Resolutions

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Friday (26th January 2018) saw my first visit to the awesome Ham & Jam Café in Preston this year, for the monthly Spark true story telling event. This month the theme was appropriately Resolution. It was great to see many new face and story tellers joining in too. Though I ad-libbed as well, this I pretty much what I covered in my own five minute contribution. A tough topic for me as I never make resolutions, even at new year. I guess that’s why I never break them. My only resolution is never to make resolutions and I’ve stuck to it for my entire life. I guess that’s a contradiction in terms. I could promise myself that I’ll quit smoking, if I ever started in the first place. I do set out to do lists, which are a sort of resolution list, but pick up a tin of beans on the way home is hardly a life-changing resolution. I can safely make some resolutions against ever going base jumping, swimming with sharks or becoming a mercenary in some god-forsaken civil war. I can’t make resolutions against bog snorkelling, cheese rolling, or swimming in the Serpentine on Christmas Day, etc., because I’m stupid enough to actually sign up for that given half the chance. It’s only being geographically disadvantaged that probably stops me. I have done some outrageous things in my time, like sitting in a bath of mushy peas in a pub one night for Children In Need, though we raised just short of a £1,000 quid that night. I set goals and targets, littering more publisher’s in-trays with my manuscripts, but again, not really resolutions. I guess I am irresolute, lacking in ambition. I should be looking at dieting and exercise. As a volunteer patient for university medical students I recently used being overweight as the test case for their classes in patient manner – quite a few students piped up with why not go to the gym more. Answer, NO! I went once, and found it full of fitness fanatics who clearly had no need to be there, posing and preening to show off their impressive physiques. Looking like they could model for Michaelangelo’s statue of David. Finding a waddling hippo wandering among them just brought out looks of you must be joking. I’ve not been since. My mum has a rather novel take on re-solution; solving the crimes on TV detective shows before the detective does, but only when the shows are repeats and she has guests to impress by suddenly saying, ‘I think the bee-keeper did it’. She got quite upset when I pointed out that I knew she’d seen that episode of Midsummer Murders already. I suppose not embarrassing my mum in front of her guests should be a resolution. Arthur Chappell