Happy New Year! Whether you vow to take up running, promise to make your bed every day, or tell yourself you’re going to eat your five-a-day each day of the week, it’s very well known that New Year’s resolutions are almost impossible to stick to. Our lives are so busy, it’s often really difficult to even think up any changes we want to make, so putting them into practice is even harder. I once heard someone on a podcast saying that it takes an adult at least two weeks to cha

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” The cakes and mince pies may have been made for a couple of months now (or in the shops if, like me, you don’t make your own!) and Black Friday, Red Monday and all the other coloured days that marketing teams can think of, are coming thick and fast. You’ve worked out who is going where on Christmas Day, how many chairs you’ll need (remember that Peter Kay joke about everyone being on different chairs around the table, at a range of

My Grandad was great at creating little rhymes. One of his favourites was 'Rachel 'surname' is no good. Chop her up for firewood!' He created longer pieces, too, and sometimes wrote them down but I don't know if anyone kept any of them when he died. On Christmas Eve in 2023, we prepped for Father Christmas and pulled out my favourite Christmas story, The Night Before Christmas. Our children hurried into their beds and I stood between their doors, reading the story from the