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.

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.

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.

Even new born babies soon learn to communicate.  They return smiles, they giggle and wave, and then comes the gobbledegook – the practise sounds that all babies try out.

After all, they’ve been able to hear for quite a while: 18 weeks after conception. So, they grab at their chance to try out all the things they've been hearing, all those sounds.

We’ve just been badly let down. Really I am furious, but can do nothing except be polite and wish them well. We had great plans and now there is nothing. I feel as low as can be, but at least experience tells me that something good will turn up soon.

We all get these frustrations from time to time  - exam results we weren’t anticipating, or perhaps something even more serious, a broken relationship, or a lost job.

Maybe you're new to computers. Maybe you're new to using an Instant Message program. Maybe you're wondering what your children are saying online, but it's all written in some weird looking code!