Burger the calories, Yankee Noodle Candy has come to Spain

MY 2014 diet is already heavy going - and I’m only two weeks in. Hardly anything lost in the last week...but it’s not my fault I’m only marginally slimmer. Honestly.
 It’s those so-called friends who’ve been encouraging me to join them for meals at disgustingly inviting restaurants - and flatly refusing to take my emphatic ‘no’ for an answer.
Well, I’ve had enough of it so I have made an executive indecision (I’m a Libran).
The idea is to Name and Shame ANY individual or group who lure me into an over-eating session, or who encourage me to join them in filling my face with Chinese, Indian, Spanish, French, English or virtually any other kind of culinary delight. The only group I don’t need protecting from are the burger-the-calories  pot-bellied pigs - or fat Americans as they are sometimes called. As befits an aging journalist with a degree in headline pundamentalism,  my current favourite bathtime songs are I'm A Yankee Noodle Candy and New York New Pork.  Anyway, the 2014 diet started so well with my losing 2.5lbs during the first week. But this last seven days, two Chinese banquets  plus a Sunday special at the Portico Mar (everyone's favourite down our way) have  gutted what was becoming a concerted attempt to hit my goal weight in record time.
Anyway, the Shame Game lurks in wait for those still intent on leading me astray in the world of fine dining. Their only escape will be  to have a large box of chocolates waiting for me at the table.

YOU'RE ten years old, have just moved to Spain with your family, and it's your first day at school. To help you pick up Spanish more rapidly, no English is to be spoken during school hours. Problem is, you know very few Spanish words...and asking to go to the loo is not among them. A dilemma in any language...
The daughter of a friend of mine faced that scenario not so long ago. The poor child just sat there, minding her pees and Q's, until her mother whisked her home in the car ...to everyone’s relief. 

SCRIBBLING IN THE SUN: Twittering and wittering: Mum's dirty washing's online again

SCRIBBLING IN THE SUN: Twittering and wittering: Mum's dirty washing's online again

Twittering and wittering: Mum's dirty washing's online again

MY stepmother blames me for the fact she is not computer literate.
She says I never carried out my promise to give her my old laptop for her 80th birthday - condemning  her to a miserable existence with only her washing and the odd passing train online.
In the six and a half years since I committed that heinous crime, she's repaid me with  a vengeance, As the world and I savour the Tweet delights of  Twittering, the old moaner spends her life wittering. And wittering. And wittering.
She also insists I’ve deprived her of watching the 21st century's answer to Morecambe and Wise. “The ones with the funny names...Google and Skype’’.
The old dear always thought computers were purely a modern version of a typewriter. Then a mischievous pal of mine caused turmoil by telling her that 'Internet' is where footballers must despatch the ball to score a goal.
So much for the wisecracks. I actually have problems myself understanding the remarkable development of new technology over the past couple of decades.
I remember vividly being told of a mind-boggling invention with which people could record TV programmes and watch them later.
My TV memories go back to the piano-top antics of Muffin the Mule, who spent most of his life prancing about in black and white on my parents' 14-inch Sobell  TV.
There was even an alternative to BBC 1 – you could switch off and watch the little white dot fade away  in the centre of the screen.
That Sobell was an apology for a telly, yet it cost the equivalent of £1,000 in an era when £20  a week put you in the top 10 per cent of wage earners.
How times change – not least in the field of education, where the nearest thing to today's 'A*’ ranking was the simple 'A' awarded to students achieving a mark of 80% or more.
The difference was that only the cleverest kids got more than one or two A's. This was mainly because the old GCE exam was considerably more difficult than the GCSE, which replaced it following the levelling out of the English and Welsh system.
I've never understood the logic of the lefties who insist the old Grammar School system did not give underprivileged kids an equal chance. I see it the opposite way.
My secondary school classmates  in South Wales came from all walks of life. The Hand of their Fathers turned to everything from labouring to coal mining, business management, advanced medicine and law.
It made no difference if you were working class, middle class or the Princess of Wales. If you passed the 11-plus you were entitled to a place in a grammar school with its  formidable  GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ level courses.
If you failed,  it meant at least a year in a lesser school studying for the inferior CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) – with the chance of promotion to the local  grammar school  if you did well.
My sister Lydia is probably cleverer than I am, yet had to plough the GCSE trail because she was, my Dad’s generation always insisted, “a late developer’’.
From what I can gather, you need rich parents to get into into grammar school today, unless you can wangle yourself the educational equivalent of state benefit.
Don’t tell me that constitutes a more level playing field than the one we used to gallop across at breaktime for our clandestine ciggy in the toilet.
The only injustice was that secondary moderns were generally mixed while grammar schools were exclusively for one sex.
Help! Stepmum’s been line dancing in the garden - and  fell off.