Carol Singing on a frosty night for fun.

This year I am going carol singing.Twice. The first time I am going with some mums from school and our children.We are hoping to raise money for McMillan Cancer care and I am sure it will be a lovely, if rather cold night.I don't think we plan on dressing up a la Victorian, probably more a la North Face. I would imagine we will sing very properly and beautifully and I may hide at the back.

The second time I plan to go carol singing is with my children and my neighbour - possibly with my husband too. This one is for purely selfish reasons. We do not plan on asking for any money at all. The plan is to wear a sign saying ' We are not singing for money, but for pleasure!!' We just fancy singing carols and last night, after a glass of two of vino we practised in my lounge.

Admittedly we may be paid to go away by some people as we are hardly the Westminster Cathedral Choir, but at least we will be enthusiastic. And, let's face it, at least we will know the words to the carols, unlike the occasional opportunistic teenagers who turn up and mumble a couple of lines of 'We wish you a Merry Christmas!' and then hold out their grubby paws for a pound coin.

Our repertoire is really quite extensive and in the privacy of the lounge last night even included some grunge versions of the classics.'Little Donkey' sung beautifully and then after a quick '1,2,3,4!!!!' turned into a thrash version may not feature in our line up, but last night it was fun!

I don't really know why we are going singing, other than for the nostalgic pleasure of standing together warbling beautiful tunes that bring Christmas back from the commercial spendfest it has become, to a tiny slice of free togetherness.We don't want people to have to scrabble about for money, we just want to give them a moment of pleasure - even if the pleasure is grinning to themselves when we have gone and wondering 'Who on earth were those idiots??'