The out-of-office is on, the mulled wine is mulling, and the highlighter pen is out as families look ahead to the best of this year's Christmas TV.

I meet her now in the bustling Neumarkt Square in Cologne, surrounded by Christmas market stalls where locals eat sausage and drink mulled wine, and the dramas of Syria seem far away.

Police are the only people walking around the boarded-up mulled wine and gingerbread stalls.

Usually at this time of the year, German city centres are full of shoppers and revellers drinking mulled wine, but this year the mood is very different.

After mulling it over a week, Adams responded.