I now have a mini electric chopper and for a healthy breakfast I used it to grate the following:

• An Apple
• Celery
• a Carrot
• some Dates and Walnuts
• Top with some Yoghurt and Honey

Delicious and quite a change from my usual Laughing Cow Cheese on Toast!!

One of my presents this holiday season was what I understand is called a "NetBox" or "NetTop" – a tiny little PC the size of a small book which sits under my TV and connects to a camera sitting on top. Now I can Skype with my family from the living room, which is much more relaxed than doing it from my laptop. Here I am drinking a cup of tea while talking to my son in Germany. This really is the shape of things to come!

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My trusty old Grundig PVR video recorder gave up the ghost, taking with it my video library on its hard disk. One of my grandsons stepped in and very generously bought me a new Humax box, and I was getting used to its new terminology – “Reservations” are programmes I’ve set up to record. All was going fine until all of a sudden a big block of the evening showed “No Reservations” on the programme guide. A call to the most helpful customer service line resulted in an email with ten different points I could check.

I was just about to embark on this voyage of discovery when I looked in the newspaper TV Guide and discovered that a film with Catherine Zeta-Jones was showing that evening. Check the title!

I trust this got as good a chuckle from you as it did for me and my whole family. Just please don’t tell the very helpful man from Humax who put so much time into compiling a list of suggestions for me!

After my husband died over ten years ago, no one prepared me for the probability that I would, in time, become all of the following:

Maybe you’d like to hear about my latest “gadget” for keeping bread fresh. It’s an adjustable bread keeper and it really does keep your bread fresh. I admit to being a sandwich-lover and therefore always like to have really fresh bread available. This was a gift from my daughter who, incidentally is a well-known London caterer – Georgie of GeorgiesCatering.com.