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REALISTIC RESOLUTIONS

I DON’T know about you, but I feel pickled, partied-out, totally shot, utterly spent. So January will be different. Well, maybe not the first few days, because we will all still be recovering.

January 3, will, however, be different. Or, I hope, different. Or different unless something really fun is suggested, because technically the kids are still on holiday.

In his first year at school, my eldest son was asked to choose and illustrate his ‘New Year’s resolution’. Beneath a picture of a child shouting ‘yes’ as he did press-ups was writ the legend, ‘I will do exssise evreey day to get fit and hell feey’.

I have kept this picture, both because it is cute and because that has essentially been my New Year’s Eve resolution for the past 30 years, with some dieting and abstinence from alcohol for good measure. Do I follow through with it? Do I hell.

Excited as I am, in theory, by the idea of personal transformation, in practice January is a cold, miserable month in which to suddenly embrace abnegation. Should we make life changes incrementally, or by going cold turkey? I have no idea.

A lot of fiction pokes fun at the idea of self-improvement. In the comic novel Not Working by Lisa Owens, a woman in her late 20s leaves a tedious marketing job to try to find her true path, but finds herself stuck down various rabbit holes.

‘I used to think the problem was I didn’t like my job; but now I see the problem is that wasn’t the whole problem,’ admits the trainee adult.

‘Here’s an account of how I left the world last week: worse, worse, better, worse, same, worse, same,’ admits Eleanor Flood, in Maria Semple’s bleakly hilarious Today Will Be Different, as she flails around Seattle.

Then of course there is Bridget Jones’s Diary, which begins with 20 resolutions, a 5,424-calorie count, and an account of the Alconburys’ New Year’s Day Turkey Curry buffet, where Mark Darcy is priggish.

Go easy on yourself, this week. You’ve got a whole year to come good on any resolutions.