This year has proved that more and more older people are getting to grips with technology - and, more importantly, loving every minute of it!

RIGHT, you've had your presents, eaten the turkey and scoffed the sweets... time for the thank you letters. Or even the thank you email, phone call or text. The method really doesn't matter, but it has to be done.

In all the magic of the run-up to Christmas, no one mentions that between now and the start of term, mothers will be reminding, persuading, bullying and bribing their children to write their thank yous.

Of course they don't want to do it. Ungrateful little beasts. That's why they've got parents - to make them. It is a simple courtesy. After all, they were quick enough to write their list for Santa, weren't they? No trouble then in finding a pen that worked. Or logging on to the internet.

You can tell, can't you, how I spent many a long hour of late December when the boys were small.

Anyway, I too have my thank you letter to write, to all the people who have written, emailed and telephoned during the year. Thank you for them all.

This year the main topics of correspondence seem to have been mosquito bites, fountain pens, too much packaging, errant husbands and spoilt children - which is a fine and varied spread of subjects and a great reflection on the wit and wisdom of readers. You keep me on my toes and add great dollops of wit and wisdom to the pages.

My apologies if I have failed to acknowledge your letter. I try to incorporate your views on the page when I can. I used to be able to acknowledge all emails, but here's another interesting thing. The very first emails I received, years ago, were clearly written from offices, from people who'd read the Echo in their coffee break and dashed off a quick comment.

Then it was easy to chart the huge surge in home computers. And in the last year or so, there's been another change. It is clear that many of these computer users are now - how can I put this? - older. They are the over 60s, over 70s and even over 80s who are meant to be frightened of modern technology.

Not a bit of it. They are shooting off emails, all over the place, keeping in touch with grandchildren round the globe, doing their banking in the early hours of the morning and discovering the joys - and pitfalls - of internet shopping. Very cheering, very optimistic.

The older you get, the more the internet is a way into the world. If there are any grown ups out there still scared of computers, maybe 2007 could be the year you learn to surf in cyberspace. It really is easy - any passing five-year-old will help you - and it could change your life.

But in among all this speedy communication, let me also say thank you for one of my favourite old fashioned means of communication - the WI postcard. Nice pictures, pithy messages. Letters, emails and pretty postcards, it is a pleasure to receive them. Thank you for them all - and I hope there will be more next year.

FIRST of all it was Chris Tarrant, pictured, giving his version of the break up of his marriage. Then wife Ingrid put her side of the story. And then last week their daughter Sam threw in her two pennorth with a big interview. Now I'm only guessing here. But something tells me that whatever your Christmas arguments were like, they were nowhere near as public as the Tarrants.

STRANGE, isn't it, that the more diet books are published and the more low fat foods appear on supermarket shelves, the fatter we get?

The diet industry is huge and growing bigger all the time and so, strangely are we. People worry about size 0 models, but we should be more concerned about our size 20 children. And the parents in the North-East who won't even let their children get weighed for fear of upsetting them.

Look, being fat upsets them, getting teased upsets them, not having clothes to fit upsets them. And that's the responsibility of parents. Ignoring the weigh-in doesn't actually make your child any thinner.

But there is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.Weight watchers are apparently shunning over-priced, tasteless diet food in favour of natural healthy foods. It seems sales of low fat yoghurts and ready meals have plunged.

So, if you're New Year's Resolution is to lose weight, forget the diet, the diet books and the diet meals _ just eat more healthily instead. Tastes much nicer.

And it might cause the bloated diet industry to lose a few pounds too.

TEN days before Christmas I realised that my passport was about to run out and I have a trip planned for January. Help. Never has a photo been taken so snappily or a form filled in so quickly. My passport also has a slight complication in that I have two names on it. I sent it off into a pillar box full of Christmas post. I was not optimistic.

If you, like me, have two surnames, then there is a way round it on your passport. Mostly I use my own name, Griffiths, which is the name in which all my official documents, bank cards, driving licence and passport are produced. But, sometimes, it is useful to have the other name, especially on family holidays. So on the old passport and now on the new one, a line on the Official Observations page notes "The holder is the wife of Ernest Michael Amos". It has solved a few problems.

Meanwhile, I wondered if I would have any passport at all, in any name, in time for January.

I needn't have worried.

Less than a week later, a man in a car pulls up outside my house and delivers the new passport. Now that's what I call service.

But if I were you, I wouldn't cut it so fine again.

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