I went with my family to visit the grandparents during the Easter holidays. The weather was pretty poor so indoor activities like scoffing chocolate, watching TV and sleeping were the main pastimes. Suited me fine. One morning though, in a rare fit of energetic enthusiasm, we went swimming, at a...

Recently I had a weird encounter with a supermarket checkout assistant.

I say weird. Actually, she was doing the normal checkout thing and I was doing the normal customer thing. That is, she swiped goods across a barcode scanner while I put them in plastic carrier bags (I know! I...

Camp as a row of tents. Camp as Christmas. Camp as me - apparently.

I've never been what you might call a sporty person but my two sons enjoy their football. Last week I turned up as usual to collect them from their after school training session. As I...

I've always found shoes a bit stressful. Buying them. Wearing them. Cleaning them. Finding a perfectly comfortable, hard wearing, stylish pair of shoes is a rare and wonderful thing. It's probably a hangover from my childhood.

Growing up in the 1970s, the only option for me as far as...

It's my son's birthday soon. It's a bit too soon after Christmas for my liking. Suddenly I'm shopping for presents again. Amongst other things*, he's asked for the Harry Potter DVD box set. It's his 11th birthday - the very age when Harry Potter discovers that he is a wizard....

Yesterday I saw a milk float; the old fashioned electric type which over the years seems to have all but disappeared. It immediately brought back childhood TV memories of the 1960s and '70s; happy ones, of jolly whistling milkmen wearing white jackets and peaked caps, with a pinta* in each...

The title may give you the wrong idea. This isn't about me, The Modfather and The Cheeky Girls. Or the Proclaimers, for that matter - I'll save that for another time (when I've thought of a punch line).

I grew up in Southampton. It was 1977 when I heard...

I rarely go to church and when I do, it's fairly reluctantly, but when I was a child growing up in Southampton, my mum dragged me along most Sundays. Occasionally, if she asks, I still keep her company at her local church, near to where I live. These days I...

Last week something happened to me on the train home from London.

It was Friday the 13th.

I wasn't attacked with a machete, by a bloke in a hockey mask called Jason, or anything. I was on the 16.42 from St. Pancras to Margate. If there had been...

The perfect body. The perfect kitchen. The perfect holiday. The perfect car. The perfect life.

Not everyone's bothered by these things, obviously, but at some point, we will probably all fall into the trap of seeking perfection in something or other.

Something we desire will have to be 'perfect'...

"We're all doomed!"

It's the classic catchphrase uttered by Private Frazer in Dad's Army. We've all repeated it, (admittedly with varying degrees of accent authenticity), and many of us can still hear the original echoing inside our heads, thanks to the genius of actor John Laurie and the continuous...

I live in Broadstairs on the East Kent coast, near Margate.

The Queen's coming to Margate today. She's going to see a naked couple snogging.

A lot has changed since I left London and moved here, in 2003. People said I was mad. Maybe I was but moving here...

The Moon is back! And it's bigger than ever. Not literally of course. It actually never went away and it's still exactly the same size (although I can't scientifically prove that). I'm talking in fashion terms of course and let me tell you, the Moon is going to be SO...