There has been much disputing over the precise date of the new millennium. But even we purists have to admit that the 21st century has now begun. The old century ended very strangely for me. For the first time I missed the carols in Westminster Hall and the Parliamentary Carol service at St Margaret's. There were no pre-Christmas constituency visits to schools or Cheshire Home, or Post Office, or any other of the various festive ports of call. Because for me, as the 20th century drew to its close, an era did indeed come to an end.
After attending the one pre-Christmas engagement I was able to keep, on December 7, I spent the weekend in Lincolnshire visiting my 90-year-old mother who had been very ill. I returned encouraged by the progress she was making - only to be woken very early on the morning of the 12th to be told she had died. This is not the occasion to pour out personal feelings of grief, but all those who have told me that the death of the surviving parent, whatever the age, is a great blow, are certainly right.
So it was back to Lincolnshire again to help arrange the funeral and, after a hectic few days, and a brief return to Westminster on the 18th, back on to the all too familiar Great North Road on the 19th for a long and difficult journey, in atrocious weather, to my home town of Grimsby.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 20: We had a quiet said Communion last night when mother's coffin was received into “her” church, where I sang in the choir over 50 years ago. We were back there again today for the funeral service. As she would have wished it was a joyful, as well as a sombre, occasion - giving thanks for a long life well lived in the service of others. In the ancient church crowded with friends the words of the Prayer Book Funeral Service gave great comfort and Corinthians 13 rang out. There was also a palpable sense of loss. I have given many addresses at funeral and memorial services but this was the most difficult.
After the committal there was time to talk to old friends and the boyhood memories came flooding back, as they had so often over the last week
THURSDAY DECEMBER 21: Back to Staffordshire. I have done 2,000 miles in the last 12 days and am ready to flop when we finally get home.
FRIDAY DECEMBER 22: No chance for flopping: it is last minute shopping in Stourbridge and Bridgnorth while Mary prepares for the family invasion. I am delivering Christmas presents in the village when she pages me - those instruments do have a real use - to tell me that Charles, our elder son, and his family have arrived from Scotland. Katie, the three-year-old, is full of the joys of Christmas and gives a non-stop commentary on what it is all about. Emily Victoria, 18 months, and built like a cruiserweight boxer, is less vocally coherent but running everywhere and into everything.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 24: As Christmas Eve is on a Sunday my church warden's duties are fairly demanding. Together with my fellow warden I take the Morning Service, in order to give our vicar, recently recovered from a by-pass operation, a brief rest. Back to church at 2.30pm for the children's service where ours, I am pleased to say, do not disgrace themselves - a good thing as most of the others are almost impeccable in their behaviour too. Christmas comes alive at this point. I shall always remember Richard, our younger son, when he was barely three, picking up the baby from the crib and demanding all too audibly “but where is God?”.
Later in the afternoon two other friends arrive from Scotland. Stockings are hung on beds and mince pies left out for Father Christmas and carrots for the reindeer. After dinner it is back to church for the favourite service of the year - the Midnight Mass. As always I get a spine-tingling thrill when I read that most majestic of all passages of prose - John l; from the Authorised Version. How sad that so many churches have abandoned the King James Bible even for their services of lessons and carols. I was horrified to hear that King's had done so this year.
MONDAY DECEMBER 25: Amazingly the children slept until 6.30am but by 7.30am stockings have been opened, and the bicycles discovered.
The rest of the day passes in a sequence of different delights. After breakfast some of the main presents are opened, before we adjourn for Morning Service. Incredibly Katie behaves beautifully, with no demand for further toys.
Then it is back for further present opening and the long late lunch, punctuated by an adjournment at 3pm for the Queen's Christmas message - the best, in my view, she has ever given, and much the most moving.
It is a day of toys and tree and total affability - and the television is not turned on once.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 26: In our home Boxing Day is always a day of rest and recovery after the exertions of the previous 48 hours, and, insofar as the presence of two very active and very excited children will allow, so it is this year. When they are safely in bed and supper is over we do not turn on the television but someone produces a game - Who Wants to be a Millionaire? - based on a certain programme. We go to bed after midnight but none of us has made a seven-figure sum. We have all been floored by questions on pop music.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 27: Jamie and Diana, our friends from Scotland, depart and we have a day of reading to, and playing with, the children.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 28: We wake to a silent white world. Snow has fallen through the night - a good four inches of it - and Charles and Linda wisely abandon their plans to drive north. There are snowball fights in the garden and we find an old sledge, built for our boys almost 20 years ago. Everything looks magical in this most sparklingly beautiful of lights. We do watch the television today - to find out about the weather in other parts of the country. Though we are full of sympathy, and not a little concerned about when it will be safe to undertake the journey north, we enjoy this first real winter fall for some years.
FRIDAY DECEMBER 29: Charles has a large four-wheel drive vehicle and, having consulted the internet, decides to head north. He has a dinner that he must try and attend tonight. We are mightily relieved when he telephones six hours later to say that they are safely there.
SATURDAY DECEMBER 30: I disposed of my four wheel drive a couple of years ago, and rather regret it as we slither down the lane towards the main road. But we make it and shop in Kinver, the larger of our two local villages, and then return to take a series of photographs of the snow, and to rest and read. It is wonderful having young children in the house at Christmas time - but it is good too to be able to recollect their happy presence in tranquillity when they have departed. This, we are determined, is going to be a weekend of domestic peace. We made no plans to celebrate New Year once we knew mother was so ill and thought we might well be called away at any time so, for the first time ever, we are on our own when New Year's Eve dawns.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 31: I struggle to church through the snow but in the afternoon the rain sets in and by the time (after a leisurely evening and a splendid dinner) I let in the new century there is almost no trace left.
MONDAY JANUARY 1: I spent yesterday reading a fascinating account of the last days of Queen Victoria and I have now embarked on a new biography of Samuel Pepys. And, for the first time this holiday, we do spend an evening looking at television - and the BBC 2 tribute to the Victorian age.
TUESDAY JANUARY 2: Here I am back at my desk. There is a great deal to be done on the domestic and the constituency fronts before facing the journey back to London next Monday - the day this diary will appear. But as we go to press today I must finish it now. In doing so may I wish you all a very happy new century?
