Thing To Be Today: unijugate.

Every day the doormat is covered with a slithering pile of tat.

Yes (as if we could forget), Christmas is coming.

I am currently swamped with catalogues (does anyone really want a plastic-owl-in-a-Santa-hat air freshener? And, what's more, want it enough to pay for it?); leaflets (escape Christmas altogether with a cruise to Turkey! Make it easier to get up after Christmas dinner with an electric booster chair!); and fliers (have some Christmassy tomatoes on your pizza!).

It's not that I don't enjoy the odd catalogue, but so many are arriving with every post that I haven't got time to read them all, let alone get round to choosing and ordering anything.

Ideally, I've realised, I'd be unijugate. It means having only one pair of leaflets.

All right, all right, unijugate is really a botanical term describing a particular form of compound leaf, so I'm using the word quite wrongly...or perhaps creatively...but, hey...

I mean, if I were unijugate (an interesting word that begins uni but is to do with having two of something, that is, a pair of leaflets) you never know, I might even get round to getting some Christmas shopping done.

Thing To Be Today: unijugate. This word comes from the Latin jugum, which means a yoke.