It’s that time for New Year’s resolutions – a hopeful occasion where we attempt to tweak something undesirable about ourselves. Usually they are vague and often about weight loss or time management. It’s rare that people get creative with them.
Nobody, for instance, is saying, “I want to be able to parallel park without whimpering into the steering wheel.” Or “I need to stop making impressions of Mark’s face when he …laughs.” Or “I should stop making bad sex jokes.”
It was the blur between Christmas and New Year, and my friend Archibald and I were on our way to Hermione’s cheese gathering. (It had to be called a gathering as she didn’t want people to think it was a party).
Archibald had spent most of the District Line whining about being hungry.
“We’re going to a cheese gathering!” I argued.
“I can’t simply eat cheese for dinner,” he said, holding the ‘ees’ in disgust.
We ended up stopping at some burger place in Hackney to shut him up. There I scowled across the table as Archibald destroyed a double-decker meal.
“So, what’s your news resolution?” he said trying to lighten my mood.
“Have more sex, I guess. Yours?”
“Have less,” he said with a mouthful of burger.
We finally arrived at the party gathering. Hermione had placed fairy lights around her living room, and on the table was a pot of Waitrose hummus with vegetable sticks and the cheese board – that Archibald was now digging into.
It was announced by Tom, a biology teacher with glacier-blue eyes, that now the last guests had arrived (he gives me daggers), the cheese quiz could begin.
So we divided ourselves into teams.
“Which cheese sales boomed after Wallace and Gromit?” Tom said to the room.
I wondered where the time went. One minute it was 2010, and we were clubbing to Rhianna; the next, we are stood in groups of three, competitively whispering to each other and trying to spell…. wensledayle …. Wensleydale.
That’s the thing about ageing – the years go round and round like a Ferris wheel whilst we subtly change throughout the spins.
Later that evening I was reminded of my age yet again.
I asked Tom what his resolution was going to be.
“Well I had a cholesterol check,” he said with a sigh, “and so need to cut down on the cheese…”
THE QUACK 