AS the old song very nearly goes, it's beginning to look a lot less like Christmas.

That sentiment occurred to me on Sunday morning when, sitting in the lounge having a reflective cup of coffee, I gazed into the middle distance and thought: there's something missing here. And then it struck me: no mistletoe.

Our decorations have been up for more than a week, yet there is not a sprig of the stuff in sight. In fact, I haven't seen any for years, not even in the shops.

Of course, there's always the possibility that my wife has hidden ours from me, but would she go so far as to instruct the local traders to keep theirs from my view? It would be a bit extreme, but I haven't excluded the possibility. She's very public-spirited, my other half.

Maybe there's a shortage; I find that a more comforting thought.

Talking of decorations, they're not as much fun as they were when was I was young, and I'm not just thinking here about the plastic sprig of mistletoe we used to possess. Every year, when the box marked "Christma" was brought down from the loft (the final letter was obscured by masking tape), the act of unfurling the paper decorations to see which, if any, needed replaced was like being reacquainted with long-lost friends.

It's hard to believe that people used to risk their necks climbing ladders to Sellotape paper chains to the ceiling, but that's the way it was done. My playground vocabulary was greatly embellished by the oaths and curses of my dad whenever a chain was pulled too tight and ripped, thus necessitating the purchase of replacements. He took this as a personal affront; some of our decorations had survived two world wars, or so we were led to believe.

Nobody bothers with their ceilings these days, more's the pity. But to be fair, in the 1960s and 70s we didn't decorate our guttering or our gardens; you were considered posh, or at any rate ostentatious, if your tree lights blinked. My old dad, as canny a Scot as ever there was, could never fathom why people would lash out small fortunes just to entertain the passers-by. That sort of thing was best left to the ratepayers of Blackpool.

Still, we all have to learn to move with the times, and I'm going to do just that. I'm going to log on to eBay to see if anyone is flogging any plastic mistletoe.