Happy New Year! Are you all nursing gigantic hangovers? I probably will be, but can’t say for sure because I’m writing this days in advance and am, with any luck, sat in the rooftop bar of my Miami hotel as this post publishes onto the world wide web. Your New Year has happened before mine if you’re in the UK – that’s novel for me, as I have never spent New Year away from home. I do hope that I’m having a wonderful time! Hello Me! Hello Mr Bear – are you being looked after? I do hope that my Mum isn’t throwing some enormous rave in my house – you can never be sure with her.

Right, I’m not going to hang about today, let’s get straight to the nitty gritty. New Year’s Resolutions. For most of you, these are a bit of a farce – you can make them, inside your head, and forget about them. Not so, for me, not so. Stupidly I wrote them down and published for all to see and they have been viewed almost a hundred thousand times over the past twelve months. I feel I need to give some kind of report on my progress, so here goes. (If you want to read the original resolutions then click here.)

1) Stop examining my face in the mirror to check for signs of ageing. NO PROGRESS. I do this religiously and obsessively.

2) Stop browsing the internet for bargains. HAHAHAHA! Enough said.

3) Stop being so hard on myself. Well. I haven’t done very well at all so far, have I? And this one? Stop being so critical? I’d have to say NO PROGRESS. I’m worse, if anything – but it’s the only way that I get anything done, so for the moment I can’t see it changing.

4) Stop Grinding Teeth. Yeah, still doing this one. And I had a mouth guard made and have worn it…oooohhhh…..twice?

5) Write more words! Yes! I managed this one! Though I’ve been rather slack for the past couple of months due to workload and potential brain shut-down. But I have definitely increased my output in terms of writing fiction (I do this “on the side”), helped enormously by the fact that I’m paying an arm and a leg to do an MA and I have to hand stuff in.

Well. Not a great progress report, admittedly, but I’m happy enough. Who the hell makes New Year’s Resolutions these days anyway? I need to get with it – move with the times! This is the age of self-congratulation and a ridiculous sense of entitlement – I should be blowing my own trumpet from the rooftops and patting myself on the back with one of those wooden-arm back-scratchers!

With that in mind – well done me. And you – let’s not forget you – well done to you all. Whatever you’re doing, keep on doing it and let’s make 2013 even better than 2012! The only resolution I’ll suggest (and sorry to get all “Nanny State” on you) is that if you smoke then give it up. Best thing that I ever did.

Toodle-pip my friends, enjoy the first day of your brand new year!