• Nuss? Is that really a word? You won’t find it in the dictionary. It’s a word my daughter came up with that has since become a family favourite. I don’t know if it is in general use though.

    Nuss comes from the suffix Ness and describes the very essence of something, as in the essence of loneliness, shapelyness or fruityness.

    Nuss has a derogatory meaning when a negative intonation is added, as in: “It’s all covered in Nuss!” or “I don’t like its Nuss.” I suppose that by publishing the word here, it has a chance of being picked up by the dictionaries and eventually becoming an authorised word.

    Learn a new word every day.
    Repeat it and remind yourself what it means at least three times in a day.
    Try to use the word in conversation or writing today.
    Get a dictionary and look words up.

  • Kristina Lenko
    Kristina Lenko – the real star of Dancing on ice for all us sad Dads of a certain age – is not on Dancing on Ice this year. Is it going to be worth watching?

    Not worth watching for Heather Mills, surely? Can she really hope to turn herself around with a British audience? The British don’t like people who meddle with their national treasures. I suspect she will never be forgiven for marrying Paul McCartney and will either be voted off first or kept in to make her feel the pain more and more each week.

    Ah! don’t you love the mob?

  • Staunton – Forest of Dean
    It’s not easy to keep up the walking thing in this weather. I spent the whole morning yesterday, getting my mother to the Dentist and then going in to Monmouth, way down at the bottom of the hill that the Forest of Dean is at the top of, to get to the building society because our local branch closed down suddenly before Christmas.

    After those two simple things it was two o’clock in the afternoon and I needed to get some work done.

    However, as I slowly drove along the slippery roads I saw the view above. It seemed a quintessentially English, snowy scene. Staunton, is also a pretty quintessential English village – much like all the others a place of retirement and a dormitory for nearby towns. Few facilities but a strong community spirit that my mother gets drawn in to as she goes there for her painting classes.

    It was a bit eerie stopping in the middle of the road. no cars in front no cars behind. This piece of road is the fastest in the forest – where frustrated drivers tend to open up the throttle for half a mile. Not yesterday. It was twenty miles an hour all the way down to Monmouth, occasionally being overtaken by a tractor. I managed to park outside The Woolworths, that has been closed over a year now. Iceland has taken over. And they had milk! none to be had in Coleford yesterday.