Father Christmas came, of course, and left the usual pile of loot for good little girls and boys. But for all the new things that arrive on Christmas morning, I somehow find it heartening that old favourite toys maintain their place in the pecking order.

Take Coconut. He is a monkey with big eyes and has lived with us for two years now. He is from a range of soft toys which we call Big-Eyed Guys, for obvious reasons, and once he was settled in, he opened the floodgates for his mates – a giraffe, various dogs, a leopard that laughs like an axe-wielding maniac, even a unicorn.

But Coconut is the original and best Big-Eyed Guy, and he’s never usually very far from our daughter.

That said, he’s an adventurous little simian. Not long after we got him, our daughter managed to leave him behind at her dance class, and I had to race around the village hall, bursting through doors and shouting his name (in retrospect, I’m not sure why I did that bit) until I found him.

Christmas brought another couple of Big-Eyed Guys to the fold, a penguin and, I think, another dog, or maybe a wolf. So the newcomers, Leopard and good old Coconut accompanied the family as we headed west over the Pennines for a New Year’s Eve with friends.

Come the morning and the fuzzy-headed gathering of the belongings to prepare for heading home, Coconut was nowhere to be found. We practically took our friends’ home apart in search of the critter, but while Leopard and the others were easily located, Coconut remained missing.

Was it a plot from the other Big-Eyed Guys? Leopard was the second one to come and live with us. Was he trying to oust Coconut from the top of the tree, giggling his little maniac axe-killer laugh as we looked high and low?

Eventually, we had to call off the search and as we drove away, I imagined Coconut watching us from a bedroom window, his big round eyes brimming with tears. Our daughter put a brave face on it, but we could tell that she was worried she might never see Coconut again.

I am perhaps being a little unfair on Leopard. I don’t really think he conspired to do away with Coconut. But he would certainly have been in the frame had our friends not telephoned a couple of days ago to report that they had, in fact, found our errant monkey.

Our daughter will be delighted when he returns home. The only problem is, Coconut has now been dispatched home in the care of the Royal Mail. It’s not that I don’t trust our postal service to deliver him safely, but we all know by now what an adventure-loving little chap he is, and who knows what monkey business he could get into between Lancashire and here?

Only time will tell...