Words by Zoe Lyons
I for one am slightly relieved that fewer and fewer places accept cheques these days. It’s not that I am adverse to papery antiquated payment methods, its not that at all. I am something of a show off so I actively seek out things that require my scrawling over dramatic signature. Its just that it usually takes me the first nine months of a “new” year to get the date right. I have just about mastered it by the time we are once again ready to belt out a drunken version of Auld Langs Syne and I have to to get used to writing a new year in the tip right hand corner.
The older you get the quicker the years seem to whip around. Old Father Time appears to have had a midlife crisis all of his own and has bought himself a high powered Ducatti motorbike with which to speed through the months. As the starting gun of another year is fired wildly into the night air and we all gallop off into 2014 some of you dear people will be tempted to make this the year the year that you make resolutions to better yourself.
Friends I urge you, don’t bother. It is not that I am a defeatist, no, I like to think of myself as a well practiced realist. I have enough bleak Januarys under my belt to know very well that burgeoning bright ideas about a fitter, detoxed and more motivated version of yourself wither and die in the half light of mid winter nights. Here is a small selection of my own never for-filled resolutions from previous years, they may ring some bells with you.
I will go to the Gym three times a week.
I will learn French (I have the Rosetta Stone programmes to prove it).
I will learn an instrument, probably the trumpet.
I will become more financially savvy.
I will do some charity work.
I will learn to knit.
I will do a Vietnamese cookery course.
I will attempt to be happy everyday.
I will appreciate Art more and have a good working knowledge of all things culturally. cutting edge so that I can participate more confidently in dinner party chat.
I will eat less meat.
I will start flossing.
I will not drink on a school night….. (I don’t actually attend school anymore so this one was doomed to fail from the off!)
I will spend half an hour a day meditating.
I will read War and Peace.
Not one of these self improvement attempts has ever survived past the 3rd January, leaving me not only “unimproved” but thoroughly unimpressed with myself and with a copy of the Tolstoy classic as a door stop.
Here is the plan folks. This year why don’t we just try to all do something that gets us through the month of January that doesn’t require much effort or sacrifice. I am aiming for less purge and more pleasure. Ladies and Gentleman a very happy New Year to all and may you have a fabulous January or “month of a thousand cakes” as I will be calling it.
Zoe hosts Bent Double the first Sunday of every month at Brighton Komedia.
Follow Zoe on Twitter @zoelyons