So here we are just two more sleeps away from another year – how lucky are we?

A friend once advised me, “Don’t ever get old” and facetiously I answered that the alternative was not too inviting!

With the benefit of hindsight, and considering the life of the 93-year-old woman who passed on these words of wisdom, I realise that she was asking me to stay young at heart, to welcome each day with open eyes and an open mind and, as Mr Kipling expressed it, “… fill the unforgiving minute, With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run”.

Each year around this time, I resolve all manner of things around those thoughts, so bear with me while I share this year’s list:

1. Not grow old! In fact, as is very fashionable, I’ll blame “the old” for all the troubles of the world – particularly those rotten Baby Boomers. What were we, sorry they, thinking? Marching and protesting to make the world a better place. And what did we, they, achieve after all the noise?
2. I resolve to accept whatever a criminal did, they did because they were raised by lousy parents, educated by idiots, in dreadful schools and toilet trained before they were ready.
3. In the interest of fairness and equity, I eschew the sexist labelling of toilets as male and female, demand that Walk/Don’t walk signals are inclusive of all races, creeds and genders and resolve to stand with those who refuse to cross the street when our particular choice is not represented.
4. I resolve to take offence. Now, this is an area where I have been seriously lacking in integrity. If someone has an opinion with which I disagree, I am inclined to say, “to each their own”. Well no longer. Any and all challenges to the veracity or wisdom of the word according to me will be answered with all the contempt I can muster. “You stupid idiot” will preface my contrary opinion, just in case the poetry of my words is not clear enough to the moron whose opinion I’m dismissing.
5. Ah now here’s one for me – I promise not to use convoluted terms such as “with which” (see above) but will endeavour to end sentences with prepositions, e.g. “there are reasons for my decision you are not aware of.” I resolve not to scream there, their, they’re and make these words interchangeable, e.g. there going to they’re home over their. (This one is going to be more difficult to manage than I thought, I so want to edit myself!)
6. I resolve not to buy any more books until everything on my shelf and in my ebooks is read. (Oh, I’ve just spotted a whole squadron of flying pigs.)
7. I resolve to obey all PC rules, such as not assigning a gender to a newborn so it can assign its own gender when it learns the meaning of the word gender. For the unenlightened who insist on having boys and girls in their family, I will provide gifts of non-gender specific toys or clothes. I will not question why the word “Guys”, formerly a male word, has been assigned gender neutrality making it more acceptable than Ladies and Gentlemen. 
8. And finally ….. I resolve to meekly accept that in this brave new world, the ultimate sin of questioning the chattering classes should lead to the shunning of the perpetrator, together with their banishment into the wilderness. Instead of speaking out about the banning of books, ideas, songs, films, poems and people, I acknowledge that the politically correct know “much more than I’ll ever know, and I’ll think to myself, what a wonderful world”.

In the end though, my one and only resolution is to greet 2019 with an open mind and an open heart and fill each minute with 60 seconds of living. Happy New Year, my friends. I look forward to spending time with you again next year.

Karen xoxox