2006, eh?

Happy New Year to you all. Hope the hangovers have abated at least a little.

So I suppose I should be making resolutions, but as I will never keep them, I don't really see the point.

2005 saw me gain a GCSE in Spanish after two years of evening classes. I had always wanted to learn Spanish, but it wasn't an option at my school. When my parents bought a place in Spain a few years ago, I gave me some motivation, and as my company were willing to pay for my tuition expenses in return for the odd piece of translation work, I finally did it. The morning of my reading and writing exams, I memorised two sheets which showed me how to conjugate the various tenses. By that evening I had forgotten all of them, but my tactic was sufficient to get me an A*. While I can still read and understand the language sufficiently to get by, I cannot write or speak it, having no memory of basic grammar to be able to construct a sentence. In a fortnight's time I am starting a short course of intermediate conversation with my old teacher in order to brush up a little. That means I now have two weeks to actually learn how to conjugate (or subjugate as Wyndham appropriately has it) my verbs so as not to humiliate myself. No doubt I will fail to do this, and end up doing what I do best, that is, winging it.

However this course will help me in another way, and that is, because this course is at a school about 2 and a half miles away, and not on a bus route from my house, I will have to bike there. I didn't have a bike in my teens, and only acquired one in 2004. Although I can obviously still ride, I am not very confident on the open road. I got lights and a lock as stocking fillers this Christmas, by way of a hint, and I have now been out and bought myself a helmet so I can cycle in safety, if not with dignity. This five miles of cycling once a week will form at least one part of my new exercise regime.

I saw myself in the mirror the other day and realised I was only an orange perm and some tan lines away from being Bubbles de Vere. As I am off to the Caribbean in two months, this is not good. Duck and I have decided that the diet officially starts tomorrow, so tomorrow morning will be the first of the weigh-ins. I have decided to shame myself into starving by publishing my weight once a week on my blog, in a cheaper version of Weightwatchers. Paul Mckenna will also be series-linked on Sky+. Luckily, my football training also starts again next week, so that should help to shift a bit (I bought shiny new shinpads this morning - what a glamourous life I lead*) and if Surly can assist by forcing me to the gym once a week, I might just get there. I despise dieting though, so expect me to be in a really bad mood for the next few months.

So there you go. I don't regard learning Spanish properly and losing weight as proper resolutions, because I think resolutions are something you do to try to actually improve yourself. As these are more like acts of desperation to avoid humiliating myself, they don't count.

*I actually made a bit of a Freudian slip and typed "need" instead of "lead" the first time. I'm wondering if I should have bothered correcting it. Sigh.