WATCHING Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday night makes me feel quite nostalgic -- smart suited, handsome men and beautifully dressed good looking women.

It's quite a change from grotty-garbed girls who front as 'artistes'.

I am hoping this might be the beginning of the return to some sort of standards, for seeing how elegant the contestants look will maybe show young people there is another way.

For there is no doubt in my mind, that the way you dress affects the way you behave and the way other people behave towards you.

Looking and feeling good, I know, is not easy if you are out of work, but to help those young people that haven't got a job we could have a form of National Service, because I have yet to meet someone who has been in the services, if only for a short time, who hasn't benefited from it.

They never seem to lose that sense of discipline, pride, cleanliness and feeling of self-worth which I am sure would be a help to a lot of our young folk.

On Sunday I was at the Holcombe Hunt Christmas lunch and I couldn't help thinking that we 'townies' really have no business interfering with the ways of country folk. Everything someone stops or alters has a domino effect on other things, customs and practices that have evolved over centuries and are there usually for a good reason.

This particular hunt was founded in the year 1100, so it must be serving some useful purpose, perhaps not only by keeping the foxes at bay but providing work and ways of binding the rural communities and villages together.

Our traditions, our ceremonies and rites of passage bind us all together, they make our country and its people what they are.

To keep chipping away and changing things for change sake could eventually alter the nations psyche and I, for one, wouldn't like that.

Rawtenstall is perhaps not a particularly inspiring name, but on Friday I found it a very inspiring place.

It was the Woman of the Year lunch at Nino's, which raised the fantastic sum of £10,000 for the hospice, for which the committee works tirelessly all year to support. You know we should all be grateful for the work that these and lots of women do, often without any recognition. Thanks girls.

Then I was out in the evening to the opening of Liquid, won't it always be the Mecca to lots of us? It is certainly a great makeover, very swish and hopefully will bring more people into town.

Got a little 'happy' on Saturday, at my friend Edith's Christmas soiree. I'm glad she had the good taste to cook a fish dish, as I have a feeling I'm in for a surfeit of turkey over the next week or two!

And I have to admit it, Christmas is with us and cards are arriving.

I have decided that I will only be sending cards to friends abroad or far away.

It's got well out of hand, or is it that I'm getting a little idle? I love getting them really, I just like a a little grumble now and then.