Brave new year
My New Year resolutions for 2008 are many and varied. I am exceptionally good at making resolutions and exceptionally bad at keeping them which is an unfortunate situation, but whereas as a small child I used to resolve each year not to commit any more sins, this year I am going to focus on some more attainable targets 
My first resolution is that I am going to learn French. My boyfriend took me to France in September, and I was terribly embarrassed by the fact that I was unable to communicate with any of his friends except by inane smiling. I spent five years at school studying French, and came out of the experience with an A* GCSE and a complete inability to speak it. Well no, that’s a lie; I can say certain things…
Je m’appelle Radio et j’ai douze ans. Je porte une jupe bleu marine, une chemise blanches, des chaussures noires et des chaussettes noires. Je n’aime pas les uniformes parce que tout le monde se ressemble et pour les filles porter une cravatte c’est stupide. Je voudrais être secrétaire. Je veux travailler dans un bureau avec des ordinateurs. Je ne veux pas être vétérinaire. Je ne veux pas travailler avec les animaux. C’est ennuyeux.
That is the sum total of my French. I hope it impresses you. It impresses me, actually, that eight years later I am still able to recite without pausing for breath a stack of sentences which I memorised without understanding, but it is unlikely to impress anyone in France. And so I am going to learn French, so that next time my boyfriend takes me to France I am not such an embarrassment and also so I can eavesdrop more effectively on what people are saying. It’s very frustrating to know people are talking about you but not be able to understand the words 
I already have a vast quantity of books, and an MP3 player with a Michel Thomas course on it, so the only explanation I will have for not being able to speak better French this time next year will be that I am lazy. I am hoping to make good progress with it in January when I will be working away from home and able to spread all my books out in a hotel room and concentrate. Learning French at home is problematic, because I don’t want anyone to know I am learning French. It is, admittedly, a harmless enough pastime, but a curious person might wish to know why I am troubling to learn French, and I cannot think of a satisfactory answer. To tell the truth, that I have been on holiday to France, is not an option because, as already alluded to, as far as some people are concerned I was in Düsseldorf in September, not Toulouse.
My second resolution is to lose weight. I just told this to one of my friends and he said “Do you have any to lose?” which was nice of him, but actually I am almost a stone heavier than I was this time last year and so as of yesterday I am on a diet. Not a diet that will involve much actual dieting, and certainly not one which will require me coming into contact with anything green, but I’m going to stop eating junk food between meals unless it’s a chocolate emergency, and make sure I walk four miles a day. Losing weight will be greatly beneficial, because my current suit is going to holes and I have a new suit in the wardrobe which I need to be under 8 stone 5 to fit into. If I could lose about half a stone, that would be perfect
My third resolution is to save money. I already started off with this one before the New Year, and have set myself up an internet savings account into which I am going to transfer £500 a month. I got a nasty shock a while ago when I realised I was spending as much as I earned, and so I have carried out a thorough review of my finances, including changing both my mobile phone tariffs to cheaper ones and resolving to keep careful track of the cash I spend. At the end of each month I’m going to transfer anything I have left in my current account over to the savings account, and the hope is that I’ll soon (well, soon in a relatively long term sense of the word soon) have enough for a deposit on a house. I might just about be able to scrape together a house deposit at the moment, but possibly not, and that would absorb every last penny I possess, which isn’t a sensible thing to do if you’re buying a house. Houses need decorating and furnishing, and because unfortunately circumstances mean that I won’t be able to coordinate buying a house with getting married, I will have to buy all the furniture and appliances myself. If I were going to get married people would buy me washing machines and tables and towels which would all be rather helpful, but that is not, I suppose, an argument to justify marriage :( Hence my savings account. It has just occurred to me that I could do interesting calculations about how many bars of chocolate I need to not eat until I can afford a washing machine, but perhaps that would be a bit sad 
My fourth resolution is to learn to drive. I really need to be able to drive for my job but haven’t learnt yet for a combination of reasons; not being well enough, being too busy and being too scared. This is going to be the year when I start, although I may leave it until February. I am trying to console myself that there are a lot of people I know who are quite stupid and yet perfectly well able to drive, but I am so terribly clumsy that I still have grave doubts about my own abilities. This is another reason why I need to save lots of money; driving is expensive :( Luckily, I have actually just got a pay rise
I have various other resolutions which aren’t important enough to merit their own numbers. I need to be more conscientious at work, because it is probable that I will be staying at work longer than I once intended to. Well, I intended to have left work several weeks ago when I failed my exams. I want to become more confident and not so reluctant to talk to people, and possibly a bit more truthful towards certain members of my family. I can see there would be advantages to having a life which is simpler than mine
How many of these things I will achieve is debatable, but I hope by writing them in public I will be somehow shamed out of deviating from them for fear of people asking me how I am getting on…
I have decided not to buy a paper diary by the way. I had a quick flick through last year’s diary yesterday, and it didn’t make very cheerful reading. Bizarrely, the first entry of 2007 ended with me asking God for the strength to cope with the year. I say bizarrely because I can’t imagine writing something like that now and I am curious about at what point I changed from being a person who could write that sort of thing to a person who could not.
Tags: French, new year, resolutions