Today’s Christmas shopping list:

• 1 new leg cast for Scarlett
• Pants, socks, trainers and a snorkel for Daddy
• Mascara and eyeliner for Mummy (ready for our posh Christmas dinner)
• Christmas chocolate
• Christmas biscuits
• Christmas wine
• Christmas beer
• Christmas cheese (for one sitting only – we have no fridge)
• Christmas funny Thai snacks (fried seaweed, biscuit stick original tasty, taro fish strips, pizza flavour crispy broad beans, seaweed flavour crisps, spicy lobster pringles…)
• A teeny, tiny Christmas tree
• Teeny, tiny baubles
• Beach bungalow decorations (tinsel; balloons; teeny, tiny Santa)

The first item was from the hospital and the best present any of us could have asked for. The doctor says that Scarlett’s leg is healing so well that she may only need two weeks with her half-leg cast, not six. She’s been soldiering on with her hip-high cast for a month and half now and was being very brave about having to manage for another six weeks.

Everything else was from the massive Tesco near Chaweng beach. I know it’s bad form to buy yourself stuff just before Christmas but Samui’s the only place we’re going to visit in the next few months with clothes and shoes big enough for me and I’ve been wanting some trainers. When packing, I thought I wouldn’t need any so left mine at home, but, having ditched my walking boots in Nepal, and now having only sandas, I’ve decided I’m going to need some more enclosed footwear for walking through grass (snakes) and up volcanoes (stones). I’ve also been wanting to go jogging and it’s just not possible in flip flops.

Unfortunately, even hre, the only ones big enough were shockingly bright red. At least it’s a Christmassy colour.

With our bungalow decorated (and my new trainers), it’s finally starting to feel like Christmas here. We have wine and cheese. We’ve wrapped up the girls’ presents, sent at great expense and difficulty from the UK by my mum and dad. We’ve got three walking socks hung up for Santa to fill, a glass of beer (can’t find sherry) for him to drink and some edamame beans for Rudolph (nor carrots). We even have five M&S Christmas puddings (also from my Mum’s aid parcel).

Tomorrow, we’ll open presents in the morning, go swimming in the sea till lunchtime, eat fish at a beach restaurant in the afternoon, then Skype our relatives before heading over to a swanky Italian restaurant in Chaweng for a posh Christmas dinner in the evening (oysters, giant prawns, roulade of turkey with chestnut puree stuffing, pannatone gelato).

Not a traditional Christmas, perhaps, but it should be fun, and will hopefully have enough of what we’re used to feel familiar.

Anyway, the cheese is chopped (and getting slightly sweaty), the chocolate is unwrapped (and beginning to melt) and the Muppet’s Christmas Carol is queued up on the laptop. Time to start those Christmas traditions we can still observe over her in Thailand.