DID you enjoy your extended Christmas break? As the snow lay round about, did you frolic in the cold stuff, perhaps making a snowman? Did you toast some chestnuts on an open fire as the festive lights flickered or did you…. Oh no, I m getting my bank holi

DID you enjoy your extended Christmas break? As the snow lay round about, did you frolic in the cold stuff, perhaps making a snowman?

Did you toast some chestnuts on an open fire as the festive lights flickered or did you....

Oh no, I'm getting my bank holidays mixed up again. It's a topsy-turvy world we live in with all this climate change going on.

I must remember that if it snows it is likely to be Easter we are celebrating, not Christmas which, when I was a kid, I seem to recall almost always was witness to the flutter of flakes from the sky but has become a mild time of year these days. Last December I saw people walking around in shorts.

I must keep in mind that when spring has sprung and the daffodils are at their very best is when Jack Frost is likely to strike and I need to stock up on cans of de-icer and have my heavy overcoat at the ready.

Looking forward to the summer is not what it used to be. There was virtually guaranteed wall-to-wall sunshine during the long school summer holidays of my youth but now you don't know what you are going to get.

It's warmer abroad, of course, which is why so many of us head for the Mediterranean but, here's one thing which has not changed, our reputation goes ahead of us.

The British holidaymaker can be a menace while sojourning on foreign soil. They drink too much which leads to them being abusive and they try out dangerous sports such as bungee jumping which they would never contemplate doing at home.

You've seen the pictures of trouble-makers on the rampage, the young men stripped to the waist throwing pavement café tables and chairs at innocent passers-by.

But hold on a minute. It's a topsy-turvy world these days, remember, and I see from a report just out that it is the older Brits, the ones aged over 55 who used to sit on a deckchair on the beach with a knotted hankie on their heads, who are now causing the sort of alcohol-fuelled trouble usually associated with the younger generation. Some things you never thought would change, do.

The warning for the over-55s not to overdo it came from the Foreign Office which said it wants people in that age group to "have fun" on holiday but cautioned that they needed to make some simple preparations to help avoid encountering problems abroad.

A holiday company specialising in catering for the older traveller was more upbeat, saying: "Just because you're over 50 does not mean you have got to put your surfboard into storage or hang up your salopettes."

Perhaps I got lost along the way to adventure but I've never owned a surfboard and I had no idea what a salopette was until I looked it up in the dictionary.

Now I know - but I'm not tempted to take to the ski slopes at my age, although the après-ski does have appeal. Skoal!