December is a blank sheet of paper, a waggled pencil, a half-finished whiskey and a headache. Christmas lists when we were kids were fun, New Year resolutions as adults are dreadful. They are a virtuous list of rarely kept promises designed to make me a finer version of myself.

I've never done this before and it strikes me that it's sensible not to write them down. I'm middle-aged, you see, by February I will have forgotten them.