FACING up to the new year is a sobering experience. Particularly if you had a lot to drink the night before. Or even if you didn't. Returning from a party on New Year's Eve, we passed a depressed-looking Bugs Bunny plodding home, a sight so surreal that, even though I'd been on orange juice all night, I had to pinch myself to check that I hadn't slipped into the realms of Donnie Darko.
As far as I know he was not, unlike scary six-foot rabbit Frank, prophesying the end of the world. However, his ears looked sad and droopy in the way that only the knowledge that a new year means another chance to stuff up all over again can bring.
(He may, of course, have just lost his carrot. One really shouldn't anthropomorphize.) Anyway, Honey Bun, I know how you feel. Every year I make the same resolutions - lose weight, go the gym more, stop watching Neighbours - and I never keep them. The only reason I stopped drinking successfully was because it makes me feel so ill that I come over all peculiar even on one bottle of 0.5 per cent low-alcohol lager.
Besides, I still have a clutch of eco-challenges' outstanding from 2006 to deal with. This is a set of objectives I set myself back in the autumn in an attempt to live a greener lifestyle and, although I've made inroads, I've a way to go yet.
As a method of gauging how well our family is doing, I've had a go at calculating our carbon footprint. This is the total amount of carbon dioxide emissions that we, as a household of three, are responsible for in a year and includes such factors as travel, holidays, home insulation, energy use, recycling, and so on.
We must be doing some things right because when I did the on-line carbon calculator our total came out at just under five tonnes, which is less than half the UK average of 10.92 tonnes, according to latest figures from the government-funded Carbon Trust.
Most of the changes have been achieved fairly painlessly. We haven't flown anywhere in the past ten years and we don't drive much because I work from home and the husband walks to work and conducts business trips by train.
Switching to energy-saving light bulbs, taking showers instead of baths and remembering to turn off the TV isn't difficult (unless you're the husband, who seems to think the latter does not apply to him); neither have we suffered from turning the central heating down (she says, adjusting her scarf).
Eco-friendly cleaning products are better for you as well as the environment, a 40-degree wash cycle does a perfectly good job and I've learned to live without the tumble dryer. Oh, and we now have a device on the loo that reduces your flush (minimum for a boy, medium for a girl, maximum for - well, you get the idea).
I've changed my food shopping habits radically, getting most locally and from a veg-box scheme, though I still go to a supermarket once a month to restock on the basics. However, despite my best efforts, Christmas produced a glut of packaging and although much of it I was able to recycle, there were still too many plastic trays crammed in the bin.
I am, though, steaming ahead with the composting and the bokashi system, which composts cooked food, meat, fish and dairy products and not only makes a significant difference to the amount we throw away but also means we're not sending methane-producing waste to landfill.
The wormery I gave up on - something went wrong with the drainage and it ended up stinking - but then I have so more than enough worms in our compost converter, to the extent that I have to stand back when I open it because they climb up the sides and squirm out all over the place when I lift the lid.
I chuck 'em back in and tell them to get on with the job, which they're doing very efficiently because I've got perfect compost at the bottom, apart from a few, over-optimistically composted Christmas cracker hats, which had foil in them and came out whole.
This year the plan is to actually start growing vegetables with all that lovely compost. And yes, I know I said that last January, but this time I really mean it. Oh, and change to a green electricity supplier, buy a water butt and get the draughty front door properly insulated.
I also want to get a low-flow shower installed, switch to an ethical bank and - my biggest personal challenge - get back on a bike.
Did I say I wasn't going to make any New Year resolutions? Oops, I did it again. With apologies to Britney. And Bugs.
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