Dick Whittington at Canterbury's Marlowe Theatre gets a thumbs up from Our Kent Family

It has to be said our Christmas preparations up until now have been somewhat ...lacking.

In fact if I'm telling the truth to keep myself on Santa's nice list, we've been a bit slack.

There's still so much shopping to do, most of the Christmas cards lay in the box unloved and unwritten, we've yet to make any contact with Santa either in person or by letter and the elves on our bookshelf quite frankly are feeling a bit tired and lazy and definitely missing their naughty streak this year.

Our annual family trip to the Christmas Tree farm was even abandoned last week in favour of a mad and panicked late-night dash to the garden centre to grab an artificial one when we felt we couldn't put off hanging decorations with the children any longer.

Work, school, nursery, other commitments and just life at home in general hasn't until now left much time for Christmas.

In fact when Charlie questioned in her blog last week whether the pressure of Christmas was all getting a bit too much in the run-up I think my mum guilt was relieved - albeit briefly.

But the children's distinctly un-festive (yes I'm not sure it's a word either) December was rescued on Sunday with a visit to The Marlowe's Dick Whittington.

We are massive fans of Canterbury's pantomime, it's always brilliant. It has legendary status.

And anyone who has ever been knows its worth paying for the finale ghostbusters bench sketch alone.

And if I've not been able to save Oscar and Liv's run up to the big day this year, a man carrying a red spotty pack and a cat called Maureen (apparently Tommy is so last year) definitely did.

We all had the best time.

Ben Roddy, as Dolly the Cook, was immense as always, dishing up the usual dose of adult humour mixed with child-friendly slapstick. And his dream team of TV presenter Stephen Mulhern and Kent actor Lloyd Hollett served up enough on-stage chemistry to have probably seen off King Rat in the opening scenes.

In fact the entire cast, the special effects, the music and songs, were brilliant.

And the panto is so good and well-written that the typical 'he's behind you' lines just aren't needed.

Instead they are replaced with the classic 'Sheppey gag', plenty of other local references and a dig at the opposition with a regular 'you don't get that in the Dartford panto' line.

Well Dartford, we shall see.

Because thanks to the fantastic team at The Marlowe we appear to have now found (some) of our festive spirit and we're coming for you on New Year's Eve.

You've got some seriously big glitzy shoes to fill. No pressure.