What a joy it was to revel in our home-grown talent at 2012 London Olympics | Verity Lush

Have a think about your family. Are you a happy family? Alternatively, are you a close family? What about your relatives outside of your marriage or relationship?

The summer of 2012 had such a fantastic feel of national pride. From the opening ceremony to the closing, the nation came together and felt cohesive in a way the World Cup has never quite managed.

It was our chance to show on an international level that we don’t all have stiff upper lips in the UK, or mouldering teeth and an obsession with the weather.

Instead, we revelled in our home-grown heroes – both sporting and also the musical and theatrical ones that opened and closed the show.

It is a shame, looking back on such good times, that we can’t maintain that pride.

Don’t play the blame game just swallow your pride...

Have a think about your family. Are you a happy family? Alternatively, are you a close family? What about your relatives outside of your marriage or relationship?

Do you get on well and meet up regularly for family celebrations? Family can be the bane of some people’s lives, or the pure of joy of others’.

We haven’t chosen to whom we’re related, and yet we are expected to get along. It can be a lot of pressure to live up to a Waltons’ style ideal because, in any situation, disagreements occur and need to be dealt with before they escalate.

However, if nobody holds their hands up and takes their portion of the blame, fractures can occur.

Which leads me to wonder, should we not make the effort to raise our children knowing when to hold their hands up?

Each action we make or perform has consequences – if you behave poorly, then you have to pick up the metaphorical tab for that behaviour.

But if we’re raising our kids to bury their heads in the sand, then we are binding ourselves to live in a society where people are simply filled with their own virtue, and refuse to take responsibility for their actions.

In the extreme wokeness of 2019, it seemed blame was being chucked around as far as the eye could see.

Here a wrong, there a wrong, everywhere a wrong, wrong.

But the folk throwing the blame can’t possibly be leading perfectly shiny, moral existences themselves, can they?

‘Sorry’ has long been acknowledged as the hardest word (thank you, Elton), and it is tricky to hold your hands up and say you are to blame.

However, sometimes, swallowing that pride or stubborn silliness, is the only way to go if you want to ever move anything forwards.

Occasionally it is worth doing this even if we stand on firm moral ground ourselves, or even if we can’t yet acknowledge where we’ve gone wrong.

Of course, you can provide people with a million second chances and too often it’ll get you nowhere.

But at least you’ll have tried.

There is no doubt the BBC won the Christmas telly wars

Christmas is now way past us and the standard flurry of new year telly is upon us.

In my humble opinion, the BBC owned Christmas 2019 in terms of television.

Even Dracula, while disappointing by the random third episode, was at least ambitious. ITV seemed only to serve up their standard soaps with myriad repeats of Midsomer Murders thrown in for festive measure here and there.

I don’t think it’s sad that many of my Christmas evenings teetered upon what the remote control might bring. I’ve done my younger years of teetering on heels and I welcome the December Radio Times with open arms and a highlighter pen.