I have not exactly made New Year Resolutions as much as New Year Intentions.
I did make some resolutions, which I announced at breakfast this afternoon, which were to become rich and thin, and both the children laughed so much that I thought they might choke on their sausages.
They did not seem to feel that there was much likelihood of either.
I must regretfully acknowledge that they are right, and that I will have to settle for something less ambitious. Hence the New Year Intentions. They are like resolutions but without the commitment and guilt.
Here are my Intentions.
- I am going to find out how to work my computer and delete some of the junk off it. I am going to have a nice slideshow of pleasing photographs, especially ones that I can tell what they are. Everything that looks as though it was taken during a major clash of tectonic plates can go.
- I am going to find out how to work the television. The Peppers have showed us some very startling and lovely things that it can do, or at any rate they would have if they were allowed to come and see us which of course they aren’t. We set it up last night so that it showed a film of logs burning merrily in a grate, complete with crackling sound effects. This was so realistic that it really made us all feel warmer, and the bits of us that were closest to the television actually felt hot. The human mind is a marvellous thing, imagine being able to be fooled like that even though you know perfectly well that something is not happening. Anyway, we watched the pretend fire, and then after midnight we learned how you can get it to show the things that come from somebody’s telephone and watched fireworks in celebration of 2021.
- I am going to clean the bathroom more often.
- I am going to get a bit thinner. Actually I don’t know if this is a good idea really, because I bought some new trousers last summer and if I get thinner then they will not fit any more. I do not want to be wearing the sort of ridiculously baggy trousers that need a belt, so perhaps I had better stay portly. Ah well.
- I am going to do all of the sewing jobs that are piled up in my cupboard. All of them.
- I am going to get a bit richer, because there are a lot of things I am going to need money for this year. Number Two Daughter has invited Lucy and Oliver to come and visit her in Canada next summer, and they want to go very badly. Neither of them can afford it and so we are going to have to start trying to raise some cash. I am going to try and find out properly how the stock market works and turn the small stash of cash that we have saved against a terrible emergency into millions. This would involve a return of roughly two thousand percent, but I am quite sure that it could be done. I am going to befriend some Government officials and find out what the next craze is going to be. I wish I had thought of this before face masks became fashionable.
- I am going to do more of the things that I like to do, like going for walks and writing stories, and not so much of the things that I do not like to do. I am not sure how I can work this around Intention 3, but I am going to have a go.
- I am going to eat smoked trout for breakfast whenever I feel like it. Since the children have been home we have been doing some of the things that we like doing best when we are staying at the Midland, like eating a buffet breakfast. In fact I have liked this even better than the Midland breakfast, apart from that nobody comes round in a white apron with a jug of coffee. We have eaten still-warm fresh bread, and lots of cheese, and sausages wrapped in bacon, and yoghurt and melon and of course slices of smoked trout and mackerel. We have not managed to organise this before about one in the afternoon, but the benefit of being late has been that we have been able to add a guilt-free single malt to the menu. It has been very splendid indeed.
We went for a walk this afternoon, because we were all together and because it was the last day before Mark has got to go back to work. It was the most wonderful walk. We went up to the top of Gummer’s How, and reached the top just as the sun was starting to set. We could see for miles and miles. The mountains were white and grim all around us, and in the distance we could see the sea, blindingly gold in the last of the sunshine and further still, we could see across the bay to Blackpool Tower.
It was splendid.
I am looking forward to the new year.
