thanks for the suggestions
I have managed to come up with a way of doing it which is short and sweet,
dim strabbmonths as String *10
for j=-1 to 2
strabbmonths(j+1)=DateAdd("m", j, Now)
strabbmonths(j+1)=Format$(j+1), "MMM")
next j
I tried it out, and lo and behold it worked !