QUESTION OF SPORT

We managed to get tickets to watch a recording of Question of Sport in Manchester. I think the bright sparks who decided to move the BBC up north will now be regretting it. When the recordings took place in London you just couldn't get tickets - there was even a waiting list. Yesterday the studio audience was very thin on the ground and there were lots of empty seats. But as luck would have it it was a great show - a celebrity edition. Paddy McGuinness and my favourite X Factor contestant, Olly Murs were guests.

It was a great laugh - but I don't think we needed the warm up man to tell us how to clap and I cringed when he told us to whoop like American audiences. Surely I'm not the only television viewer who'd rather not have our long-standing traditional programmes turned into Oprah Winfrey soundalikes.

BIRTHDAY BOYS

It was a weekend of celebrations. Oscar and his uncle (our younger son) share the same birthday. Oscar was having his party on the Sunday so our son had his on the Saturday and we're still suffering the after effects of birthday cake overload.

Our daughter had gone to great lengths to bid on (and win)  some football boots worn and signed by a Villa player. She told the seller to send them to our address but on Saturday morning they arrived at her home in Hull - annoying. But thanks to the wizardry of mobile phone cameras she was still able to show her brother what she'd bought him.

IT'S ELECTRIFYING

E-on have just sent us a little gadget that tells us how much electricity we're using every second of every day and it's horrifying. I tiptoe into the kitchen first thing in the morning, when only the fridge freezer is on and it tells me that at that rate we'll pay just £10 a month for our usage. Kettle on, dishwasher on and immersion on and it's a bank-breaking £888 a month. I'm like a woman possessed - we now sit in the semi-dark in the evenings, the tumble drier is a no-go area and showers are limited to 30 seconds. My husband says he doesn't want a minute-by-minute account of how much fuel we're using, but I'm afraid that's what he'll get until the novelty wears off. And what has surprised me more than anything is the huge amount of electricity the television uses so I think his football viewing is going to have to be rationed.

CLEANSE YOUR COLON

As soon as I posted the previous piece on this site something popped up above it, advertising "Inner cleanse capsules, best selling colon supplement" perhaps someone, somewhere thinks I suffer from verbal diarrhoea.

RICHMOND

Thanks to a Virgin train offer, we travelled first class last Saturday to Euston. Up at the crack of dawn to board the 7.19am from Lime Street. The London son met us at the station door in his car - what luxury and what a treat, to be driven, free of charge, through the capital. He showed us Michael Winner's house and other landmarks on the way to his new pad in Richmond. Then we walked by the river, through the parks and had a barbeque lunch in a meadow at the back of a pub. Later we sat in the sun enjoying afternoon tea, looking out from a great height over Eel Pie Island. Why does everything about a day in London seem so special?

Then, in the park, we came across a black wrought iron archway with a hole in the middle and a sign that said "St Paul's six miles". When we looked through a handily-placed telescope, there was St Paul's Cathedral, as clear as anything, right in the centre of the hole. Magical.

BERLIN & HARROGATE

Perhaps it's something in the water, but first our daughter and then the elder son and his family spent their summer holidays in Berlin. Oscar thoroughly enjoyed the experience

and insisted on trying out ALL available treats

STRATFORD

Just back from Stratford where we saw the RSC's production of "The Winter's Tale" . Greg Hicks - who I last saw when he was covered in blood as Coriolanus - took the part of Leontes and was just brilliant.

The play lasted for just over three hours and I found that my knees had become sort of hinged in a very uncomfortable position - I even found myself worrying about DVT (I hope that's not rude).

We saw some of the meteorite shower on the way back to the hotel after the performance but although I really wanted to stay out and see more, I'd looked up for so long that I'd developed a crick in my neck - is this what getting old is all about - hinged knees, dvt and a cricked neck?

This morning at breakfast I was just about to place a slice of bread on the hotel's toasting contraption, using the tongs provided when a girl of about 11 raced up, manhandled the white cloths covering the loaves and started grabbing pieces of bread - desperate to get her slices onto the toaster before I could get mine on. I told her mother that there were tongs available if she'd care to wait for a split second. "Oh we don't bother about that, it's only us who'll be eating it," she barked. Judging by the number of slices that the girl had her hands all over - I doubt that - but who knows.

We'd just sat down to enjoy our  first-past-the-post toast when a father, dressed in shorts and flip flops (Stratford in the rain) stood up, bent over his table so that his face was two inches from his son's (son about seven) and started berating him for some crime to humanity in an exceptionally loud and booming voice. "We had all this in London, why won't you listen, it shows that you have no fidelity, no thoughtfulness, no sincerity...." etc...etc....etc for ten full minutes. I looked at the family - the little wife was shrinking in her seat, the white-faced son wanted the floor to swallow him up and the man's mother didn't know where to look. It was like something from The Fast Show, except it was extremely unfunny. Just when we felt it was safe to get stuck into the now cold toast, he started again: "YOU DO UNDERSTAND WHY I'VE TAKEN THIS ACTION AND SPOKEN LIKE THIS,"  he bellowed. For pity's sake leave the poor child alone and give us all a break I wanted to shout. I had chronic indigestion all morning. Hinged knees, dvt, cricked neck and indigestion - are these holidays worth it?