Happy New Year Post

A very Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of you.  It is time to review our last year's resolutions and to make some new ones. Last year mine were:-

1. Not to buy anything at a flea market, antique fair or car boot sale that does not fit into a shopping bag (I have a very capacious shopping bag)

2.  To buy nothing at all, of any size or shape, that is painted with gloss paint

3. To use up some of the infamous yarn stash   

I didn't do too badly, although I did slip occasionally.  So I have decided to carry these three over into this year and make them into two-year habit-busters.

Then, of course, there are all the other resolutions which we all make and break almost immediately:  lose weight, cut down on drinking alcohol, learn Spanish, take up tap dancing, climb Kilimanjaro for charity - you know the sort of thing.  

There was an article in The Times on 1st January which should give us pause for thought.   Among the conclusions were that we should give up fruit (too much sugar) and eat veggies instead.  I wonder how peas are going to taste on my breakfast meusli.  We should forget the steady 30 minutes a day of exercise and instead do short bursts of 20 seconds of intense activity a few times a week.  No further details are given about this so I'll leave it to your imaginations.   And, quite the worst, 'The new evidence ... is that tiny amounts of alcohol increase your risk of cancer.  If a woman gets through only a very reasonable one bottle of wine a week, her risk of breast cancer goes up by 10 per cent'.  The article goes on to suggest that to balance benefits against risks, we should be drinking no more than 'a quarter of a very modest glass of wine' per day and that half a glass of wine might be described as 'bingeing'.

So, to add to the miserable weather we've been having, the floods, the recession, the fiscal cliff, and having to get through the next 3 months before the car boots start again, I now have to give up drinking.  Happy New Year!