The road to hell

Although the abandonment of people’s new year’s resolutions is as predictable an annual staple as Tim Henman’s exit from Wimbledon and the riots at Drumcree, it never ceases to amuse.

Folk begin the year with the best of intentions, loudly proclaiming to anyone who’ll listen that they’re going to stop smoking, cut down radically on their drinking, work harder, broaden their horizons, get fit, end world hunger, drop the debt and find a cure for cancer.

Then one day around about now (at the latest) they come to their senses for long enough to realise that none of these things is going to happen, because if it’s only the middle of January and they’re already kneeling on the floor of a pub toilet resting their cheek on the cool porcelain of the lavatory bowl, it’s highly unlikely that they’re going to find the time or enthusiasm at any point in the next 11 months to finalise the adoption of that litter of Romanian orphans they saw rocking to and fro in unison on the six o’clock news last Thursday.

It’s at this time of year that I’m always particularly envious of teetotalers and non-smokers. While it’s easy to announce that you’re planning to cut out the liquor and fags from the soapbox of a bar-stool in late December after a fortnight’s life-sapping carousing, putting one’s intentions into practice is an infinitely more difficult proposition in the cold light of a brand new year.

People who don’t drink or smoke, on the other hand, have no such problem. If they decide that the time has come for them to broaden their horizons and embark on a life devoted to the drunken generation of thick fogs of cigarette smoke, it’s a relatively easy goal to achieve.

True, the first couple of days are bound to be the hardest, just as they will be for the roisterer who is attempting to go cold turkey. Nevertheless, if the will to succeed is strong enough and the challenge is attacked with the necessary gusto, it won’t take long for someone who spent new year’s eve sitting at home enjoying Des O’Connor At 40 (that’s years in showbusiness, by the way, not years of age) to acquire a taste for cigarettes and alcohol that will hopefully remain with them for the remaining years of what promises to be a much more pleasurable existence.

Excessively lofty ambition seems to be the stumbling block over which most people’s new year’s resolutions come a cropper. Well, excessively lofty ambition and the fact that they publicise their promises by foolishly informing people that they plan to jog 10 kilometres a day, despite knowing deep down that nothing could be further from the truth.

There’s really no need to tell anybody you’re embarking on a grueling fitness regime, not least because nobody cares. Having said that, people do remember and take great glee in reminding you of your idle promises six months down the line in June when you’re even fatter and more unfit than ever before.

If you have to tell people something to make yourself feel better about the sorry state of your life, let them know you’re “going to join the gym.” Joining gyms is easy and anyone can do it. The important thing to remember is that just because you’re a member, you don’t actually have to go.

To finish, I’ve decided to outline, for the record, my own new year’s resolutions for 2003. Most of them are simple, and the ones that aren’t come equipped with carefully-worded, self-contained get-out clauses that ought to ensure that I’m able to keep most of them with a minimum of pain or anguish.

I will continue to labour under the delusion that I will have given up smoking by my 30th birthday. On my 30th birthday, I will promise to give up the next day, as it would be foolish to attempt to give them up on the occasion of what promises to be a monumental piss-up. On the day after my 30th birthday I will attempt to give up smoking and more than likely fold like a deckchair and light up at about 4pm.

I will never go jogging around Clapham Common – a vast expanse of green running amenity that I can see through my living room window if I open it, stick my torso out and look right – but will continue to muse inwardly on a daily basis that next week is the week that I’ll begin jogging around Clapham Common.

I will buy a bicycle, park it in the yard and watch it rust as I ponder that there must be safer ways of familiarising myself with the many parts of London I have never seen before than cycling to them.

I will learn a new and interesting fact every day. For example, did you know that chewing gum while peeling onions will stop you crying?

And that liquid helium flows uphill?

See, already I’m surpassing my wildest expectations, which can only bode well for the coming months. A very happy new year to one and all.