How I got no sleep, my neighbour got shirty and Santa got whiplash

It is not uncommon to hear the refrain, "It had to happen at Christmas didn't it." However pessimistic it might sound it is undeniable that whether it be family illnesses or unexpected financial commitments, right through to cars breaking down and central heating systems failing, Christmas is often a time when we have to put on a brave face otherwise suffer having our festive intentions foiled.

I hate to sound cruel, but sometimes people simply ask for it. Take the example of my next-door neighbours. My beautiful wife had just given birth to our twin girls and, like all new parents, we were desperately deprived of sleep.

When next door decided to decorate their house with enough neon to make Las Vegas look like an unlit backwater, I tried not to mind. Yes, sure, the lights did blaze, flash and strobe on all four sides of their domicile, including the one that faced the bedroom of the burgeoning twins, but I really did try to be philosophical about it.

That was until Matthew, next-door's patriarch, decided to erect a truly hideous 3D chimney-climbing Santa at the front of his house. It's not that I objected to the aesthetics of the thing. Although, truth be told, I thought it ugly enough to put any tot off the idea of Father Christmas for good. What I objected to was the noise of the thing.

Every time Father Christmas reached the top of the chimney, he would say, at clarion volume, in a disturbing android's voice, "Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!" And this went on, all night, every night for about two weeks. It was incessant and nightmarish.

Eventually, I decided that I would approach Matthew in the most diplomatic way and tell him that, if he hadn't heard already, I thought that his Father Christmas, as charming as it was, was disturbing the sleep of those next-door.

Despite my best efforts, I must have done something wrong, for Matthew did not take kindly to my concerns. He accused me of purely being out to spoil the festive spirit.

"Do you know how many people have complimented us on our display," he said. "We are bringing joy to everyone in the village this Christmas."

My polite suggestion that, as villagers, the twins weren't yet quite up to appreciating the finer glories of his "display" met with little understanding. So, with characteristic cowardice, I decided to leave the issue alone.

Now, dear reader, please understand that I am not usually the type to revel in another's misfortune. However, when, on Christmas morning, after another night of "Ho! Ho! Ho!" interrupted sleep, waking to the most tumultuous crash, I looked out of the window to see Father Christmas lodged headfirst up his chimney, boots poking through the windscreen of Matthew's Honda, I can't say that I didn't experience a slight swell of satisfaction.

And this year? Well, the Christmas lights are back, but the twins are a little older and somehow manage to sleep through, despite the fact that their bedroom is once again nightly seized by the kind of sordid and echoing light more appropriate to Amsterdam's more infamous quarters.

But thankfully, Father Christmas is gone, locked firmly in Matthew's attic still nursing last year's whiplash, awaiting to hear whether the compensation claim he's lodged against the man who so endangered him last year has been successful. Well, I like to think anyway.

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