Blonde's Eye View: Aims for 2010

I spent my vacation stewing over the round robin printouts people enclose in their Christmas cards.

You can't help but sneer at these impersonal, mawkish summaries of the writer and their family's annual achievements.

Full of details of their volunteer holiday in Papua New Guinea building an impoverished despot's outdoor toilet, or the news that in February their new daughter, Gonorrhoea, was born.

I loathe these self-important letters as they force comparisons with my own empty life. I wouldn't be able to fill a page.

In January I joined a gym, but never went. February I stayed in and watched CSI, because it was cold.

I considered a mind enhancing hike across Peru, and signing up for Cordon Bleu cookery classes in the South of France, but settled for a week on a hot beach in a generic sunspot.

We discussed starting a family, but that was dropped when I opted to change the spare room into a walk-in wardrobe. And I brought some more shoes.

All this prompts me to write a list for the year, not only do I include the usual health orientated resolutions, but I add some big aims as well.

Visiting Vietnam, lowering my carbon footprint and finishing writing my book. Then I tear it up.

Even if I could be bothered to do all those things, I won't be bothered (or organised) enough to write the round robin letter at the end.

I like my evenings and weekends wasted (in every sense) in the pub with my mates. This year I'll just resolve to recycle the round robins before I read them.