Aim High, Fall Fast, Land Hard, Regret Everything

So here we go then: with some aims for the Year of Our Lord Twenty-double-el. Or as I am now going to call it 20-lublubublulblblulblulbub!

That really only works if I do it in person, so do request it next time you see me, friends, and I shall perform for you like the flamboyant simian I am. Do.

Aim the First: Be a bit more timely with blogging

Oooh, er... Um... *shifts uncomfortably*

OK, so I'm doing the traditional January 1st or at the very least, January 2nd if you are one of the cool dudes who see in the New Year lying underneath their television, watching the pixels dancing vertically and incomprehensibly, hearing the bongs and hilariously asking your fellow party-goers whoozzfoanizzringinggg, basically, under the influence of more than the slight buzz generated from a particularly charming episode of Father Ted, blogpost, on the 7th. Let's bump this one to next year.

Aim the Second: Write a sitcom (in the next four-and-a-half weeks)

Because it's always good for the mind-state to start with a nice, easy one. The time limit is due to this life-changing opportunity. But, like the ten or twelve life-changing opportunities that waft past my snoozing nosey on a monthly basis, probably - they are too stealthy to make enough noise to rouse me, the ninja bastards - this will pass without any discernible effect on me. I am too busy STILL being troubled by the fact that the frozen stares those two singing bozos on the match.com advert give each other after they've completed their hellish duet is because of the realisation they've each been croon-seducing their own sibling to be bothered by such trifling matters as life-changing opportunities.

I'd love to write a sitcom, but I have no ideas. So, unless I can somehow extend the whole brother/sister seduction story into a feelgood six-parter (note to self: can probably pitch it to Channel 4 if I make it Katie Price's kids and cast Frankie Boyle as a disturbed therapist) I'm looking at attempting to write stuff based on what comes out of the random article generator on Wikipedia. So, BBC, look out for the knockabout tale of a Mexican banda group from Limon who move to Coso, California and whose leader falls in love with an Indonesian frog who, despite a failure to understand even basic arithmetic, was rather cruelly named Panos Papasoglu!

Don't worry: I never even left the drawing board.

Aim the Third: Stop The Bitterness!

Hollow laughter from certain corners of Peterborough, Essex/the high seas and deepest darkest Turkey to this one, I'm sure... But I'm thinking that maybe, finally, 2011, at the age of 30, should be the year when I stop hating all women in the world.

Wow, you think I'm kidding! I'm really not! Ask them people up there in those far-flung places! I do. With very few exceptions (Peterborough, Essex/the high seas and deepest darkest Turkey xx) I hate all women. That's usually fine - women all over the world are having a fantastic time of it all despite my hatred of them - and really only impacts on me when they bloody dare to do the same bloody thing as me. So, when I was 14 and thought I was a good singer (I was not) I got that oh-so-special knot in my stomach when confronted with Louise Wener, Justine Fricshmann and that keyboard bird out of Pulp. (She didn't even sing, I don't think. So unfair of me) And now, I think I'm a good writer (I really don't. A good writer would not need so many parenthetical interludes. Say, whatever did happen to Zoe "Brackets" Williams? OOH! I'm so delicious!) so it's whoever happens to write something good, especially if they're unpaid and/or younger than me, that now makes me grind my teeth into a pointless talc.

I have no idea why I have this reaction. Hungry for attention? Daddy never loved me? Sociopathic bitch? Can't fuck their bodies, so need to fuck their minds (not like that)? Or everybody feels like this all of the time, but no-one would be so crass as to mention it in their blog? Everything but the last, let's hope. Whatever. It's getting too expensive in clothing to hulk out every time someone female on Twitter gets praised or retweeted.

So no more. Carry on, ladies of the world. I am behind you 100%, unless you continually tweet "hello to my new followers!" and "Thanks for the follow fridays!" when you are UTTERLY UNDESERVING OF EITHER.

OK...no more from now.

Aim the Fourth: Go On An Impulse Trip To Vegas With Someone Off Twitter

Or something equally as rash and stupid that seems like it will be like a brilliant offbeat movie but would instantly descend into a gordian knot of practical impossibilities and sullen disagreements and no-one would win any money or expand the realms of their consciousness or see Celine Dion or anything.

My need to go to Vegas is now reaching unbearable levels, though. Dear Jim...

Aim the Fifth: Give It A Cigarrest

Finally, one that's possible. And has worked for five days now! Not a whiff of beautiful, life-sapping smoke has entered my lungs since Sunday, expect for when I frenched that startled tramp in the bus stop on Wednesday night. He hadn't even been smoking - I just had a funny turn. (The smoke in that instance came from our burning sexual compatibility) And I don't miss it at all. Here is photographic evidence of me not missing it.

That is not me. I would kill for those arms, and I would also kill whoever gave me that fringe. Then skin them, then dry out their skin over a period of several years, then crumble the skin into flakes, then roll it up in a rizla, then swap it with a local friendly cannibal (a fine young one, perhaps? Oooh-ma-hahaaa!) for a packet of Marlboro silvers.

I have given up before. It lasted, I think, about 18 months. But I think that's because I didn't give myself strict guidelines. So this time, I will not smoke unless one of these circumstances should befall me:

• walking over a bridge at night while listening to Kind Of Blue
• needing to prove that I am cool in awkward social situations when acres of sparkling banter has not suddenly made itself available to my front-brain after 30 goddamn years of skulking around the inaccessible hinterland of my back-brain
• dispersing clouds of mosquitoes
• creating an unspoken bond with dangerous-looking youths at bus stops
• or because I really want to.

It'll all go fabulously, I'm sure.

Updates to follow as and when they become relevant.

I Don't Really Smoke B+H. What Am I, Superman?

Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about making your mind up to do something tough is coming up with the creative excuses to not do it any more. Little vignettes that the reckless pleasure-seeking part of your brain can sing prettily at the worthy, nagging part of your brain, allowing the decision-making centre to merrily stick two fingers up at the nagger and succumb to an orgy of weakness. I have been going through this almost constantly since last August when, in a sudden decision which actually took me by surprise and led me to wonder if I was suffering from a Fight Club-esque split personality disorder, but instead of the alternate me being a cool, sexy insurgent against capitalism, it was a prissy emphysemic old woman, I gave up smoking.

It was OK for a while, but then the excuses started. Firstly, the odd one when I was drinking, but that was OK because smoking would always be the very least of the multitude of sins I would commit when under the influence of the red-wine-red-wine-red-wine-gin-to-round-off-the-nightmare gods. Next: smoking on holiday was just fine and dandy, especially as my holiday destinations were coincidentally - coincidentally, I tell you! - places heady with the sweet, toxic atmosphere of love for the smokeroos. Then came the all-nighters at work...who can get through eight solid hours of a completely empty office building without leaning on the choking companionship of my good friends Benson and Hedges?

But kaloo, kalay! I now have a fabulous new excuse to inhale a mix of burning plant and delicious carcinogens. No more invention needed on my part! Our wonderful government has decided that all smokers are illiterate bell-ends who somehow can't understand the enormous words "SMOKING KILLS, YOU UTTER NUMBSKULLS!" emblazoned on our boxes o'delight, and instead, need to be informed of the deadly nature of our habit via the medium of grotesque pictures of diseased lungs, rotting corpses, laboratory beagles crying a single tear and suchforth. And now I can take up smoking professionally again, after recent dabbling at amateur level. The reason? Collections! How badly do I want to collect every single picture they're throwing at us? How much do I want to have the schoolyard swapsies conversation again, flicking through my fag packet collection: "Got. Got. Got. Got. Awww, autopsy! Want! Swap you for three tar-ridden hearts and a bag of oilies?" Very, and lots. And the only way I can is to buy, buy, buy, until I literally can't breathe. If Phillip Morris is really clever, and 60 years of unimaginable profits says he probably is, he will engineer one of the pictures to be incredibly rare, so the kidz will buy at least six packs a day in search of the decaying organ equivalent of the foil '84 Liverpool badge sticker.

If these pictures are even a fraction as cool as the Lucky Strike pack that opens up like a book and then OMG YOU TURN IT ROUND AND IT OPENS UP THE OTHER WAY HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?!, they will be very bloody cool indeed. I look forward to a purse-and-life destroying but socially-lubricated winter. I can go and join the cool people again!