'If you want to take a trip outside Portsmouth for a day, you could try the ‘Pubic Hills’!'
The poor old dear I was talking to meant Purbeck Hills - comic as the malapropism may be, it doesn’t sound like somewhere I’d want to go.
I once walked in the door telling my Mum I was ‘ravished’ instead of ‘famished’, and I’ve heard rotting things described as Mildred instead of mildewed…I’m not sure what Mildred would think of that/
One of my favourites has to be an example given by a friend of mine who owns a dress shop. A lady came in looking for a fascinator, one of those feathery little hair accessories, but what she actually asked for was a fornicator! I don’t think my friend sells those!
Sometimes it’s just down to mispronunciation. My fiancé always used to pronounce skeleton Skellington, my sister used to say Dracliar instead of Dracular, and an old school friend said ambliance instead of ambulance. Patronising as it may be, I can’t help but point out inaccuracies. I like correct pronunciation with all consonants in the correct place and anything less gets my goat.
That said, when in college I used to make up words if there didn’t seem to be one that was quite fitting. Taking an adjective or even a full phrase and then add ‘ness’ on the end helped to describe a whole host of feelings, situations, and objects. I think my friend still does it, but I had to get out of the habit as I don’t think my BBC News broadcasting would be quite as credible if I carried on. But I still like to rate sofas on the ‘comfortability’ scale and claim to feel ‘vitaminised’ after a smoothie of fruit and vegetables. Who knows, they may make it into the dictionary one day!

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Blondes have more fun…discuss. It sounds like the title of an essay I’d have had a ball researching at university, but sadly I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to find out - well not uunless I go platinum. My father and I were discussing genes and how he’d got his mother’s black hair but father’s string bean physique. It could have been completely the opposite if he’d had my grandfather’s fair hair and grandmother’s stout figure. I could have turned out to be a petite blonde rather than a lanky brunette! I’d like to try that for a day.
Genealogy has become really popular in recent years, looking at who’s who and what they did as a job, but I’d prefer to find out where my brother's nose came from, whose smile my sisters have, and whose fault it is I’ve ended up with pale blue skin and freckles rather than the more olive complexion of some of our other ancestors.

I have a confession to make. I was drunk in the school assembly hall.
It sounds very unlike me, the former Head Girl of Cowplain Comprehensive. But in my defence I must point out it was the teachers that plied me with alcohol.
There’s no need to choke on your tea. It all happened just the other weekend.
The Assistant Head of the school had organised a band night last weekend so I showed up in support. And yes, there were a few drinks imbibed.
I'd walked the familiar route from Mum’s house and was met with a host of memories flooding back; the spot where I’d wait for the lollipop lady to authorise me to cross the road, past the house with the dog that used to make me jump when it barked. When I reached the school gate, I envisaged the school bell ringing as I sped across the playground, running into class just in time for the register. Everything was just as it used to be…only a bit smaller. You remember your first day at school, being shown your coat peg and touring the school thinking it’s the biggest building you’ve ever seen, then when you get to big school you’re convinced it’ll take you at least 20 minutes to get between classes and you’re very likely to get lost in a building that looks a old and grand as Hogwarts.
Driving past Horndean First School the other day I couldn’t believe quite how tiny it was, and re-visiting Cowplain Secondary, I discovered it’s nowhere near as big and scary as Harry Potter’s school of wizardry (though I do remember some odd concoctions being made in home economics and the science lab).
I’m lucky in that I have very fond memories of school. Parents always tell you ‘they’re the best days of your life’ as you groan the way only teenagers do, and while I don’t regard that as wrong, I do think it depends on what you do with your life afterwards. I think people like Richard Branson, David Beckham and Madonna have probably improved on struggling with their maths and English homework, but it’s still fun to take a trip down memory lane.

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The people of Portsmouth are stocking up on Christmas pud and mince pies and we’re not yet into November. Nuts and figs and dried dates wrapped in plastic and fat turkeys are being loaded onto trolleys. I know it’s a good idea to spread out the cost but can our kitchen cupboards bare the strain? I love the smell of Christmas food laden with spice and laced in brandy, but there’s one impostor that displeases me every year.
You lay out the cheese board and open the box of crackers- only to find a digestive biscuit amongst the choice. Why? Cheese and biscuits doesn’t literally mean biscuits does it? Is it there to dip in your after dinner coffee, like a kind of dessert? It’s like buying a selection box and finding a carrot amongst the bars of chocolate. Is it just me, or is it wrong to mix sweet and savoury in this way?

Picture the scene. It's a mild October afternoon and the sun is shining, so my friend and I decide to take a stroll. We leave the hotel we’re staying in, turn a corner and suddenly scream!  A half-naked woman is standing inches from us parading her alls in a window
 ‘Aaaaaahh!’  Not what you’d usually expect to come across when innocently going to look for a restaurant, but I hadn’t clicked that when booking our hotel ‘located in the heart of Amsterdam’s historic city centre’.
Ah yes, the historic Red Light District, rumoured last month to be downscaled to rid the area of underlying criminality. A third of the buildings currently used for prostitution are being sold off and we could soon see luxury apartments and shopping malls put up in their place. I can see more shocked tourists getting swept up in the historic city centre before too long
 You can just imagine buying a luxury apartment off plan then arriving to find it situated next to a brothel. 
Our hotel receptionist offered to show us all the ‘nasty places’.  My friend and I shuddered and assured her we’d do perfectly well finding our own way around.  Ok, so Amsterdam is famous for its sex industry and cafes but there’s a lot more to the city besides. Anne Frank House is astounding, the cheese is pretty good, the Van Gogh Museum holds the biggest collection of his art, and the historic canals are just beautiful for a boat tour.
I’m glad that Portsmouth’s historic centre revolves around the dockyard rather than the sex industry, but we could take a few tips from our Dutch friends when it comes to detailing with the traffic.
It’s not only the canal boats that make the transport systems interesting.  Trams, trains and buses loop around the city like clockwork with thousands of rickety old bikes weaving in and out. As a pedestrian it means you have to look in about 16 different directions before crossing the road, but there are never any jams.

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I quite often get accused of being dressed inappropriately. I’ll admit that quite often my creative sassiness takes over  -from wearing elaborate dresses to simple events to knocking walls down in hotpants and even painting in my underwear.  This weekend was no exception as I arrived at the tip in my Sunday best - skinny-fit jersey dress and four-inch heels. I was just dumping some broken chairs, but the wood pile was so high I had to stretch up and lob them over the top.  As I did it I dislodged some precariously balanced bed parts and three planks came tumbling down right onto my big toe!  Just like a cat that pretends nothing has happened when they fall off a chair, I carefully put back all the dislodged pieces before tottering back to my car, delaying my yelps until I’d closed the door. My purple swollen toe is all I need to remind me to wear steel toecaps next time.

I heard this week that a lack of sleep as a child can make you fat. My mum always sent me up to bed at 7pm, just before Top of the Pops. This was annoying to me as an eight-year-old, but possibly went in my favour.
I’m sure there must be more to staying slender than how difficult you were when it came to bedtime in younger years.
But research has found that a lack of sleep prevents the body from producing sufficient quantities of a hormone that suppresses the appetite (no wonder I eat four breakfasts when I’m on an early shift).
Now, I’m thinking, if this rule carries through into adulthood this could be a perfect excuse for an extra snooze or two. Instead of dieting or going down to the gym you could join your Gran during her afternoon nap in the armchair.
Never again would we feel guilty about falling asleep at the wrong time. A nodding head in a French class, a sudden jerk of alertness as you realise your blink was rather too elongated during a Uni lecture, would be acceptable. Yawning through boring Boris’s presentation and daydreaming in a work meeting would all become socially acceptable.
In the past I’ve known people bite or pinch themselves to stay awake, or tense every muscle in turn to stop dropping off.
We’re always so embarrassed about falling asleep when we shouldn’t. It seems rude, as if we were bored. And we’re never quite sure whether during our unconscious moments we snored (or worse), but there are certainly times when falling asleep can get you into a little more trouble than you bargained for.
Famously a judge fell asleep during the trial of the plotted Millenium Dome diamond snatch. More recently a dozy burglar up north got caught attempting to steal jewels from a woman’s house after falling asleep under her bed.
I’ve been so tired on early shifts in the past I’ve set my alarm for a break time snooze after presenting a show…but now I know why…I wasn’t being lazy, I was slimming!

Have you noticed an increase in the number of roundabouts being tampered with? One of the most high-profile in Portsmouth has to be the old Johnson and Johnson roundabout - now a junction. The Eastern Road/A27 roundabout is getting a re-vamp at the moment, but it’s the Catherington Road roundabout in Horndean that’s getting the biggest upheaval as lights are being introduced.
Roundabouts were originally found in France in the 1870’s, but the problem was people drove round them any way they liked. I'm not naming names but I know someone who drove round the Arc de Triomphe roundabout the wrong way once. If you’ve ever stood in the middle you’ll know that’s a bad idea.
The UK Roundabout Appreciation Society (yes they exist) helps to preserve our great roundabouts and promote road safety and consideration.
Whether you’re a false starter who inches out bit by bit, or someone who drives straight through the middle, I don’t think it’s our magic roundabouts that need improving. It’s our driving.

Are there bits of your life that are missing? I’m not talking about forgotten memories or nights spent in an alcoholic daze, but moments when you just have a five-minute blank in your timeline. Have you ever driven to work, or a friend’s house, and then realised that you can’t remember a big chunk of the journey?
It’s quite alarming to think you encountered two roundabouts, judged a busy junction and merged onto a high-speed motorway subconsciously. But no matter how hard you try to recollect the journey it just remains a blank. What were you doing in that time? Did you look in your mirrors and indicate before making your manoeuvres? Were your eyes, hands and feet driving for you while your brain switched onto something else? How would you have reacted in an emergency?
We often talk about doing two things at once - so wouldn’t it be good if you could control this power? For example, you could go to work on subconscious auto pilot then get home without having got bored or stressed once. ou could switch off at the gym and exercise without remembering enduring the exhaustion of the bike, stepper and rower. At the end of your session you could simply pat yourself on the back and leave fit and healthy.
As a student I remember struggling to concentrate during some lectures, and it was always a chore to do revision. Wouldn’t it be good if you could consciously split your mind… the information store could absorb facts and figures while the rest of your brain wanders off onto something more entertaining. You could study on a Friday and Saturday night at the same time as going out to a party, relaxing and having fun.
We could all quite happily do the dishes and ironing subconsciously while the rest our brain has a lie in. Or mow the lawn on autopilot after Sunday lunch while your mind has an afternoon snooze.
We’re often told things are mind over matter. But wouldn’t it be good if we could occasionally have matter over mind. Right, enogh thinking about that. I'd better get on with writing my column. Hang on - I seem to have done it already.

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Is it a wonder that many men find women difficult to satisfy? Little girls are brought up on fairytales of handsome princes falling in love with their fair maiden at first sight and within a few pages they’re married and live happily ever after.
Boys’ books are all about monsters, battles and adventure. These social ideas are ingrained in our brains from day one so it’s no wonder men and women grow up expecting different things from life.
Girls hold their breath as they wait for that ultimate marriage proposal, but all too often turn blue with the lack of oxygen, while their boyfriends seem happy to avoid the issue. Life more often than not resembles Dorothy’s yellow brick road rather than Cinderella’s ball, but after what seems like Sleeping Beauty’s 100 years I just had my fairytale ending with a proposal at La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and after all this time, it was definitely worth the wait. And they lived happily ever after….

I am not a hoarder - I can’t be doing with dusting all the clutter. Yet during my recent move I seem to have collected far more junk than I had realised. It’s amazing what moving house can uncover…boxes for electricals you don’t even own anymore, damaged clothes you never got round to repairing, three phones you kept just in case you needed a spare, four woks and enough coasters for all the cups of tea in Portsmouth!
‘I’ve only got about three boxes worth of stuff!’ I declared. Did I mention that’s just the shoes? It’s not until you clear out all your drawers and wardrobes and move into a new place that you realise the magnitude of your collection which billows out of the ‘temporary’ junk room while you give yourself time to sort it out. Even after a big drop at the charity shop and a trip to the tip, you still can’t believe it’ll ever get packed away tidily.
As for the dust you uncover…well it’s not surprising - you haven’t moved your wardrobe in years and the vacuum cleaner doesn’t reach round the back. It’s not until you move house that you notice just how faded the curtains and carpet were, or how many cobwebs had lingered hidden above light shades. Thank goodness Kim and Aggie didn’t pop by for a slice of cake. During a recent interview with the Queens of Clean, I discovered that 62 per cent of people leave their property grotty when they move out. A fifth leave their unwanted junk behind (as if we needed that) and 10 per cent even leave an un-flushed toilet! The toilet in my latest place took several bleaches, a soak with a bottle of cola, limescale remover, and a new seat before I’d use it.
I have a friend who’s moving house in two years time and she’s already started to have a sort out. I thought it a little extreme at first, but after this week I think she’s got the right idea. You can never be too far ahead in the moving game.

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My eating habits have been interesting this week. Due to my upside down kitchen I’ve eaten more takeaways over the last seven days than in the last seven months put together. Due to limited cupboard space, my cereal consumption has gone through the roof. I was chatting to Winchester TV Chef James Martin the other day, (ooh I’m in a name-dropping mood today) and telling him about the three bottles of olive oil, stale spices and out of date garlic I had uncovered at the back of my cupboard. He suggested a few more useful basics that you should always have in stock. One emergency rations recipe included a tin of tomato soup, a can of beans, garlic, onion and olive oil…I tried it. Amazing, and it saved me from the takeaway for at least one day this week!

It is inevitable…you will dance like your parents. I was at a very good friend’s wedding this weekend, it was a gorgeous ceremony with touching speeches, but several toasts later and you know there’s going to be embarrassment at the disco. The fizz and beer are flowing and suddenly everyone becomes the hottest audition for DanceX.
Some say the cringe-worthy mum dance arrives age 35, but I’ve seen it happen way before that. I became astutely aware that I was dancing hideously to the usual Jive Bunny and Grease mega mixes, the reason being that it’s impossible to do anything except dance badly to those records. And what is the official dance to Build Me Up Buttercup? You half dance, half stand there, yelling the words at your best mate or anyone drunk and friendly enough to share your dance floor humiliation. The Macarena and Whigfield’s Saturday Night have little routines to follow. Teenagers look great doing them, men in their 50s just look constipated.
The YMCA and Time Warp seem to have escaped with some credibility - it’s become acceptable to do those badly -but mostly we just step together, step together, and sway a bit not knowing quite what to do with our arms.
Mums do a jolly dance, jigging up and down with their arms down by their sides in strict Scottish Country Dancing style. Or perhaps they hold their arms slightly out to the sides so it doesn’t look like their marching on the spot. The square dance comes into action with a bit of Cliff Richard, and the head starts nodding ferociously as soon as Tina wails into action.
We learn dances in our youth and then stick to them whether or not they fit the music of the day. I’m the same - if it’s not drum and bass or hardcore I haven’t a clue. Thank goodness I took basic lessons Latin American a few years back. A spot of subtle cha cha or rumba usually gets me through. I know that in years to come I’m going to resort to the mum-style sidestep but for now I’ve got one thing to be grateful for… I don’t dance like my Dad!

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I’m not as graceful as Catherine Zeta Jones but I think she would have been impressed with my manoeuvres. I recently had to varnish nearly 40 metres of skirting board. Restricted by the weather I adorned my house with them from every angle, across benches in the lounge, propped up on walls, down the hall and along the stairs. It took careful planning to work my way around them in order to finish up by the front door and let myself out. I put my hands on my hips and smiled in self congratulation, until I realised I’d left my bag back at the starting point. I limboed underneath the sticky boards, took long strides over the top, breathed in, and ducked under. It was like a scene from Entrapment where Jones performs a series of gymnastic manoeuvres to avoid laser beams. My performance didn’t get me Hollywood recognition, but I did manage not to smudge my varnish.

When it comes to tea, I like an infusion, rather than a stew that sticks my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
My Grandma taught me to make a proper cup of tea when I was about five and after Sunday lunch it was my duty to put the kettle on and warm the pot. When I attempted to earn my ‘hostess badge’ at Brownies aged seven I was well ahead of the game.
Most of us will admit to liking a good cuppa - the UK population makes about 2,000 cups a second and tea makes up on average 40 per cent of our fluid intake. But it’s one of those drinks which can go so very wrong.
We all have our own particular taste. One old school friend of mine likes hesr made into stew with half a cup of milk, while I prefer it at a moderate strength with just a dash. I remember times when she’d be chatting away while repeatedly squeezing my teabag against the side of the mug. I’d get to the point where I could no longer concentrate on what she was saying as I stared at my tea, willing her to take out the bag as it turned darker and darker orange by the second.
There’s nothing worse than having to struggle through a thick brown sour brew, and when it turns lukewarm it’s even worse. Better to guzzle it down quick while it’s hot…gulp!
Apparently, 30 per cent of us take sugar in our tea. Even if you don’t take sugar, dentists will tell you tea stains your teeth, but at the same time it’s a natural source of fluoride. So is it good for you or not?
Many nutritionists recommend avoiding caffeine and drinking more water, but the UK Tea Council recommend four cups a day to boost levels of manganese, potassium, zinc and folic acid.
Either way, tea breaks have been a tradition for us Brits for the last 200 years, and as it's the nations most popular drink I’m sure it’s here to stay. And if you don’t like the way other people make it…do as I do and make it yourself!

You have to have trust to get ahead in life. I’m not talking about friends and partners - I’m talking about overhead electronic motorway signs.
I often find them inaccurate and out of date so I never know when to trust them. I regularly drive to work at 4am when the signs are warning me about last nights queues at the next junction, or informing me there’s debris on the road which had actually been cleared ages ago.
So on Sunday I ignored the warnings of long queues on the M27 and carried on motoring, only to come to a halt a couple of miles down the road at Whiteley.
I switched off my engine and thought about setting up a picnic as I listened out for the next BBC Radio Solent travel report. For once, the signs were correct, but I wish the Highways Agency would make them accurate all the time so us motorists would have a little more faith in them and heed their advice.