It's a new year. It's 2007. The papers are full of articles about fresh starts, New Year's Resolutions and changing oneself. Time for a new look to the website, I thought. I always thought that the black look was too funereal, and the dark blue version never seemed much better. So I've taken it in hand, and designed the page myself to my own tastes. Smart but refined, colourful but reserved, gently quirky perhaps, like the new Joanna Newsom album. Or something like that. Anyhow, along with the redesign a resolve to post more frequently than once a month. I've said it before but then I did spend most of last year working far too many long hours in Glasgow and now I'm back at home I have better opportunities to update this site.
While we're on it, I suppose I should be making my New Year resolutions. To be honest, I can't think of that many. I know I won't be taking more exercise or drinking three litres of room-temperature water a day. I know I won't stop drinking beer or going to far too many gigs this year (those two tend to go hand in hand, particularly if it's something loud). Resolutions tend always to be about giving up some awful bad habit or character trait rather than to spend more time making small talk with strangers or petting farm animals. Therefore, in that spirit (and one of not entirely total seriousness) I've racked the dark recesses of the slothful part of my brain and come up with the following:

1. I will not pay grossly overinflated prices to eBay chancers for tickets to instantly sold-out gigs by Radiohead, The Arcade Fire, Bjork or indeeed just about anyone.
2. I will not eat any more Pot Noodles.
3. I will stop watching repeats of shows called House Doctor, Escape To The Country, Antiques Roadshow and indeed just about anything on the UK Style channel.
4. As an antidote to 3., I will renew my subscription to The New York Review Of Books, though that doesn't necessarily mean the back issues won't continue to pile up beside the bed as a reminder of just how lazy and slothful I have allowed my brain to become.
5. I will stop relying on Hitch to be my personal chef almost every evening of the week.
6. I will stop pretending that I care about the music of Neil Young. I will thereby remove the copies of unlistened-to CDs such as Tonight's The Night, On The Beach and Ragged Glory from my shelves. I will keep Harvest and Harvest Moon because they are quite pleasant every now and again.
7. I will smile at the nutcases who hang around the entrance to Brixton tube station instead of scowling at them. (There are no farm animals on the streets of Brixton.)
8. I will live up to the bit on my cellphone answer message that claims I will return your call as soon as I can.
9. I will stop clipping pictures of Wayne Rooney out of the sports section of newspapers. This is a sad and pathetic thing for a 41 year old man to be doing.
10. And I won't glue them into a scrapbook using a Pritt Stick either.

Come back in December and ask me how I've done.
A joyful 2007 to You and Yours.