IT'S that time of year again - time for the Christmas card and for the round robin letter, because I know you're all just bursting to know what the Mullen family have been up to in 2002.

Naturally, it has been a year of stupendous triumph as usual: our Marian won Wimbledon and Brian scored 369 for England against the Aussies at Adelaide. David, though still only five years old, has qualified as a brain surgeon. His first major medical responsibility was to be asked to look for signs of intelligent life in John Prescott.

Well, the year got off to a rather discouraging start when our holiday cottage in Helmsley was destroyed in a small nuclear explosion. Police and MI5 subsequently identified the perpetrators as the provisional wing of the Lancashire Hotpot Society. March saw an improvement when our Janice was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for her trilogy of novels on the theme of "bonk": "Bink", "Grunt" and "Bank". On April 1 our youngest, Attila, surprised us when he suddenly turned into a large black Labrador dog. This proved somewhat embarrassing when the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Druid, Rowan Williams, came round for a gin and tonic and Attila couldn't resist eating his beard. The Archbishop took a most charitable attitude over the whole incident and declared that Attila had shown: "...a refreshing disdain for the systems of pomp and worldly show."

Early in May, Alice announced one morning at breakfast that she was going to have her head off. She'd long wanted to be a Cabinet Minister in the New Labour government, but not having been able to win a parliamentary seat, she decided that amputation of the cephalous was the next best thing. Shane won £6m on the National Lottery and - Shane being Shane - drank the whole lot in one evening at the Brown Cow.

You know what the Mullens are like - not ones to blow their own trumpet. In fact we have always prided ourselves on our quite exceptional modesty. In July, we were delighted to learn that Eleanor had been elected Pope and, as a celebration, we decided to give the Galapagos islands a miss as our usual holiday destination and go to Mars instead. It rained.

It has not been a good year for health. Stephen's paranoid delusions returned and for several weeks he was convinced he was a white mouse. We didn't mind the expense of the cheese, but the droppings completely ruined the front room carpet. Sheila lost her temper in Central Africa, ran amok and was convicted of genocide. Her public hanging cast something of a shadow over our preparations for Christmas.

But our spirits were somewhat revived when Amelia won the Diana-Cherie Award for Overacting. Imagine our delight when cartloads of floral tributes began to pile up on the doorstep. We just know that the highlight of your Christmas will be to sit around the tree reading our wonderful annual newsletter!

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.