No Year Resolutions

I think I might have a gene missing. Lots of Bloggers are putting up their New Year Resolutions - and good luck to them - but I won't be doing that because I don't have any.


You see, the trouble is, as a novelist, I always see the consequences to any action or statement. So I see the old man in the baby and the danger of failure and disappointment in any public plan to lose weight, take more exercise, read more improving books or whatever the list of resolutions contains.

I'd rather make private pacts with myself and then I'm the only one who can sigh and shake her head at the end of the year. But then I don't really like New Year. December 31st is the day my mother died so it always feels unnatural to be partying and celebrating.

Oh dear; this is all beginning to sound rather curmudgeonly and I don't mean it to. I think it's partly that for me, the year really begins in October, the academic New Year. Maybe it's because at 19 I was the oldest girl in my secondary school (I stayed on an extra year to take Greek A Level - how geeky is that?). Then there was university and postgrad and more than 25 years of the girls' education from nursery school for the oldest till the extended end of the youngest's second undergraduate degree in 2009.






I can understand making resolutions in October; it all goes with bundles of new pens, pristine notebooks, lined pads and a fresh haul of books to study.

January is a good time to think of beginnings, as well. I always feel hopeful once we are past the shortest day and the year is turning on its upward curve, like Fortune's Wheel or the London Eye, on the way up to the giddy heights of summer.

I just know that most of the things I want to happen in 2013 are not in my control - maybe I should make a list of New Year Wishes instead?

Whether you make resolutions or wishes or not, I wish all you who kindly read this blog a very Happy New Year and all the things you wish or resolve for yourselves.