Weekends are not what they were. Thank Goodness. A survey by a London tourist organisation has revealed that we're not making the most of our weekends.

Too many of us spend the time working, shopping or doing the housework. And after a few carefree hours on Saturday, we spend Sunday miserable - already stressed out at the thought of Monday.

It could be worse. We could be watching Gilbert Harding. For that in the 1950s was the highlight of the weekend.

Saturday was then still a working day, until lunchtime at least, which left the afternoon to do the weekly shop. Sunday was devoted to cooking and cleaning (there were working mothers, even then) and then the day moved seamlessly from the roast and two veg followed by something home made and custard and Forces' Favourites, through the washing up, a snooze under the papers, until it was time for tinned peaches, the Dickens serial and What's My Line?

Riveting, eh?

In between, there might be church, a walk or a visit to your gran's - which still meant tinned peaches but also salmon sandwiches.

But there were also great long gaps of sheer boredom. No shops, no professional sports events, no theatre. And of course in Wales, no pubs.

Our God, I'm afraid was a joyless God - on his day we were not encouraged to call for friends or run around outside and make a noise, neither were we allowed to play cards - the Devil's picture book.

Basically we stayed in and kept quiet. And the only excitement was in trying to sneak a look at the News of the World and wonder just why the reporter had to make his excuses and leave...

The good thing about it was that, apart form worrying about the News of the World or wondering if Lady Isobel Barnett would guess what a sagger maker's bottom knocker did, your brain went into suspended animation.

It floated free, had a rest, beaten into submission by all that Sunday food and enforced idleness.

And that, actually, was no bad thing.

It was a break in the week, a mark that the day was different. Maybe it gave you some time for reflections, taking stock.

It might not have been a laugh a minute but it did give you chance to gather your wits, rest the brain cells and recover a bit from the rigours of the working week.

It was in its own stodgy and old fashioned way, curiously refreshing. We need such occasional blank times in our lives and these days they are few and far between.

Even if we're sitting doing nothing, we're likely to have a remote control in our hand, flipping restlessly and noisily between one jangling channel and another. But the old fashioned Sunday was just the thing.

Finally, driven to bed early by boredom, there would be a small sigh of relief that another Sunday was over. Tomorrow the world would start again.

Because Sundays were so bad, we actually looked forward to Mondays. And how many people can say that now?

CAROL Thatcher - daughter of Margaret, sister of Mark - is generally assumed to be a good egg, jolly and straightforward.

But when she arrived back in this country last week and was commenting on her brother's escapades, I have to say that in a quick glance at her picture the paper, I thought she was Jimmy Saville...

A PLANE parked in a Herefordshire field while its owners went to lunch, was eaten by a herd of bullocks. Doesn't surprise me..

Our first house backed on to a field full of cows, who would lunge their great heads over the hedge and try and eat anything they could, especially the washing off the line. But they surpassed themselves the day they ate our mortgage...

I'd left the money in cash on the kitchen dresser. And while I was on the phone, our two-year-old found it, wandered out to the hedge and the cows - and started feeding them £10 notes.

I don't know if you've ever had to retrieve chewed up £10 notes from the throat of a slobbery cow. But ever since, I've paid the mortgage by direct debit...

THE nicest thing about our medal winners - Kelly Holmes, Matthew Pinsent, the men's relay, the cyclists, the sailors and all of them , plus Amir Khan's vast family - was that when they won they looked so happy. Not triumphalist or gloating or smug or self satisfied, but rather surprised and utterly uncomplicatedly delighted.

It was very endearing and in its own way added immensely to the feel good factor of the games.

BEING single is bad for your health. New research by the University of Warwick has shown that once you're over 30, being single is as bad for you as smoking.

They blame it on all sorts of things - bad diet, drinking too much, working late because there's no one to go home to, lack of self esteem because no one loves you, stress because there's no one with whom you can share your problems.

The truth is all of those and also probably a lot simpler. If you live alone, who's there to call the doctor, take you to hospital, collect the prescription or make the chicken soup?

If Bridget Jones doesn't make it to the altar soon, maybe she should get a flat mate. Or a very clever cat.