Sport and I have never really got on - doing it that is. Even as a little kid I knew I was a hopeless case which is why I glued my egg to my spoon on sports day. I thought it was showing initiative but the PE teacher thought otherwise....

At secondary school netball and hockey were horrors to be endured and as for circuit training in the gym, I spent so much time in the sick bay with sudden headaches or stomach cramps that they could have named a wing in my name.

I've always been a curvy girl and, like a lot of women, sometimes there are more curves than at others. So, I decided recently the time had come to confront my intense dislike of exercise and start a regime to try to keep the undulations in check before they were really bursting out all over.

My chosen method of torture is a cross trainer. I thought I was doing ok until it was pointed out that I was only going backwards which wasn't the idea at all. Hmmm.....

Once I'd cracked going the right way, I began to build up my stamina and was mighty chuffed with myself to get up to five minutes. I was proudly telling one of my sporty friends about my breakthrough and wondered why she was looking at me in an affectionate but slightly pitying way. She gently told me that she does an hour and at least six miles.......

So now I'm going to give Zumba a try. After all how hard can it be? Actually, probably a lot harder than I think. Oh well.

I've taken to singing in the car - loudly.

I read somewhere that it's one of the tips given to people who suffer from the winter blues. That's not me but I'm always interested to try out new feel good ideas.

But they're not talking about a gentle warbling along to the radio, oh no, this is belting it out Katherine Jenkins style.It takes a bit of getting used to, singing at the top of your lungs and it helps if you're alone in the car unless you do have vocal chords to rival the Welsh songbird, which I definitely don't, unfortunately.

Picking the right songs is another factor - last week I worked my way through Take That's 'Progress' and I'm now on to Bruce Springsteen's new CD although my current fave is Adele's 'Rolling in the Deep' from her new album 21. Boy can that woman sing, how I'd love a voice like that.

It works! I now know I'm never going to be able to hit a top C again in my life (not sure I ever could) but I reach my destination feeling decidedly perky.

There are some things to remember though - traffic lights. I was still burbling away when I had to stop at a red light at the motorway junction. I glanced to my right to see the man in the car next to me laughing his head off.

It's going to be such fun in the summer when I have the roof down on my car. I may get pulled over for a breach of the peace!

Every now and again something happens that pulls me up hard and makes me realise that, all too often, I'm completely wrong and need to open my eyes and my mind. That happened this week when I sat with the teenage son of one of my closest girlfriends and helped him write a tribute to his best friend who had died only days ealier in a dreadful car crash.

This horrific crash claimed the lives of three young lads, all close friends and left a fourth critically injured. My friend's son would most likely have been with them on the night if he hadn't been away for new year.

I have a teenage son and I realised, as I sat there, that I'm not actually a great mother to him. I spend far too much time moaning at him or complaining about him to others, how messy he is, how he doesn't work as hard as I think he should at school, how he wears his jeans so low his pants show, how he plays his music too loudly.

When did I last tell anyone how he happily will jump up and make me a cuppa, how he didn't even flinch when he came in with his friends and I was dancing around like a mad woman to Take That, how he's completely relaxed about giving me a hug, how he'll come shopping with me and tell me I just have to buy that dress because I look great in it?

So I'm doing it now.

The mysteries of the washing machine......

Traditionally new year is the time for resolutions to lose weight, do more exercise, spend more wisely, blady, blady blah. Not me......

2011 is the year I have promised myself I will finally get to grips with the washing machine and other domestic appliances that currently thwart me. I have always fought against the stereotypical presumption that the kitchen is a woman's natural habitat, but even I recognise that not knowing one end of the washing machine to the other might be taking things a bit too far.

I do try. Every so often I come over all domesticated and vow to myself that I will see a wash through from laundry basket to airing cupboard. The trouble is it's just so complicated - the powder can defeat me before I even start. In the drum or the top and if in the top, which of the three slots? The last time I tried I managed to shrink my favourite cashmere jumper so the only person it had any hope of going near was a very small five year old.

I've come to the conclusion that I must have been born missing a vital gene when it comes to domesticity. I'm not a stupid person, I've held down stressful, high powered jobs, but put me in front of white goods and I'm flummoxed.

That became all too evident when the last new washing machine arrived and the fitter asked me to put it on to test it. He was open-mouthed in disbelief when I had to phone a friend to find out what to do.....

This is the year I'll also stop getting lost or losing my car in car parks - without resorting to having to buy a sat nav. Anyway sat nav wouldn't have helped when I managed to lose my bright orange Mini in an Oxford park and ride car park. How I got on the wrong bus and ended up in Cowley I still have no idea. Thankfully the friend I was with realised before we'd called the police to report my car as stolen.

 I'm not quite sure how I'm going to achieve any of this but I'm determined to give it a go.

Turning invisible.

I decide I need a laptop. Trying to be self employed while sharing a PC with a Club Penguin addicted nine-year-old is not working out. So I head to PC World.

Their TV ads make it look as if buying anything from them is like being at a party, so I’m expecting this to be a doddle and fun. It’s lashing when I arrive so I’m in my mac, purple oilcloth with cream spots which I like to think is rather stylish. Even if it’s not, I’m not easily missed.

PC World is one of those places I hate, a vast hangar with row after row of computers, netbooks, laptops and heaven only knows what else that is enough to start a technologically challenged person like me hyperventilating in panic.

I’m not just in the communications business, I'm also a Gemini - we are born to talk - hopefully chatting with me isn't too ghastly a prospect so I potter around smiling winningly at the (male) assistants as they whizz pass me, again and again. Perhaps it's the purple mac but none of them seem to want to stop to help me. And I wait……and I wait. A guy comes in and before you know it a sales assistant in a lilac shirt pounces on him and off they go happily to mutally admire the Apple range.

I may be chatty but I'm also what some might call feisty and by now I'm so mad I want to jump up on to one of the display stands and yell 'hello, I may be a woman but I actually want to spend hundreds of pounds, don't you want my money?'

I have to virtually accost an assistant. I explain what I’m after – lots of memory (me and the laptop), good connection speed blah, blah, blah. I think I’ve been businesslike and succinct. He leads me along the rows to a blue Packard Bell. I almost sense what is coming when he closes the lid, strokes it and says ‘this one has a lovely texture, it’s not plasticky like some of the others and it comes in a range of colours.’

I don’t think I’ve been that spectacularly patronised for years. My Surrey accent becomes even posher and more clipped in my anger as I spit out that I don’t care what it feels like or what colour it is, I’d like to know what it does. And me and my purple spotty mac stomp out of PC World.

Back home I order a Dell online.  It’s red and shiny……