HOPES FOR Our Daily Express columnists offer their
Eye cartoon showing two men sitting side by side on a park bench, eating their packed lunches. One says to the other: “Well, Bob – fancy bumping into you again! It must be years. What are you doing these days?” Bob replies: “Well, as a matter of fact I’m writing a novel.”
His old friend digests this for a few moments before replying: “I’m not, either.”
Exactly. But at least I’ve constructed my plot and made a start. Wish me luck.
Nothing ever turns out quite the way we expect, does it? Just look back over 2018.
I bet all sorts of things happened in your life that you simply did not see coming, some good, some bad. It’s far better to expect the unexpected than cling to some crystal ball offering false images of the future.
But whatever befalls you in 2019, I hope that it is all to the good. Happy New Year!
I do not make New Year’s resolutions. First, because they are nearly always doomed to failure, and secondly, because it is too near Lent and one challenge at a time is quite enough, but thirdly, because if whatever you resolve is important enough then really you should be doing it anyway and not be waiting until January 1 to start! However, last year I did make a resolution: to use less plastic. Less, not none. Resolutions should always be achievable. Indeed throughout 2018 I did remember, occasionally anyway, to take my own shopping bag instead of getting a plastic one and I did switch to glass tonic water bottles, but that happened largely because I fell in love with Fever Tree.
So this year I resolve merely to use even less plastic. It will not improve my life, but it might help the planet and be kinder to wild life. I suspect the average cupboard under the stairs contains enough plastic bags to last a lifetime so I am going to try not to add to my stock this year.
The crucial word there is try. Too many resolutions are too ambitious, but I will obtain a folding-up shopping bag for smaller purchases and make it a permanent fixture in my handbag. In fact I will order one now! New Year’s resolutions and I have never really got on. What is the point of making promises to yourself that you are never going to keep, especially when most of the traditional pledges involve stopping doing what I enjoy?
So in 2019, I plan to eat more, drink more and enjoy myself more. I’m going to try to increase my knowledge of wine, which will not be that difficult as I know very little. Getting out in the great outdoors is one of life’s pleasures so this year I plan to do a lot more birdwatching, not just the everyday stuff I do when I’m walking my dog, but actually getting out to more and more nature reserves. I hope to make the target I’ve had – and missed – in recent years: to see 200 species in the UK. Given that the most fanatical birders can clock up 400, it should not be that tough a task.
I’ve also written a Viking saga that is sitting on the shelf instead of rampaging into the bookshops. This year I’m going to get off my bottom and make an effort to get it published so the world can learn the joys and horrors of my very violent creations. They make football hooligans seem like choirboys. Their year has come.
In my teens and 20s, I was so slim that I could suck my stomach in far enough that you could virtually see my backbone outlined against it. These days, I’m a little, er, stouter, round the middle. So I’m resolved to try to emulate the disappearing acts who were Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and BBC newsreader Huw Edwards, though I realise this means cutting out sugar, bread and alcohol – three of the things that make life most worthwhile.
As for predictions for the year ahead, I am backing Harry and Meghan to come up with an unusual name for their firstborn. I am not suggesting they are about