THROW back the duvet covers, get the sports kit and the shopping list ready and mourn the death of another great British tradition - the Sunday lie-in. Most of us don't have one any more, apparently. And not just those with small children. Instead of snoring happily away long past our normal waking up time, we're all still up fairly early, certainly by the crack of nine o'clock. A few people go to church, a few more play football. A biggish chunk go to work. And more than half the early risers on a Sunday morning are off down to the shops to spend, spend, spend.

It's exhausting even to think about.

Gosh it's a long way from Tony Hancock's Sundays, where famously there was nothing more exciting to do that to try to get the gravy to move.....

According to a man from Currys, who did the research, we all work so hard during the week that weekend time is too precious to waste lying in bed.

Frankly, I'd say that weekend time is too precious to waste in shopping, but each to his own.

The sad thing is that we have this compulsion always to be doing things. The good thing - the only good thing - about the old-style Sunday was that it forced you to slow down. There were no football matches or cinemas, no shops or fast food joints. Where I grew up, there weren't even any pubs open. So you spent the day preparing the Sunday dinner, eating it and going to sleep after it.

It was frequently incredibly boring. On the other hand, it did give you a rest. From lie-in to early night, it forced you to re-charge the batteries, to gather your strength and your scattered wits. Families tended to spend Sundays together, even if they did nothing more exciting than go for a walk or a drive in the car, watch a Dickens serial or What's My Line?

Even for non-church goers, Sundays were different. An enforced idleness that broke up the pattern of the week and must have been good for us.

Now all our days are filled with activity. Our leisure has become as demanding as our work. And our stress levels are soaring. Coincidence or what?

"Six days shalt thou labour" seems a pretty good rule for life, really. So maybe it's time to have a few more Slow Down Sundays. Forget the shops and the aerobics class, the painting and decorating. Switch the alarm off, give your brain a rest and do nothing.

And if you really crave excitement - see if you can make the gravy move.

IT WAS still British Summer Time when the first Christmas countdown feature appeared in the papers. Advent calendars were in the shops at about the same time as school uniform and long before the Hallowe'en masks.

Strange, isn't it, that as fewer and fewer of us are practising Christians, that our celebrations of Christmas get bigger and bigger, ever earlier and, of course, more expensive.

MAYBE it's because I'm an old trout who once had to get a man's signature when I wanted to buy a television on credit (I was earning more than the man, but that didn't matter)... or maybe because I know too many women who had to give up work simply because they were married... or because my sister's teacher refused to mark her brilliant physics work because he believed women should study needlework, not science... or maybe it's because I've read too much about the suffragettes and their campaigns, including the brutal force feeding.

Whatever the reason, I find the latest Thorntons chocolate ad peculiarly distasteful. "1918 Votes for Women," it says "1975 Equality for Women..... 2001 women finally get what they want." - which turns out to be chocolates, of course.

Maybe I'm ultra sensitive. But that sour taste in my mouth means I won't be eating Thorntons for some time.

EARL Spencer's bride to be declares that the Earl is "so romantic". Mmmm.

Maybe he thought it was romantic when he made so many cruel and unkind remarks about his first wife. Unfortunately, as part of her divorce settlement, Victoria Lockwood is sworn to silence so we'll never hear her side of the story. But I would bet that "romantic" is not the first word she would use for her ex-husband.

OH no. They're bringing Fanny Cradock back. Snippets of her cookery programmes - all frosty voice and barking orders at Johnny - have become cult viewing in the States and now her old series are going to be re-run. Eat your heart out Nigella.

But what next? Percy Thrower back in the potting shed? And instead of the multi-coloured makeovers, maybe it's time to bring back dear old Barry Bucknell.

He might not have Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen's tumbling curls, but at least his house improvements were liveable with. Now that would make a change.

IT was the stuff of nightmares. There I was up in the top left hand corner of Scotland, five hours north of Glasgow. Meanwhile, 350 miles away in Redcar, my nearly 80-year-old mother wasn't answering her phone. Her next door neighbours are ex-directory. I had their phone number, but that was sitting on my desk, also over 300 miles away. Really useful.

And that's when I realised that I knew the names of virtually no other neighbours. Well, I did. But Tracey-next-door, or Liz-down-the-road-who-does-the-garden, or Brian-opposite-with-the-van is less than helpful when you're trying to call Directory Enquiries. Try as I did, I couldn't summon up any surnames to go with the neighbours I thought I knew so well.

I managed, just, to get the X-D number. Brilliant neighbours did their stuff, police broke in, paramedics were called. But there's no happy ending. My mother died twelve hours later, just minutes before we got to the hospital.

As it happened, it would have made no difference if we'd raised the alarm earlier, or even if we'd been there when it happened. But for someone you know, circumstances could be different. Prompt action could save a life.

So, the moral of this story is get those names and numbers NOW. If you have an elderly relative living alone, make sure you know what the neighbours are called and what their numbers are. And if you disappear to far-flung corners, remember to take the numbers with you.

Then at least, when a phone keeps ringing out unanswered, you'll be able to do something about it.

AS well as thanks to the neighbours who rallied round - and even, bless them, replaced the broken glass before we got to the house - thanks are due to South Cleveland Hospital. Or James Cook University Hospital as we must call it now. In particular, to Dr Nick Hargreaves.

The day after my mother died he took the time and trouble to explain to me exactly what had happened, the hows and the whys of it. He was kind and patient and certainly made things much easier to cope with.

As well as the actual medicine, there is pressure to devote more of students' training to developing communication skills. Believe me, this really can make an enormous difference.

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