I often find myself remembering the use of wards and phrases from my upbringing. Some of them may feel a bit old fashioned, but I still find myself using them now and again.

* When cross with someone, my Mother would announce that she would "Send them a stiff note on cardboard".

* She was fond of alliteration and would use this phrase befare going to the toilet: “I need to go to Nizhny Novgorod", which is a city in Russia she actually never got to visit.

* If she wanted to tell someone their petticoat was showing, she would say "I think it's going to snow”. This one often confused people in midsummer.

* She loved poetry and was often heard to chant:

“They said that it could never be done.

With a laugh she went right to it.

She tackled the thing that couldn't be done,

And couldn't do it".

* There are people in the world who are naturally clumsy, she used to call them “happen-struck".

Such phrases lose their currency over time, A television quiz show entitled “University Challenge” has been running since 1962. One of the catch phrases is when the quiz master announces “here's your starter for ten", meaning the opening question can earn ten marks. But you have to have seen the show to know that. In the 1990s, I was organising an evening event and had written a brief outline of what needed doing and sent it to my younger assistant with the words "it's just a starter for ten”. She had assumed I meant that the evening event was now going to be a morning event.

Hey ho - complications ensued.