The best resolution (From The Northern Echo)

The best resolution

12:07pm Wednesday 30th December 2009 in

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WELL yes, there is always a chance that by this time next year I will have lost three stones, walked Hadrian’s Wall, written three more books, kept to the moisturising regime and even sorted out the study.

You might have given up smoking, cut down on the booze, run a marathon and not yelled at the kids at all.

On the other hand...

The good news is that psychologists now say that making new year resolutions is pointless. They are so big and ambitious that they are doomed to failure. Add to that the fact that it’s the gloomy time of year when you want to curl up and cosset yourself, not be bold and determined and deprive yourself of stuff you like, and it all seems a spectacularly daft idea anyway.

If you want to improve something about yourself or your life, you should do so when it occurs to you, not at some arbitrary date with a hangover and Auld Lang Syne still ringing in your ears. Though if you’re planning to ditch the booze, that probably helps.

We also ask too much of ourselves.

No huge and dramatic aims – instead we should set ourselves small steps towards small goals. More achievable and less shattering if we fail.

And then what resolution to choose? Most of those we make tend to be pretty self indulgent really. Self improvement is all very well but it doesn’t do much for the wider world really, does it?

Then I read of a school in the US.

It’s in a really tough, deprived quarter of New York, where the children have little family life and the school has steel doors and armed guards.

Sounds grim. Yet the school has been transformed and once inside, the atmosphere is cheerful, welcoming and incredibly purposeful.

The students don’t wear a uniform, but they wear T-shirts bearing the school motto, a motto that sums up the school’s ethos.

“Work Hard. Be Kind,” it says.

Which seems to say it all really. As advice for life, it’s hard to better that.

And so, if you are shilly-shallying over which impossible target to set yourself on Friday, I say forget it. Instead Work Hard, Be Kind.

It could make you happier. And it will certainly make the world a better place.

SO that’s it for another year.

Very many thanks for all your letters, postcards, emails and telephone calls throughout 2009.

The MPs and their expenses had you so angry that the emails arrived with a blaze of sparks – like those Screamers in the Harry Potter books.

One or two of you even suggested that I might like to stand for Parliament myself.

Lovely idea, thank you, but no fun at all. Now if you offered me the chance to be a dictator...

While the rest of the world was getting terribly worked up about recycling and making do and mending, we were having fun with your memories of parachute silk in the war and just after. Some of it quite legally on sale, and not needing coupons.

But much more was acquired very dubiously, which was much more interesting.

Many a bride went off on honeymoon with her underwear made of parachute silk – often, apparently, provided by the best man.

Time to draw a veil, I think.

We considered the rights and wrongs of huge divorce settlements, big weddings, university education and year-long maternity leave – and managed to be pretty well balanced on every issue. With one or two rabid exceptions – those who EMAIL IN CAPITALS – you are a pretty fairminded lot.

Jade Goody sold her life and death to provide a fund for her children and whatever we’d thought about her before, we loved her for it. We also love Amanda Redman, Joanna Lumley, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins for being fantastic, and Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole for providing us with so much innocent merriment at their antics.

This page is the closest we can get to a conversation in print, so your letters and emails are your chance to have your say and get your two penn’orth in.

It’s been great to hear from you all in 2009. May the conversation continue in 2010.

Happy New Year!

Prince William's night on the tiles

YES, it was a bit of a token gesture for Prince William to bed down for the night on a piece of cardboard in a dingy alley. But even with his detectives close by, it can’t have been much fun.

And it worked, didn’t it? It got publicity for the plight of homeless people and Centrepoint, the charity that helps them. A result.

But now that he’s sampled life on the streets, surely it’s only fair that Prince William reciprocates the hospitality. How about a night at the palace for Centrepoint’s residents – complete with comfy beds, a slap-up meal – gold plate optional – and a balcony view of Changing the Guard?

Breakdown in security

THE Pope was attacked by a woman who had attacked him before. Airlines who have been waging a security war on our deodorant and shampoo, managed to allow on board someone with explosive, on a wanted list, whose own father had warned them about him...

Security might be a tough challenge, but there were a few clues there, boys, weren’t there?

He might have had explosives in his underpants, but as long as he wasn’t carrying a lethal bottle of shampoo, that was all right.

After the shoe bomber, security required us to take off our shoes for security checks. At this rate, we’ll all be stripping off to our underwear before they let us on a plane.

Stay-at-home holidays already look more appealing.

White Christmas

YES it was cold and driving was tricky and there’s probably more to come. And I was heartily sick of having to lace up my walking boots every time I went out. And of pouring salt on the front doorstep.

On the other hand, it was beautiful, wasn’t it?

We walked to church on Christmas morning, crunching through the snow, the sky blue, the trees thick with frost and the fields around us all sparkly white in the sunshine. It was like being in a Christmas card and if I’d bumped into Father Christmas himself, I don’t think I would have batted an eyelid.

Cold, inconvenient – but above all, absolutely magical.

Work first, study later

UNIVERSITY degrees in two years? Great. The sooner the better, for some courses at least.

Once upon a time, students were expected to read huge amounts. They needed long summer vacations to get through the reading list and research and start on the essays for the next year.

But now most of those readings lists have dwindled to the size of your average paperback.

So who needs long holidays?

Let students have a year in work before they go to uni – and apply during that year when they already have their results, thus doing away with that last-minute panic and scrabble for places – and then, once they’ve got some money saved, they can concentrate like mad and be done in 21 months. Perfect.

The only thing wrong with the plan, is that it means I’m in agreement with Lord Mandelson.

Scary.

TWO-THIRDS of drivers questioned for a recent poll said they think an “etiquette”

section should be included in the driving test to prevent road rage, drivers hogging the central lane of the motorway, parking selfishly or overtaking on the inside.

But they don’t need an elaborate “etiquette” to prevent that. It’s simple good manners which, on the road like everywhere else, are becoming increasingly rare.