Karen Koren: Your guess is as good as mime . .

I HOPE you all had a lovely Christmas. Our family enjoyed themselves immensely as my ten-year-old grandson, Finn, has now mastered the art of charades.

I bought him the Charades For Kids game and thought it would be the same as other Christmases – with so many presents, Finn would ignore mine and be completely mesmerised with all his other brilliant presents. But no!

Now I follow Norwegian tradition of Christmas, so presents are opened on Christmas Eve, after we’ve had dinner, sung our Christmas songs, danced round the tree and read the Christmas story. By that time the grown-ups are exhausted and just want to doze, however Finn decided we had to play charades.

It was great fun, as Finn and sister Lily really got into it. It took a while to get them off home, telling them they’d see Santa in the sky if they weren’t careful.

Lily knows if that happened Santa would skip her house. That soon got them moving.

The next day we all went to Finn’s for Christmas Day dinner, and after lovely food (again wanting to relax), low and behold more charades.

Boxing Day came and after a late breakfast and a good walk, more charades. My grandchildren have well and truly learned the art of miming silly films, books and sayings. So more next year please, as long as we can leave it until then.

The new year will soon be upon us and I am very privileged to be going to Devon, to Bill Bailey’s holiday home. He is having a few guests and I am looking forward to enjoying something different to the traditional Hogmanay.

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and would especially like to mention the lovely lady and her daughter who came up to me in Primark on Princes Street (well, I had to have a look, didn’t I?). She wanted to shake my hand as she reads my column every week and really enjoys it. Thank you so very much. It made my year.