New Year’s Resolutions Were Never Built to Last N
By DAVID SEXTON
NEARLY there. Not long now. The year is going, let him go. A time for resolutions, perhaps.
Time certainly for diet and exercise books, which are really nothing more than anthologies of resolutions, to flood the shops.
Neris and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook, anyone? How about The Lemon Juice Diet (“lemon juice is the new cabbage soup”)? Perhaps the pick of the bunch is by “Life Bitch, Steve Miller”: Get Off Your Arse & Lose Weight. Now there’s a ringing resolution. But has anybody ever kept a single New Year’s resolution? Maybe. But not me.
I take comfort from the fact that not even such a hero as Dr Johnson could manage it. Again and again, Johnson resolved to do the simplest things in the year ahead. To get up by eight o’clock in the morning was his great ambition.
In his late fifties, he recorded in his journal: “I purpose to rise at eight because though I shall not yet rise early it will be much earlier than I now rise, for I often lye till two…” On the following New Year’s Eve, he was able to boast of some success, having, or so he claimed, risen every morning that year by eight, or “at least, not after nine”.
But the improvement didn’t last.
Near the end of his life, in his seventies, he was still desperately ordering himself: “To rise at eight, or sooner.” It’s the ever hopeful “or sooner” that gives him away.
It was perhaps Johnson that Samuel Beckett had in mind when, in Krapp’s Last Tape, he portrayed an old man listening to the recorded resolutions of his much younger self including a great vow to eat fewer bananas. “Fatal things for a man with my condition. Cut ‘em out!” But we have already seen him, as soon as he comes on stage, get out a great big banana, stroke it fondly, peel it and eat it. And then slip on the skin..
Poor Johnson’s other recurrent resolutions included keeping up his diary, putting his books in order, setting down at night some plan for the morrow, also known as making a list, and “to drink less strong liquours”. I’ve tried them all myself.
Johnson kept making resolutions, of course, because he kept breaking them. Are resolutions useless then? Not at all. What they can usefully do for us is reveal how obdurate our own natures are. That’s well worth knowing and could save us a bit of money on self- help books, too.
Towards the end of his life, Johnson remarked: “Every Man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time, and frequency of experiment.” In its way, it’s a concise review of all these manuals. Perhaps Waterstone’s could save us all time by putting it on a sticky label on the covers instead of “three for two”? As for myself, I’ll be drinking less strong liquours. You bet. Luckily, I’ve never cared for bananas..
The Royals take on the vipers TELEVISION scheduling over Christmas is a curious business. Dim traditions are honoured, year after year. Dickens. James Bond. Dads Army. The Queens Speech. But not only the Queens speech. Thus we were treated to extended studies of Prince Andrew flogging exports, the Queen Mother in Love, the adventures of Princess Margaret, and Dr David Starkey wandering stoutly up to Windsor, pontificating about Prince Charles.
Why? Perhaps its based on a half-conscious acceptance that we all somehow belong to the royal family and the festive season always involves a little bit more of the relatives than wed like.
Is there no alternative to the House of Windsor? Well, yes. There was one promising development this year nightly adventures among dangerous snakes. The reticulated python, the bushmaster, the pit viper. Now thats more like a real family Christmas.
The furniture of our dreams WHAT is it with sofas? When the poet Cowper was set the task of finding something good to say about them in the 1780s, he claimed they were the ultimate refinement of seating: First Necessity invented stools./ Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,/ And Luxury the accomplishd SOFA at last… But by sofa, Cowper meant no more than an austere wooden daybed. What people mean by sofas now are vast plush barges that you would think would be difficult to park in an aircraft hanger, never mind the average home. Yet to judge from the plethora of sales ads this week, these bulbous enormities are prime objects of desire. Perhaps the fact that sofas play such a large part in British home life reveals our deepest ambition. At the end of the day, what we really, really want is to be supine.
– DEPENDING on who you believe, either a quarter of a million or 300,000 people were out supporting foxhunting on Boxing Day. Either way, it seems to have been a record number. Its three years now since the confused and spiteful legislation was passed, allowing hounds to follow a scent but not to kill foxes or stags.
There are 314 registered hunts, carrying on pretty much as normal and not one rider from them has been successfully prosecuted. Has any law ever been so widely disregarded as an idiocy?
In comparison, the ban on smoking in public places has been observed with absolute fidelity by almost everybody, because even smokers know its right.
DAVID SEXTONS ARCHIVE [L50776] standard.co.uk/ davidsextonSeasonal fare: The Queen shelters from the rain outside church at Sandringham
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