That’s it. I feel the need for a ballgown.

It is dark outside and our island genes put up with the dark for just so long before the red dress becomes an absolute necessity.

Not only this, but it simply must be accompanied by a party, one of those dancing parties Miss Austen was so fond of. Only with the Macarena.

Brave souls are beginning to put up something akin to Christmas lights. It is only a matter of time before we begin scheming to spend our evenings immersed in bling.

Phil has charged Maddie with organising a Grand Lantern Christmas Party this year. It will be held in the inky black night, with Phil’s chimenea burning merrily and the holly bushes swaying jovially in the force nine gale.

There will be punch and mince pies, and gloves and scarves and hats, and the charm of daylight will be a distant memory compared with the warmth and light of the company of friends.

The need for a bit of glamour is tugging at my sleeve. I yearn for sparkly paste diamonds, scarlet taffeta, and scaffolding from Marks which one would never normally countenance.

Ah, the parties, the parties. Over the years I have had wonderfests and dismal deflated apologies; impromptu raucous rumbustiousness and pre-planned gems.

As, I’m quite certain, have you.

The Winter party is a very particular celebration here. Our houses and meeting places become islands of light in our frosty darkness, and we don our sparkle and gravitate to them like moths to a flame.

I have to confess that my favourite parties are not the decorous, meticulously planned eye candy which typifies such celebrations in the Smart Set.

No, mine are a little like that affable carousal we read of in Dickens’ work. The one in Pickwick papers is my favourite, because he realises that the charm of a great party lies in the detail: how you get there; what you play; what’s on offer to drink; and of course, the characters on the periphery.

Pickwick’s character is The Fat Boy. When he and his friends jump from the carriage at the Blue Lion, the destination for their party, he’s there, pulling on Pickwick’s coat tails. He says little, and what he does say is comically prosaic in response to the friends’ jovial questioning.

Tiny moments like this seem to gain clarity with the frost. They are preserved across the years: there are miniscule moments with folks immortalised in our minds – at precisely the age when they played a bit-part in our lives.

Often we never knew them well before, and we never will again, but for that one evening, with the lights, and the frocks, and the feast and the glitter, they are just the ticket.

I will never forget a glittering wit I met in a London pub at a Christmas party, long before Phil materialised. Dancing eyes, similar outlook, no-nonsense attitude to my garrulousness. It was totally magical, and then I left, and he left, and Dawn broke on the alternate, and very separate paths of the rest of our lives.

Of course, that enchanted Christmas grog doth help. The sable-wrap of cinnamon and the penetrating warmth of cloves seem to weave a magic all their own. Pickwick’s friends, it must be noted, had been warming themselves with ale and brandy, “to enable them to bid defiance to the frost that was binding up the earth in its iron fetters, and weaving its beautiful network upon the trees and hedges.”

No-one says it quite like Dickens, do they?

The moments preparing for a party are almost too sweet for words. It is not a book that sums this time up for me, but a film.

Moonstruck’s heroine has allowed the pleasure of passion to dim into greyness over time. Now, she has been invited to an opera.

She says yes: and then she is passing the hairdressers with money to deposit in the bank. She finds her feet walking themselves in and taking a load off for a makeover.

Emerging to whistles on the street she sees a drop-dead red dress in a plush shop window and comes out, a little later with a collection of delectably various-sized bags.

There’s no-one home when she gets back, so she turns on the radiogram and pours a glass of red, and sits looking at her purchases, taking them out of their packages, trying the lipstick for shade, basking in the moment: the evening before a night at the Met.

Those moments, when the dress is still rustling with tissue paper, are the essence of vivid winter life. Without them it can become monchrome, but as long as they are there life is a rich, warm tapestry.

I always think of one heroine itching to dance at a toe-tapping party, but unable to join in. Scarlett O’ Hara is vivid to her bones, but there she is behind a lemonade stall in monochrome, while others got to be the life and soul of the party.

She is outraged, after the death of a husband who meant little to her, to have to sit ‘ like a crow’ in black taffeta.

The enchantments of a party, with all the action and the energy which are so part of her soul, are barred to her.

I love that moment when Rhett bids for her and causes universal scandal by dancing roundly with a woman in mourning.

It brings to mind that devil-may-care attitude which tends to overtake me at such occasions. Without dancing, preferably on tables, I feel cheated. No one should lower their voice at such occasions. Bad behaviour makes for such fun.

We all have our tales of excess: I do hope some of the Shrewsday regulars will oblige. My proudest moment, however, was mimicking a Spitfire in a street my aforementioned friend Dickens knew better than most.

And I wasn’t the only one. There was whole squadron of us, flying in perfect formation along the ancient houses of the High Street, just moments from the castle and the cathedral. We weren’t properly protected from the cold, but like Pickwick’s party, we didn’t need any more than the fire water which had graced our evening.

So, as November dwindles in a haze of mist, and December and its midwinter merriment calls, I shall look forward to the celebrations which shall surely materialise, one way or the other.

Time to go out, and purchase that new frock.