Every New Year’s Eve I make the same resolutions; do 100 sit-ups a day (at least), drink less, don’t shout at my children, read more and improve my French. This year I am wondering if I should bother with any resolutions at all as I never end up keeping them. It is not as if I make them lightly. I truly do believe that I will set aside 15 minutes a day to study the vagaries of French grammar. But I never seem to find a spare 15 minutes. As for the drinking, my husband and I have given up alcohol for January several times. It isn’t as bad as it sounds, actually once I get past that initial craving for a glass of wine I quite enjoy the saintly feeling I get from being totally sober. But tomorrow is January 1st and the thought of not having a drink to get me through the last day of the Italian influx seems worse than conjugating French transitive verbs. My aunt has now managed to fall out with my uncle so the atmosphere is strained to say the least. But my father continues to amaze me. He has actually played with the children and taught Olivia to write “Benedetto is very beautiful” on his laptop. A phrase I’m sure will come in useful.

I think rather than vow to do everything at once in 2007 I will have one resolution a month; January drink less, February read lots of books, March do sit-ups every spare moment. There’s only so much multi-tasking a girl can stand.