I like new years. Not New Year - that's a sad and rubbish time for me 'cos my grandad (the nicest man in the world TM) died on New Year's Day so it's always a poignant time (this year made more so 'cos my gran died last year so it was the first year my mum was an orphan - which brought up all kinds of 'fuck, should I be propogating the species' issues, not at my mum's behest at all, but just because. Then I realised that a) having babies - in my idealised view of how I want to do it at least - requires being with someone you're convinced you're going to spend the rest of your life with, and I'm not; b) gives you piles, varicose veins, an extremely hurty cunt and numerous other side effects so scary that if a drug had them, it'd be banned within seconds (and sold in clubs thirty seconds after that) and c) results in a screamy thing that controls your life from that day forward. So while, yes, I'm theoretically not opposed to the idea should Mr Love, Marriage and Babies come along, it's going to take a lot of convincing. I have a reverse biological clock going on - the older I get, the less appealing having kids seems, not least because I've got more mates who've got kids now and the whole 'aren't they cute and lovely' thing becomes less believable when you've seen how much snot they can produce. Without trying. Or possibly with, if they're horrid children. So that thought process sorted that particular angst for me.)

Wittering about children aside, new years are ace. They give you a chance to try to pretend that all the mistakes you've made Will Not Happen Again. You can get all energised and excited and approach things with vim and vigour and other such words used in 1920s books that have subsequently been commandeered to name cleaning products (if Vigour isn't a cleaning product it should be anyway) And in honour of this new year, I've been trying to 'be a better person'. Or at least a bit healthier.

Obviously, the attempt at giving up smoking is already flagging but I'm determined to keep making the effort (and I am still smoking way less than I was before this 'new year' thing started - by about 75 percent - and I'm reading a book on giving up smoking to help rid me of the final vestiges of evil smokingness). On the plus side my eating 5 a day thing is going well (fruit and veg are nice. So are cigarettes. This is where the problem lies) I've also been doing the beach walks thing again (OK, one so far, and two long wanders around the shops but that still counts as exercise doesn't it? If you've ever seen Brighton seafront in January you may understand exactly how much commitment it takes to go on a 6KM walk along it. The sea is taller than the houses on the opposite side of the road. Or at least taller than me) I've managed to avoid drinking most days (we won't mention the two days when I didn't. But one of them was someone's birthday - my new cleaner [the old one left to marry a celebrity. Honest] who's a burlesque performer who does an act dressed as a cleaner [she doesn't wear the same outfit for real world cleaning, more's the pity] and the other one was, err, actually, utterly unjustified. But it was a fun night.) And I'm even doing mornings (yes, before 9am on several occasions - a time that I didn't even believe existed last year). So I've got a vague degree of virtuous (some would say smug) going on.

Despite it being so early in the year, I seem to have piled up a fair bit of work already: I did a piece on the pros and cons of circumcision for Forum (finding the pros was rather tricky). For Emily-at-Large, I went off and had a fab glamour shoot done (or rather glamorous shoot - I didn't get my tits out. It hardly seemed worth it). And I've been doing the usual load of agony aunt type stuff. Sadly (or rather, happily, given there are all the joys of paying tax to deal with this month) I've got a tonne of other things on: the January Audible show to write, some erotic anthology stuff to finish for them, a couple of Scarlet features, a piece on Pagan Valentine's celebrations and Valentine's presents for blokes for Rocks magazine, a book on oral sex (done primarily so I can use the line "Blow jobs? I wrote the book on them.") and the exes book (which is coming along nicely but I still need case studies so if you have any great stories about nightmare exes, how to get over an ex, or any other ex-related things, email me) I've also been approached to do a couple more books which I'm quite excited about but, what with it being early days and all, I shouldn't talk about here quite yet.

As to the rest of the week? I've got to write like a demon (assuming they're dead good at writing. Well, at least they've got the dead part sorted - or undead?) tomorrow morning 'cos I'm having lunch with a mate and I strongly suspect it'll be a lunch that rules out any kind of sensible activity for the rest of the day. I've got a very surreal evening date planned for Thursday, that I may elaborate on at some stage in the future, and then on Saturday I'm going to my first lesbian wedding. In Brighton. The day after my anniversary of moving here. I think, at that stage, I'll be one step further towards being a proper Brightonian.