Mrs Perfect got married in May 1970 and to this day she has never forgiven Charlie Haughey for upstaging her at the wedding. The guests talked of nothing but the arms-smuggling charges that had just been announced. She felt nobody gave her even a passing glance as she walked up and down the aisle. Their wedding seemed only like a supporting act to the dramas that were going on elsewhere. She was 25 years old, she looked wonderful - she can show you the wedding pictures to prove it - but they were more interested in Blaney and Haughey that day. She knew that you have to work at marriage - her mother told her that long, long ago. Let nobody tell you that running a home was easy, her mother had always said; it involved ceaseless vigilance and planning.
So Mrs Perfect had done exactly that, and never more so than at Christmas.
Hers was going to be the Christmas that would be remembered by everyone. Planning began in early summer, when she would start the present list. Her gifts were never extravagant but very thoughtful.
If you ever said to Mrs Perfect that you liked chutney, she would write it down, and she would cross reference this on her chutney list. She made two summer shopping trips to the North, where many things were much cheaper, and she never travelled without her list, plus the list of what she had given for the past five years.
She knew how dangerously easy it would be to give the same person an aromatic herb pillow year after year if you didn't keep proper records.
All her Christmas cards are sent on December 6th; she books her Christmas Eve hair appointment in November to make sure she gets the right time. The turkey, ham and spiced beef are ordered weeks in advance and the shopping list, the Christmas countdown and two stuffing recipes are photocopied and pasted to the back of a cupboard door by the beginning of the month.
She knows a place where you can get a non-shedding tree, and bought it long before the rush so that she could get the right shape. The lights have been tested, a candle bought for the window, a holly wreath for the door.
The fridge and the freezer are filled with things that can be brought out instantly for unexpected guests, though there seems to be fewer of those than there once were.
Still, it's good to be prepared.
The children have all left home now, so you would think it would be less pressurised than it used to be. But Mrs Perfect laughs at this notion. It's worse than ever, she says: you have to remember all their in-laws - a tin of mince pies here, a potted plant there. Not that in-laws is the right word, more like common-law in-laws. None of them married, all in what people call "relationships" and not a sign of a grandchild from anyone.
Mrs Perfect says it doesn't look at all good at the bridge club, where she has no pictures to show. You can't show snaps of your gorgeous home - only grubby faces of little toddlers are acceptable, followed by screeches from the others saying that you don't look old enough to be a granny.
No brownie points for having made the cakes and the puddings in November, tippexed-out the changes of address in the Christmas card list book, polished the brasses and decorated the house within an inch of its life.
They have a drinks party about two weeks before Christmas and Mrs Perfect used to love the way people oohed and aahed over the way the house was already festive and decorated.
People groaned and said they hadn't even begun their shopping yet and everything was so rushed and there was so much to do, and the Christmas season started earlier and earlier, preventing them from doing anything at all. She used to think this was just a way of going on, a style of speaking, until she noticed that it was quite possibly true. She saw neighbours dragging home a tree on Christmas Eve, and she would get the same, guilty poinsettia from apologetic friends who said it was so hard to think of anything but at least this would be colourful.
Mrs Perfect had been thinking of their presents for at least six months. Wasn't it odd that other people didn't do the same?
It's hard to know who to talk to about it. Mrs Perfect's considerably less than perfect husband isn't around all that much. He seems very delighted with his comfortable, well-run home. Well, she thinks he is. But honestly, it's hard to know. Things have changed, probably, from the way they were in her own mother's day when you were judged by how you ran a house.
Nowadays, people possibly had different goals, but it was complicated trying to work out what they were.
Mrs Perfect's husband told her to stop fussing round like an old hen when she said something totally innocent like how they need to get up at 6 o'clock on Christmas morning to have everything ready.
She had actually said it so that he wouldn't come home at all hours from a do like he did last Christmas Eve.
That's when he snapped at her and called her an old hen. He said the children were in headlong flight from her because she made such an almighty fuss over everything. All people wanted to do at Christmas was get on with it, for Heaven's sake. Why couldn't she take that on board?
He had apologised, of course, for his outburst, and said it was harsh of him, particularly when she went to so much trouble and wore herself out for everyone else. All he had been trying to say was that a tin of soup would do people fine rather than weeks of boiling bones. He hadn't meant to sound bad-tempered.
And of course Mrs Perfect had forgiven him, her mother always said that men hate a woman who sulks. But it is worrying her.
None of her four children and their "partners", as they call them, is going to be with her for Christmas day this year. Is this pure chance, or the way things happen, or is it more sinister? Does she fuss them all to death?
At the Christmas drinks-party this week she wondered were people annoyed with her and even slightly pitying rather than impressed with the perfect home.
Who moved the goal posts? And when were they moved?
Mrs Perfect thinks we should have been told.