THERE has been a veritable avalanche of well-meaning winter and health-related advice coming at us left, right and centre from public agencies over the past few weeks.

We've tried to sift out the most potentially useful of them in these pages at the risk of patronising our readers (or teaching grannies how to suck eggs).

We've been advised to wrap up warm for winter, to be careful about what illicit drugs we take (while making sure we've got plenty of the more useful ones in the medicine cabinet) and to avoid overdoing on alcohol at Christmas and New Year.

Have we all taken leave of our senses or is such advice really necessary in this day and age?

A trip to any supermarket at any time over the past few days lends credence to the theory of a temporary madness descending at this time of year. We panic buy and stock up on food we know is really rather bad for us without giving it much of a second thought.

"Well, it's Christmas!" is the riposte to such bah humbuggery.

One of the most truly useful pieces of advice as winter takes it grip is to keep an eye open for the needs of others more vulnerable than ourselves. That extends from everything to pavements which turn into ice rinks as the mercury plummets to folk desperately lonely at this time of year. Amidst all the well-meaning advice being spouted, that might just be the most apt for the season.

Happy Christmas to all from everyone here at the Ross-shire.