My Christmas loot

• A lovely sweater, courtesy of my brother-in-law and this year's Secret Santa Tom, very useful since weather in Madrid can get down to freezing and not everyplace has central heat.

• The book Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a country's hidden past, by Gules Tremlett, who is the Guardian newspaper's Madrid correspondent. The book is the talk of the English-speaking expatriate community. And how can a book go wrong with chapters like, "How the Bikini Saved Spain"? Also courtesy of Tom, who is currently a university professor of Spanish and French in Ohio but who lived for a while in Madrid.

• A box of Belgian chocolates personally brought from Belgium by my husband. The best chocolates in the world are made in Belgium. He also brought some speculaas cookies, the best cookies in the world (except for Girl Scout thin mints), but the speculaas didn't survive until this morning.

He got a super-capable universal remote control, by the way. The guy thing for the geek. I also gave a Secret Santa gift certificate to my sister-in-law, and toys to my niece and nephew. My mother-in-law gets an all-expense-paid trip to Madrid this spring -- more about that this spring.

Merry Christmas.