NORAD Santa Tracker Visits London at 23:43 on Christmas Eve

The City Centre was deserted when I travelled in yesterday for my holiday visit to the hairdresser. I could have parked on the Ground Level of the car park, usually at that time of day it would have been the roof top.

With the mild weather several brave souls were sitting outside the pubs and cafes, here and there a busker trying to earn a few pennies in the light drizzle. At the cross roads outside the Globe pub in Silver Street, the Big Issue seller let out her mournful cry, "Merry Christmas".

In the John Lewis cafe, two young male servers struggled with the three orders for hot dinners. I avoided the Christmas Dinner pie with the rock hard pastry crust and disproportionate amount of carrots and glutinous gravy and went for the battered cod and chips and a cup of tea.

I passed the Christmas shop on the second floor on the way up, sadly denuded of its brightly ornamented artificial Christmas trees at several hundred pounds a throw. I remembered the forays to the Broadway Market at 4.00pm on Christmas Eve and struggling home with a Norway Spruce for ten bob, half as big again as me and my sister.

"It was dead on Saturday, too," the hairdresser told me, "We're going for a Turkish in Braunstone Gate on Christmas Day, no extra charge, taxis there and back." I wonder what will become of the City Centre as the large retailers give up their lavish corner plots.

Home again to the warm, last minute bits and pieces stowed, we eat our dinner and settle down to watch The 39 Steps and eat too many Christmas chocolates, before tracking Santa Claus making his way from the West coast of Africa, up through Tangier, on through Lisbon before coming to London, all in a matter of minutes, some millions of presents delivered.

Merry Christmas, baby.