Attentive observers will have noted that this column has had no truck with the great squall of windbaggery that is new year’s resolutions. Not only would it not insult readerly intelligence with such guff, it would not propose embarking upon anything remotely psychologically testing at such a precarious time of year. January is lacerating enough without sacrificing such essential props to the personality as sloth, greed, dipsomania and the ability to labour under customary delusions.
However, brace yourself, lone rangers, for there will be one Walton’s Mountain moment. You know how breeders can currently be found building castillos in the air around the 11-week window when school timetables allow them to escape the drudgery of their so-called lives? Meanwhile, you sit smugly by, musing on how you can drop everything, any time, and just jet off to wherever the mood takes you?
Instead, one finds oneself manacled to one’s desk, frazzled to the point of breakdown while all the Bs are away, then unable to find a week that doesn’t involve a work thing, significant birthday, or another bloody wedding between their constant lording it up.
So take that spanking new diary and block off not one, but two weeks – one in late April, another in September – and do it in pen. You don’t have to think about where you’ll go.
You don’t have to speculate on who you’ll go with. You don’t even have to hold yourself to it. But there it will be, inkily glistening, like some small Biro-ed beacon of hope.