ItÕs time that those New Year Resolutions came off the rails

Date Published: {J}

Right around now, the last of the New Year’s Resolutions should be coming off the rails – and as one of the smug abstentionists who think Resolve is a sachet that cures hangovers, it’s one of the happiest times of the year.

Part of my excuse is, admittedly, a complete lack of willpower but that is compounded by the notion of conforming to some sort of ancient custom of using the New Year to turn yourself into something you’ve never been before.

The good news is that, apparently, there aren’t as many falling foul of the Resolution Game as before because the gyms have yet to experience a post-Christmas tsunami of tellytubbies and the smokers haven’t been persuaded to cover themselves in patches.

But you can still see too many of them as you drive along the Prom or gaze into gyms as you pass – be careful, this could get you arrested – these enthusiastic converts who think that walking like a demon possessed (arms swinging, legs pumping) will shed the three stone piled on by 30 years of Guinness.

Maybe it’s those television ads that trigger the guilt – there are more ads for nicotine patches on at present that you’d need to cover a gable wall with them to stop your chimney smoking.

Gymnasiums are trawling the streets for new members with special offers that lure you in, convinced that once you get a taste for tearing your own hamstrings, you’ll be hooked for life.

The HSE is offering us all sorts of advice about how to clean up our act – which is a little ironic given that, if they cleaned up theirs, we mightn’t have over 500 people suffering every day on hospital trolleys.

Everywhere you look, there are people being pulled along by dogs straining at the leash or jogging on footpaths, causing no end of disturbance for those of us who use these paths at a sedate pace for their proper purpose – as a smooth surface to get us from A to B.

The only consolation is that most of them will be back to normal by this weekend, having either given up gracefully or inflicted some damage to a muscle they hadn’t felt any connection to since they last did PE classes at school.

If you really want to quit some bad habit or take something up to help you live longer, you should do it sometime around March and tell nobody what you’re up to.

That way, you’re not another sheep following the rest of them and failing at the first hurdle because you hadn’t really got Christmas out of your system in the first place.

Equally, if you fail in March no one will even know you’d started so there’s no loss of face – and you can start again in April if you’re that determined to see it through.

Mind you, all of this advice comes from someone who has never made a resolution – New Year or otherwise – in his life; someone who has never given up something that others might consider bad for him and equally who has never taken up anything others would suggest might do him some good.

The last time I was in a gym, it was a school gym sometime before my Leaving Cert in 1981 and even then I knew it wasn’t a relationship that was destined to stand the test of time.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.