Autumn resolutions
Shane Watson on what to aim for now
It’s Back to School week, including for those of us who last embarked on an autumn term when the Bee Gees were in the charts. We try to fight the BTS feeling. Possibly you tagged a couple of days on to the Bank Holiday weekend in the hope of postponing the inevitable. But there is no escape: this is the first week of September, so it’s back to chilly mornings, tight leather shoes and making autumn resolutions. We thought this year might be different, but no, it turns out the urge to list our plans for selfimprovement is very much alive and a lot stronger than it ever is in January.
Here are some adult BTS resolutions you may recognise:
Must have an orderly, fully-equipped desk. Sadly, getting your desk sorted no longer involves the purchase of the protractor and whatnot set in the tin (feared the contents, liked the tin), or those marzipan-smelling rubbers (erasers, if you must). These days, you might want to buy a laptop case and get a new phone cover. No point using hand sanitiser every other minute if your phone cover is a Petri dish of horrors, including whatever it picked up when you dropped it in that Portaloo in 2018.
Must buy things you only purchase at the start of autumn, including coat hangers, eco cloths, a kettle descaler, and those cups you put under the wheels of sofas.
Must not rush to buy a brand new autumn blazer. First, open the spare cupboard and trawl through all the blazers in coatbags dating back to 2004. We are not Jerry Hall, preserving for posterity the puffball we wore when we got off with Mick. No, we are just disorganised and rebuying the same stuff over and over.
Must get more Danish/ Swedish. Never that clear on the difference – possibly we want to get a bit more Dutch, but we know what we mean, broadly. We want clean hair; clear eyes; unfussy yet striking clothes; decent specs, not wonky sat-on ones; some sensible yet sexy boots; pickled herring in the fridge (not leftover macaroni); a bicycle with a basket; really good lighting in our homes; a 10 o’clock bedtime; a wholesome but rewarding social life that is not solely based around drinking into the early hours, allowing for 10 o’clock bedtime; a can-do healthy attitude; a can-do equal opportunities partner who, for relaxation, digs, cooks or maintains his boat.
New Entry for 2020: Must eat out at the beginning of the week. Love this one.
Must play tennis. Because we’ve tried everything else, eg running and skipping. (How hard is skipping? Also you have to customise the skipping rope to the right length, which is a huge palaver that might even involve buying wire cutters.) Must be far more scientific about TV watching: because now there’s the new reality show Selling Sunset (TV crack alert), which could seriously eat into our Must Get Past Page 40 of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror And The Light resolution.
Must order some printed stationery. Probably won’t. But it would certainly scratch that BTS itch.
Also New Entry: do not feel obliged to reconnect with people we haven’t been in touch with this year and haven’t missed and vice versa.
Must prepare to eat porridge for breakfast every day from next week. (Note: the eat porridge resolution has taken over from give up smoking, which never happened… and then did). Porridge may be a tougher one to crack, however, as we’re torn between that and the nil by mouth before noon theory.
Must floss more. This is always on the autumn resolution list. Why using a dental brush is more challenging than a home bikini wax, we have no idea.
Autumn resolutions for adults It might be back to school for kids, but grown-ups can start afresh, too
There is no point using hand sanitiser every other minute if your phone cover isa Petri dish of horrors