Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Like the new-born puppy sliding out of the birth canal of 2006 into the burlap sack of 2007, I am blind. Unlike that horribly tortured metaphor/puppy, this is because I've lost my glasses and can't wear my contacts, and so my world is currently a vacant blur of colours and approximate shapes to be ignored in the lift until they prod you.

This inability to see could be a metaphor for the year ahead, for trying to make sense out of the opportunities and travails wavering ahead but really it means that I'm totally fucked when it comes to going to the spin class I signed up to this morning in a moment of "Jesus, I'm ludicrously unfit" panic. I just know I'm going to accidentally switch the settings onto Really Difficult And For Swedish People Only.

But then New Year's attracts crap resolutions like a guilt magnet, as if the fact that you've just spent two weeks in the company of people you are related to by blood and very little else shouldn't automatically entitle you to a drink problem anyway. The phrase "Cough. I've given up smoking" has just drifted across the office and made me go even more cross-eyed than I currently am. If I were bored enough to consider giving up smoking it certainly wouldn't be in January when you barely get enough light to avoid rickets and need the glow of a cigarette just so you can avoid tripping over your own feet.

The onset of another year, despite being but a few days away from the perfectly serviceable old one, means that it's demanded that you become that butterfly. You know, the one you see married to Goran Visnjic/Gerry Butler in his 300 kit/the hot one from The Killers who nobody fancies but me, instead of a caterpillar who's perfectly content to sit around drinking cocktails and eating toast while watching Ugly Betty/Grey's Anatomy/Grease 2 again.

This ridiculous period means embracing all the things that make British people happy, like self-imposed suffering and yah-boo-sucks smuggery. On the downside it means giving up all the bad things that make you who you are: the smoking, the excessive drinking, the having of a gym membership and ignoring it in favour of the first two. It means a personality overhaul so exhaustive that by the time you've finished writing the list you feel cleansed enough to put it through the shredder. You'll become a green philanthropist, get involved with your neighbourhood, do a 10k run for Canadian orphans, read aloud to small children who haven't already been brainwashed by Martin Jarvis, read 52 books in 52 weeks. That sort of crap.

I don't want a personality overhaul. I'm going to settle into all my bad habits and enjoy them with a balance of being a nice person. A good person. A good me, more than anything. What I do resolve to do is to keep one evening a week to myself – no meeting up with people, no work, no gym, no nothing. I'll go home at 6 and stay there, and read, or watch telly, or whatever and then the other six days can be as mental as they like.

However, I do rather like the idea of getting involved with the neighbourhood so that's going to be my other resolution. I'm going to do that by getting behind something culturally significant to Britain, by which I mean watching Celebrity Big Brother. I loathe Big Brother like I loathe bananas, Snoop Dogg and sherry. Paris Hilton aside, I'm not massively fond of celebrities either. I do however very much like the idea of becoming totally engrossed in something that's totally bad for me for a fortnight without causing damage to anything other than my brain.

Ooh, Desperate Housewives starts tomorrow as well and I've still got four episodes of Ugly Betty on my desktop. The next 14 days are going to be AWESOME people.

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