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The Christmas and New Year festivities are awash with traditions. For me, this includes a combination of Spanish and British ones, plus some family specials. For example, watching the Vienna New Year’s concert with a cup of espresso, followed by the ski jumping at Garmisch Panterkirchen. As I was growing up, I stuck to those even through some pretty terrible hangovers in the late eighties and nineties. After all, what good are traditions if one iconoclastically bails out just because one overdid the drink the night before? Some others have been abandoned through lack of practicality, a result of emigrating to the UK. And so a new combination of traditions is developed by me, to pass on, partly common with those of my parents, partly my own, partly Sandra’s contributions. This, I guess, is so much a part of our social environment as the political system or the economy, but this part we can protect and cherish, and their survival is entirely down to us. What are your traditions? Length: ...

Llangoed Hall is a beautiful Powys manor house hotel in spectacular grounds on the banks of the Wye as it traverses the enchanting Wye Valley from Builth Wells to Hay-on-Wye. The hotel is exquisite in its architecture, decoration, antique furniture and Old World service. Elegantly understated, a polar opposite to the strident luxurious nouveau arrivée hotels in London, Dubai or Florida. At Llangoed time moves so slowly that it appears to have jumped fifty years back. You cannot get an espresso, or a bar meal mid afternoon. Filter coffee and food from seven. And forget a lie in, breakfast is over by 9.00, even on weekends. It’s as if the hotel expects from you British phlegm and the proverbial stiff upper lip. It’s charming like an old grandfather full of great stories and protective cares. In it, you are invisible, and others to you, even when in the same space. Its understated elegance is as relaxing as the strident showboating of its counterparts is exhausting. Progress? What progre...