IT'S pleasing to see that one of my regular walks has been named as the second most favourite picnic spots for Brits.

The Daily Mirror reports on a survey for DisneyLife which reveals that the Welsh beach of Three Cliffs Bay in Gower was voted top spot for a family spread followed by the idyllic Padley George in the Derbyshire Peak District which I can thoroughly recommend to anyone visiting the area.

Third was another Welsh beach, Aperporth in Cardigan Bay.

The survey said that around 85 per cent of people will have a picnic at least once over the summer holidays and more than a third of families are prepared to travel for more than an hour to enjoy an al-fresco meal.

THE days of a family gathering around the living room TV to watch the latest hit show are becoming a thing of the past, according to latest research.

An article in The Guardian reports on figures by media watchdog Ofcom which shows that more and more people are binge-watching strings of episodes.

Forty five per cent of people now watch a programme or film alone every day while nine in 10 watch alone every week and a third of Britons say members of their household sit together in the same room watching different programmes on different devices.

This change is because of the number of devices – such as televisions, tablets and smartphones – in homes, increasing internet speeds, and the growth of on-demand streaming services such as BBC iPlayer, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Eight in 10 adults in the UK – 40m people – say they use catch-up technology such as BBC iPlayer or subscription services such as Netflix to watch more than one episode of a programme such as Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things or Game of Thrones.

STATISTICIANS in the UK have now confirmed what many of us thought....items we buy in the shops are getting smaller.

The Guardian says that the Official for National Statistics found out that 2,529 products they have tracked have decreased in size over the past five years. This include chocolate bars, cartons of drink, toilet rolls and other products.

Of the total number of products that have got smaller, 2,006 were food items and items that particularly stood out as having shrunk over recent years were bags of sweets, soft drinks, disposable nappies and toilet rolls.

ACCORDING to the Daily Star, postal workers have stopped delivering mail to Regent Gardens in Hereford because they are being dive-bombed by seagulls.

Apparently residents have received a letter from Royal Mail bosses warning them they wouldn’t get any more letters and parcels and have been told to make a 45-minute round trip to collect their post from the nearest sorting office.

The letter explained: “The gulls are nesting and rearing their chicks. Postmen are attempting to deliver to customers every day and we apologise if any customer has been affected by this.

“The safety of our people is paramount to Royal Mail and these swooping attacks made it difficult for the postmen to carry out their deliveries.”

A worrying article about butterflies from the BBC. The TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough has warned that they are are facing “a vital” period following a worrying decline in their numbers.

He claimed some of the UK's most common species have suffered “significant declines” in recent years.

Apparently more than three quarters of the UK's butterflies have declined in the last 40 years, with numbers falling quicker in towns and cities.

Sir David, president of Butterfly Conservation, said that despite a warm summer last year, species like the small tortoiseshell, peacock, meadow brown and gatekeeper had seen numbers fall due to a warm winter and a subsequent cold spring.

“In the last decade our butterflies have experienced several poor years and although resilient, they simply cannot sustain repeated losses, especially if the habitats they need in order to rebuild their populations are also under threat,” added Sir David.

THERE is a treat in store for Abba fans later in the year.

The moment when the Swedish group won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 is celebrated in Super Troupers, an immersive exhibition at London's Southbank Centre, says The Guardian.

Producer Paul Denton commented: “It will be a different take on Abba we hope. In 1974 Britain economically was not doing that well … what was it about Abba that actually caught the imagination of the public?

“If you look at pop music across the decade, the huge shifts in musical tastes and the emergence of punk – if you look at the charts, Abba were a mainstay in the album and singles charts and there is something about that which is worth celebrating, and we will show what it was about them which captured hearts and minds.”

Abba: Super Troupers is at the Southbank Centre from December 14 to April 29 2018.