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And then there were two, well five if you count the dog and the cats - and one of those spends his nights and most of his days at one of his new houses five doors down.

Our grown-up daughters came home for Christmas, and then returned to their big city lives in time for New Year parties.Once you get past a certain age (generally the day you have your first kid) New Year is officially more trouble than it’s worth.

Transport costs double, the pubs are full of amateurs and as for nightclubs, don’t ask me, I haven’t set foot inside one since 1996.We spent the time between Christmas and New Year doing slightly less than sod all, apart from visiting family, which was great.The boss did her annual festive 1,000-piece jigsaw, which in point of fact turned out to be a 998-piece jigsaw because while it was still a work in progress we found one mangled bit of it in our sighthound Walter’s bed, with another that turned out to be AWOL on completion, no doubt recycled in one of the boy’s myriad downloads in the park.The trouble was, the jigsaw wasn’t even hers.

A mate had lent it to her in the wake of last year’s calamitous gift from yours truly of a Vincent van Gogh Starry Night jigsaw - 1,000 pieces, half of them black or very, very dark blue.

News Year's Eve is a much quieter affair these days. Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Once the last piece was in and smacked home with a clenched fist it was never spoken of again.As we aren’t boozers these days and watch our diets like Premier League footballers, our New Year was spent eating a salmon and string bean risotto, watching Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery on Netflix (pretty good) and smugly polishing our halos before calling it a night at around 11pm.Comfortably the best thing about being off the sauce is never having a hangover.

In fact, the feeling of waking up on a Sunday morning without feeling like death all day (and most of Monday when you get to my age) is almost as enjoyable as the warm, fuzzy glow you get when you’re halfway down the second bottle.

Almost, but not quite.Never having to worry about what you did or said while smashed is pretty good too.

That and the effortless weight loss, extra money in your pocket and sleep so good it’s like medicine and it’s not hard to see why Dry January is such an easy sell.

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Who's The Daddy: New Year excitement isn’t like it used to be anymore