My grandson had a great time over Christmas, being loved, hugged and given lots of presents. He is however only a few months old, so he won’t be able to remember it. Here’s hoping some of his presents last a while, so that he will at least have something to keep as a memento of such a special day.

Not far from here there are many caves once inhabited by early man and his ancestors.  You can go to a park where you suddenly come across a model of a sabre toothed tiger or a bear hunt. Deep in the caves stalagmites stand and stalactites drip slowly.  There are some 50 such sites in France and others in Spain and elsewhere.  Someone is making a lot of money with exorbitantly high entry fees. I prefer to stand on a hillside or by a lake and view  a landscape hardly different from those times.

The UK is world renowned for its beautiful scenery, with miles of rolling hills, dramatic cliffs, ancient woodlands and wonderful coastal paths.

It’s also pretty well-known for its temperamental weather. There is a saying, "If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes, and it will change", so before you head off on any walking holiday, make sure you’ve packed some of the most important essentials!

The hedge needs a haircut.

As far as correct English is concerned this sentence ‘The hedge needs a haircut.’ although grammatically correct, does not make sense. Hedges grow leaves and twigs rather than hair, yet when I said it to my husband on Sunday morning he understood and replied ‘O.K. I’ll do it tomorrow.’, and a few minutes ago he came in and announced, ’I’ve done the hedge", and the fact is, even if he had said ‘I’ve given the hedge a haircut’, we would both have understood exactly what he meant.

Someone said on my Facebook page today that the English are no good at ball games – especially the ones we invented. The list is quite a long one – tennis, soccer, netball, field hockey, polo, rounders, cricket and more. 

In a survey conducted by Time Magazine in 2013, people were asked to vote on the most overused words, the top 3 were: Twerk, Selfie and Passion.

If I were asked to come up with a perfect word, there would probably be a different word every day, but one of them would definitely be ‘serendipity’, which means coming across something good very unexpectedly.  However, there are other words I’m not so fond of: I.M.O. ‘Nice’ is overused and so is ‘very’, even though they didn't feature in the survey.