We hang mistletoe over the clock at Christmas, weigh our blackberries and mushrooms, count out jampots, and stand year by year to be measured against the shutter in the drawing-room window.

She told me she had been a lift girl at the Times Book Club and had lost her job because at Christmas time, she hung mistletoe in the lift.

Everyone helped to decorate it, to put up the branches of holly behind pictures and to hang mistletoe in a convenient position in the hall.

We'll see Clarice Starling showing Hannibal Lecter how to hang mistletoe before that ever happens.

I found a little institutional joke in the showroom: over a stone angel hung mistletoe.