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We spend hours each week drinking tea, shopping and surfing the net. But these same pastimes can be used to help others. How?

The British are creatures of habit, if the way they typically spend their time each week is anything to go by.

The nation spends hours watching TV, shopping, gambling, dating and surfing the net, according to the Great British Time Survey, commissioned by Community Service Volunteers (CSV) and conducted by ICM.

Younger people’s free time revolves around socialising and the computer. Dates take up at least two hours a week for 42% of 18-24 year olds, while more than half surf the net for at least an hour a day, and a quarter play computer games for at least one hour a week.

WHAT WE DO 87% of women shop for more than one hour a week 49% of men spend at least two hours a week doing DIY 69% of men spend at least one hour a day reading a paper 55% of people spend two hours a week gardening

For the over-65s, tea breaks take up more than an hour a week for 79% of them, while 11% gamble for more than an hour a week.

But what few find time for is volunteering, according to the CSV. People often think they have nothing to offer, when actually they spend a lot of time doing activities that could help others. Its annual Make A Difference Day on 29 October aims to get people involved.

We asked celebrity life coach Gladeana McMahon to give her top tips for helping others, without changing what you do.

Tea drinkers could organise community tea parties. If you settle down every afternoon for a cup of tea and a scone, why not make it a social event and invite round the neighbours. If you’re making one cup then making another three or four isn’t any more hassle.

I’m always happy when a task that I do has more than one purpose. Something as simple as making tea can have lots of benefits apart from just quenching your thirst.

It is all about looking at what you do and working out how it can help. A tea party will strengthen community relations, as well as make you some new friends.

Shopaholics could help a disabled person with their retail needs. In my experience nothing feels better than knowing you have made a difference - it’s a feeling money can’t buy.

Shop for others

If you love shopping then use your passion to benefit others. If you spend a lot of time in the shops you will know where the best ones are, what they stock and where to get a bargain.

For someone who can’t get out the house or finds shopping hard, your knowledge and experience will be a real benefit. Not only will you be getting them what they need, but at the best possible price.

Those who enjoy a flutter could help children with mathematical skills. Gambling is all about the law of probability and that is taught in schools.

Often the reason children struggle with maths is because they find the subject boring, but if you make it more exciting then you get their attention.

It is about transferring your skills. If you can work out the odds of a horse race, then you have good numerical ability. Why not use it to help others?

TV addicts could use tips they learn from makeover shows to renovate a community centre. The TV is often considered something people use to switch off after a busy day, but we learn a lot from programmes.

Pick up skills from the box

We absorb information and get ideas all the time. What we see can also be inspiring. If we see people achieve something on the TV, it might spur us on to do the same. Using the knowledge we acquire to help others also help us turn what is a sedentary pastime into an activity.

Getting involved in activities is also a way to meet new people and perhaps even meet Mr or Miss Right. And in addition to finding love, the community gets a facelift.

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Millions of shoppers will fail to bag winter sale bargains as they lack basic maths skills, the government says.

Ministers want people who find it hard to work out “20% off” or “buy one, get the second half-price” offers to sign up for free refresher maths courses.

Staff from its Get On campaign will be out among the crowds at 10 city centres across England with tips.

The Department for Education and Skills says 14.9m people lack numeracy skills expected of an 11-year-old child.

The Get On campaign staff will be handing out percentage calculators and encouraging shoppers to test themselves to see if they could improve their skills.

“We all use numbers every day, but millions struggle to do the kind of basic sums that are so essential to our lives at work and at home,” said Skills Minister Phil Hope.

“Everyone enjoys the hunt for a bargain, but people might not realise that they can brush up their maths or reading and writing - locally, and for free.”

Shops across the country are gearing up for one of the busiest days of the year, with some opening up in the early hours of the morning.

But many chains and department stores already began their sales a day ahead of the traditional 27 December start date.

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So when he’s not rooting for club member Colin Montgomerie, whose father Dunsmuir plays golf with every week, he will be thinking about getting out on the course on Monday - hopefully, to recreate Monty’s victory march up the 18th.

The members haven’t been allowed on the course for the last two weeks as the R&A, broadcasters and tented village brigade have been let loose on their beloved links.

Don’t feel too sorry for them, though, they’ve been able to satisfy their golf cravings at neighbouring courses like Turnberry, Prestwick, Barassie and the Gailes links.

But it’s the Championship Course on “The Breezy Links o’ Troon” that they miss, and Dunsmuir is no different.

“As long as it doesn’t rain on Monday, things will get back to normal very quickly. It’s a very resilient course,” the captain said.

“We’re all itching to test ourselves on the championship set-up. And it’s great playing with the grandstands still up - we all get to dream a little.”

Dunsmuir would also like to relax a little. This week is just the culmination of a process that started two years ago when the R&A’s course architect visited Troon to make his suggestions for the set-up.

Our members aren’t going to worry about a new bunker 300 yards down the fairway - unless they play two bad shots, that is Arthur Dunsmuir Royal Troon Club Captain Royal Troon’s greens king

The Troon resident is far too discrete to reveal what those suggestions were, and stressed that the R&A is the perfect tenant.

“We have a great relationship with the R&A,” he said. “They know there is a balance to strike: we are a members’ club, and this is an area of special scientific interest.”

In the end, only 96 yards were added to the course that hosted the 1997 Open, but there were 10 new bunkers added.

“Scottish bunkers, too. Not the type you can play seven-irons from. These are ones you have to play out sideways,” said Dunsmuir.

“But our members aren’t going to worry about a new bunker 300 yards down the fairway. Unless they play two bad shots, that is.”

And he was quick to point out that any short-term disturbance to the 126-year-old club’s equilibrium is more than worth it in terms of prestige, revenue and the wealth it brings into the area.

If the wind keeps blowing in this direction (from the west) it will favour a left-hander Dunsmuir’s local knowledge

“I can’t verify the figures, but it is said that this week will bring up to 50m into the local economy. I live locally, and people are always coming up to me to say how pleased they are to have the Open back at Troon,” he said.

“Hosting the Open is an enormous honour. And for the last year Royal Troon has served as a magnet for golfers wanting to play all the great courses in this area.

“This year was our turn, but other years it’s Turnberry, and Prestwick is always very popular because of its history. But all our neighbours are great courses.”

And with that, the diplomatic Dunsmuir disappeared for a lunch with the captains and captains’ wives from all those clubs.

He did, however, give me a tip before he left.

“If the wind keeps blowing in this direction (from the west) it will favour a left-hander. When it blows like this it is hard on the right-handers on the back nine,” he said.

A left-hander? You work it out.

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A conversation at a cafe in the Russian capital these days could easily include the words “manager”, “training” and “outsourcing”, to name just three. The chat could take place over a “business lunch”.

If you couldn’t afford your share of the bill, you might look like a “loser”. It might be time to go to the bank for an “overdraft”.

The Russian government has declared 2007 the year of the Russian language. That may be so - but the language as it’s spoken today isn’t 100 per cent, well, Russian.

Michele Berdy is a translator who’s worked here since the 1970s. She has a weekly column in The Moscow Times - the capital’s main English-language newspaper. It gives tips to expats hoping to brush up their vocabulary, and charts the way the language is evolving.

“It’s changed fairly dramatically,” she told me, “mostly because of the influence of English”.

It’s changed dramatically because Russia has changed dramatically. In communist times, you didn’t need a word for “marketing” or “PR” because there wasn’t really any. Now it’s everywhere. So are the English words.

Last year, Ms Berdy wrote about a linguistic experiment from the 1920s. Researchers went to a village in northern Russia and asked people the meaning of the new words which had entered the language in the years after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

The villagers suggested that a communist was someone who didn’t believe in God.

Socialism was “life the new way - dunno, something like the law?”

A “decree” was dismissively defined as “the government writing papers”.

I decided to repeat the experiment. I went to Sergiev Posad, a town about two hours’ drive north of Moscow. You couldn’t really imagine a more timeless picture of Russia. Sergiev Posad is one of the centres of the Russian Orthodox Church. Its monastery attracts pilgrims and tourists from across Russia and beyond.

There are blue and gold onion domes rising above whitewashed walls. Then there’s a restaurant called “American Pie”.

The trouble with some of the new words is that they’re not even really English terms. We can guess what an “image-maker” might do, but we might call them a “spin-doctor” or “PR person”.

Sergiev Posad is the Russian Orthodox heartland

In Russia today, every would-be mover and shaker needs one, but do ordinary people actually know what it means?

For my experiment, I tried out “image-maker”; “teenager”; and “overdraft” - all words you see and hear regularly in modern Moscow.

Most people did seem to know what an “image-maker” was. One man said it meant “stylist” in Russian - clearly a concept which has come from outside the country.

“Teenager” was easy, too. Most people I asked replied that it meant “adolescent”. Lyudmila stopped for a moment on her way into the monastery. She had a different view. “Teenager? I understand the word. It’s probably got something to do with an office,” she said, fairly confidently.

To be fair to Lyudmila, I suspect she got confused with “manager”. Russia’s post-Soviet youth may be getting used to lives their parents never led, but offices probably don’t figure in the dreams of many of them.

There was a worrying message for the future of Russia’s booming economy.

Only one person of the dozen or so I spoke to knew what an “overdraft” was.

A lot of Russians apparently remain happily isolated from one of the worst evils of capitalism.

What does this all mean? Is it proof that the West won the Cold War? Is it just easier to borrow words for alien concepts from other languages?

Maybe it’s a decision for managers to make over a lengthy business lunch.

“Moscow 2010: no one can work, nowhere to study, nothing to breathe,” was the recent front-page story in Izvestiya.

Moscow has become a victim of the country’s massive economic growth. People are flocking to the city from all over the world’s largest country and beyond.

Now the city authorities are worried about how they’re going to cope. They’ve already had a public information campaign asking people to save electricity.

The challenges they face are common to many contemporary capitals.

Izvestiya says the city’s choice is either to “follow the course of civilised European capitals” or far eastern cities, which it compares to “human anthills”.

Russia has always tried to combine the best of east and west. Will the Moscow of the future be a civilised anthill?

Send your comments in reaction to James Rodgers’ Moscow Diary using the form below.

Your comments:

The composition of Great Russian language had always been a subject for debates among educated portion of population, ever since Pushkin. Russian language is not as systematic as English, or any other European languages, it is a still changing and flexible system.
Olga, New York, NY

On a trip to Russia a few years back, I was surprised to hear a number of distinctly French everyday words (such as “etaazh” for the building floor/level and “magazin” for shop). On reflection, I shouldn’t have been surprised given that speaking French was de rigueur among 19th century continental elites. Maybe Russians were upset about it years ago; but I think they got over it.
Kaushik, New York, US

There are also many Dutch words absorbed in Russian, dating from the time of Czar Peter the Great, who studied Dutch ship building and sea faring practices intensively, and introduced a number of them in Russia.
Bill, Bristol

It’s very easy to paint people who don’t like the invasion of English as parochial, backward-looking bumpkins, as if it’s only natural that they should start using English. To get an idea of what it feels like, we Brits should always think of those irritating American words adopted by teenagers (it’s nearly always the young). My favourite hate objects are ‘pants’ for trousers, business people talking about ‘growing’ profits, companies etc. (they are not crops!) and, oh yes, ending sentences with rising intonation as if everything were a question.
Andrew, York, England

I enjoyed reading your article. President Putin worries that the Russian language is in danger. I can see that he has some things to worry about and then again he doesn’t. It all depends upon area.
Image-maker makes more sense than Spin Doctor or PR person. But what Russian needs to know what an overdraft is? I don’t and I’m Russian. There’s probably a Russian equivalent. Russia has only just begun to enjoy the blessings of democracy, but the language will stay intact if enough make sure that it does.
Ms F, USA

An article that reflects more bias and narrow views of Russia and other non-western countries. What about the French words in English Business? The use of Raison D’etre to emphasise the reason of existence of the strategic aim of an organisation, or perhaps Laissez faire to reflect a lenient management style, and this can extend to many other words.
The fact is that civilisations evolve over the years sharing their experiences and knowledge with each other.
Jamil, Jordan

I teach English to Russians. Many Russians already have a basic grounding in English from their schools and/or colleges/universities. But the acceptance and use of the English language as the universally used language by practically all countries globally has caused Russians to flock to these schools to upgrade their linguistic skills to improve their job prospects. My students are aged from 20 to 61 years old. Russian businesses are requiring more employees with English language skill sets.
Bruce Grant, expat in Russia

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