New Year's Resolutions and All That

A couple of years back myself and my friend Mark started a little thing off. We'd get together sometime between Christmas and New Year and just have an evening drinking wine and reviewing the year gone by. It always turned into a drunken night and we'd finish by making a few resolutions. Of course, by getting ourselves totally pissed we'd forget the list by the time the next morning came, so one year I had an obvious idea : Lets write them down! And so began a big tradition in our friendship, the New Year's Resolution Night. We write our list of 20 resolutions and predictions for the year and then at the end of the night we seal it in an envelope, sellotape it to the back of my current diary so we couldn't have a sneaky peak at it during the year, then we forget all about it until the following Christmas when we open it up and see how we've done! Its great fun you know. There are a few you remember writing (usually the early ones settled on before too much wine is consumed) but for the most part they come as a complete surprise! We have a little competition to see who managed to do the most each year, and so I present to you the results of my predictions for the year 2003.

Before I begin, I ought to explain that life was rather different at the start of 2003. I had yet to meet Steven, I'd just joined Planet Skaro and had been dumped a few months earlier by my boyfriend at the time. Everything was kind of in flux for a while and some of the predictions were made because of that! I've had to take a couple out too cos they are kind of personal and I don't want to mention the names involved to spare them any difficulty!

Right here goes:

1. Dye my hair. (Failed) That goes on the list every year and every year I fail to do that one. One day maybe, before I get far too old to be doing that kind of thing!

2. Find and Keep Boyfriend (Succeeded) Well as you all know a certain Mr Alexander stumbled into my life in February last year, and events developed from there... I've still got him and I'm really very pleased about that! Best thing to happen to me in 2003!

3. Go on holiday with my friends (failed) I didn't have a holiday let alone with my friends. So no luck there.

4. Go on Bargain Hunt (failed) Well we did try. My good friend Paul applied for us both, but we never heard anything back, so they obviously didn't want a pair of Doctor Who fans on their show. Shame.

5. Have a Slutty Year (failed) Ahhh, well Mark thought since I'd been such a good boy in 2002, that in 2003 I'd be all over the place doing allsorts of things with allsorts of people. He was entirely wrong about that I'm pleased to say!

6. Go Clubbing More (failed) I did in fact go clubbing even less than the year before.

7. Go on Gaydar (succeeded) Mark found his boyfriend, the lovely Simon through Gaydar and thus they felt that that might be the way forward for me. It didn't turn out that way. I did create a profile, but very little interest was shown, and I found Steven anyway, so I didn't need it!

8. Make sure Gaz has a Good Wedding (succeeded) Gaz is my best friend and he was at long last due to marry Sarah last may. Well I helped with that, keeping him sane before the big day and being an usher on the day itself (in a lovely frock coat!) so a point for that.

9. Organise big Doctor Who Fortieth Anniversary Party. (failed) Well it was mooted early in the year that we might hire a big country house and have an awesome fancy dress party to celebrate, but it all came to nothing. Shame really as I ready to don a kilt and be Jamie for the night!

10. Go to Doctor Who Convention (succeeded) We did in fact go to two! Invasion 3 in March where we naughty while watching Kate O'Mara and had our photo taken with the wonderful William Russell and we went to Panopticon where we met Paul McGann amongst others!

11. Try not to get too Depressed through January (succeeded) January is usually the time of year I get all miserable and down. Last year I was ok as it turned out, with the setting up of my local group with a friend and some excitement to look forward to in February, I got through it fine!

12. Bake more cakes (Succeeded) I'd forgotten how good I was at baking cakes and throughout 2003 I did this for my housemates.

13. Go to more Gigs (succeeded) Since I went to one in 2002 and I went to three in 2003, I managed to do this one! Fir the record I went to see Brian Ferry, Grandaddy and Re-Genesis.

14. Visit the set of Crossroads (failed) They cancelled the series the buggers instead, thus thwarting my plan.

15. Hold a Dinner Party (failed) I didn't. I had some friends round for dinner, but it couldn't really be called a dinner party alas.

16. Learn to Ski (failed) Ha! I must have been very drunk by the time we got to this one! Still it made us all giggle when Steven read it out this year!

So there we go. Altogether I managed about 12/ 20 of my aims for 2003, which wasn't at all bad really. As for 2004, well I'll let you know next year!

8th January 2004