Christmas guests are coming! A garden annexe could keep you smiling.

And the goose may well be getting fat, and stress levels are mounting as each new day brings us closer to the festive onslaught. Gifts to buy and wrap; cards to write and post; food and drink to be bought and cooked and….visitors to be accommodated, in every sense of the word.

Weary and cynical I may sound, but I am no killjoy: I really love Christmas once it’s here. I even manage to laugh (discretely, I hope) at the occasional clashes that occur when the explosive mix of too many people, in too confined a space, imbibing too much alcoholic beverage, ignites.

You know the story. Great Auntie Bess can’t resist a snipe about Cousin Doreen’s parenting skills as the latter’s children, overdosed on sugar, refuse to eat their sprouts and simultaneously decide that they would rather sit under the dining table than at it, giving a hearty rendition of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”. And it wouldn’t really be that bad, except Auntie and cousin are expected to bunk up together later…oh dear. Oh for an ejector seat, or any form of emergency escape device. Or maybe a cooling off cell…..now, there’s a thought.

A Garden Escape can provide a wonderfully comfortable space in which your more colourful guests can be contained (oops, I mean lodged), while feeling they are being treated as the guests of honour. It gives everyone valuable breathing space, not least you as host, in which to regain a sense of proportion and recharge the goodwill battery. After all, ‘tis the season to be jolly, fala bloomin la, la la la aagh.

And once the leftovers and the guests are all gone, and you realise it wasn’t just the goose getting fat this Christmas, you can stow away the sofa bed and pop your gym kit in your garden room. As you step, cycle, row or run away all those extra (purely medicinal) glasses of wine and chocolate fixes, you can gaze out at the stress busting green of your garden. Or, if it’s dark (as so often seems to be the case as we toil through the stretch of short days and long nights) pop in a DVD box set and make up for all the TV viewing you managed to miss out on as you shone as the host/ess with the most/est. And why not polish your halo while you’re at it?