I write this from the sofa, one leg resting on an upturned laundry basket, with a large bag of frozen Quorn Mince slowly melting on my knee. The knee in question is the colour of badly-mixed blueberry ice cream and is roughly twice its usual size. It throbs once every 1.35 seconds. I timed it.

I am learning to skateboard. I am 29 years old.

The New Year’s Resolution has a long and varied history. In early 1802 Walker’s Hibernian Magazine published an article making fun of the kind of resolutions that are broken even before the last of the Christmas chocolate disappears. Their list of satirical resolutions is occasionally still funny even two centuries later.