Queensbury Rules, old chap, pip pip… or… Plans and Resolutions.

I could start screaming like a maniac knowing the New Year is breathing down my neck like the proverbial alien in a dark corridor, its acid sputum carving rivulets through my trembling flesh. But I won't. This is because I have, for the first time in a long time, got plans. They aren't set in stone (or any other solid material, an anvil say…) but they exist.

Plans feel very much better than the unformed, hazy sort-of notion I went into the beginning of 2011 clutching in my sweaty mitts. I...