Promises... promises...

MY wife’s New Year’s resolution is to go on two diets. There’s never enough food with one.

She’ll fail because, as a family, we have never stuck to a pledge beyond the fag end of January. I always decide to turn over a new leaf, but end-up smoking that, too.

Ever since I didn’t become the first person to step on the moon, my New Year’s resolutions have been a harsh lesson in failure. On the plus side, coming to terms with failure so early in the calendar year acts as something of a comfort blanket for the disappointments, despair and disasters that must surely follow. Usually on a weekly basis.

In 2015 I vowed to give up drinking. Medics said it was the worst case of acute dehydration they’d come across.

My 2019 promise to eat more locally sourced produce was scuppered by my neighbour’s New Year’s resolution to build a bigger fence between our gardens.

Last year I resolved to smoke less than 10 cigarettes a day, which puzzled my wife. She pointed out I currently didn’t smoke at all.

This week, despite having the body of a God – it’s Buddha – I’ve pledged to take better care of my worn body. I’m at an age where cholesterol and blood pressure have to be kept in check and DIY checks undertaken for lumps.

On Boxing Day, I shrieked: “I’ve found a lump and it’s bloody big. No, sorry, my mistake – there’s a satsuma in my pocket.”

I promise to follow my GP’s advice and undergo regular medical MoTs. “By the looks of you,” he mused, “you’re ensconced in an extremely poor diet – baked beans, curry, chocolate...”

“You can tell that by simply studying me?” I asked.

“Studying your tie, actually,” he shrugged.

He’s a man after my own heart. He wants me to give it to someone on the transplant list in Salford.

Like an old motor, bits of me are wearing out. But my doctor is certain that within my lifetime surgery will have advanced to such a degree the wonky body parts can be replaced by gleaming new organs.

“I have a vision,” he announced grandly, “of pensioners so supple and agile, thanks to transplant advancements, they could moonwalk.”

That, at least, would add spice to the four trips to the loo every night. Or the Post Office queue.

“At your current rate of decay,” the good doctor warned, leaning back in his ox-blood chair, “they’d probably chuck out everything but your ears. What they’d do with the wiry stuff sprouting out of them, I really don’t know.”

It’s a sobering thought. Where once sat Mike Lockley would be two lug ‘oles on a cushion, which rather flies in the face of my doctor’s plea to take up cycling. Perhaps my wife could be talked into taking up the hobby, but would she want to transport my ears in a basket on the handlebars? I think not.

I suppose I’m lucky. My drinking companion Colin has been told he’d be reduced to a bum. The decline from respected council worker to a useful implement for parking bicycles is truly tragic.

Last time I underwent a body MoT, my doctor joked: “The good news is you’re definitely not a hypochondriac.”

I didn’t see the funny side. I wanted him to say I had the body of a 30-year-old, but he refused. He fears he could be sued for dishing out such disinformation. Sued by a 30-year-old. Couldn’t he meet me half way and say I’ve the body of a very sickly 30-year-old?

Each year my GP asks for a urine sample: I’m beginning to worry it’s a hobby. He shakes the liquid in a vessel, scrutinises it and sighs: “We’re not getting any younger are we, Mr Lockley?” “Are you basing your diagnosis on the colour?” I asked, a little stung by the diagnosis.

“Not entirely,” he smiled. “I’m basing it on the 15 minutes I’ve had to wait for you to fill the bottle.”

“You want to see 80, don’t you, Mr Lockley?” he asked during the recent visit.

Depends, frankly. Depends on whether I’ll dribble, smell and have to indulge in line-dancing classes at an old folks’ home. What irks is he dismisses the things that really concern me, such as my faltering memory.

“For example?” he asked, leaning back in his leather chair and tapping the tortoiseshell stem of his glasses on his teeth. “For example,” I stammered, “last week I put the shoe polish in the fridge.” “Hardly a life-changing anomaly,” he laughed. There speaks someone who has never tried shoe polish sandwiches.

Neighbours have invited me for “drinks with nibbles”. They spoil that cat

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Bought a new coconut moisturiser, but my coconut still feels very rough

My New Year’s resolution is to stop being so pessimistic. I don’t think I can do it.