa’s very own sleigh, so weighed down was it with child-sized desks, painting easels, trains, race cars and clothes.

Annoyingly, our house had not self-cleaned, tidied up, cleared out or indeed grown to accommodate this new addition of a small branch of Hamley’s.

So it has remained scattered and strewn about the place.

We daren’t put anything else in the loft either, and it literally groaned after we stored the latest raft of Ben’s out-of-date toys following his last birthday.

I wondered if it would sound rude if I were to ask relatives whether cold hard cash would be preferable next year.

Although he appreciates the entire range of Thomas the Tank Engine now, I reckon the money spent would see him through a couple of weeks of university at least – I do have high hopes for him.

And I bet with a degree of certainly that the same helicopter that drove me to the brink on Christmas Day will have its flying missions severely downgraded come this time next month, when it is heaped up with all the other toys he got bored with.