STEVE Cohen is busy this week putting traffic cones outside his house to stop people parking there as they hunt for last-minute Christmas presents in town. So he's entrusted me with the editor's chair and gold-plated quill.

Actually, that line about traffic cones was not really true. In fact our esteemed editor has suddenly and with no previous warning taken up home improvements.

Even as I write, he is ripping up floorboards, hammering nails, hoisting up the main sail (can that be right?), or at the very least drinking cups of sugared tea and moaning about his back. Well that's what workmen do, isn't it?

All this from a man who has never in his life previously picked up a nail in anger. I put it all down to new year resolutions. This time of year can do strange things to people.

Apparently sensible friends who have drunk ale by the barrel all their lives now say they are going to give it all up and drink slimline tonic instead.

And I'm terrified I'll soon be joining them. Soon I fear I'll reach for the pen and list all the things I'm going to give up or put down forever or maybe even take up.

In my heart of hearts I know that jogging round The Rye five times while wearing a black plastic bin liner for a top would shed a few stones that I would hardly miss. It is also undoubtedly true that a few trips to the gym a week would improve my fitness and maybe build a few muscles where muscles haven't dared to grow before.

But is it all worth it? Next year I would like to buy a house, lose weight, play guitar at the Royal Albert Hall and finally buy a car that starts more than one morning out of five. But I know that I make most of the same resolutions every year and by January 2 have broken most of them anyway, so why bother?

This year I've decided to be a bit more realistic in making resolutions.

For a start, I am resolved not to eat any cabbage at all this year. This is easy as I hate the stuff so already there is a warm glow of satisfaction.

Secondly, I am resolved not to fall asleep noticeably while the editor is speaking to me. This is not so easy but it will probably do my career prospects good.

Thirdly, I am resolved not to learn a foreign language. I've tried before and generally only get as far as 'do you know the way to the toilet' which has only limited uses.

So unless a truly life-changing experience happens to me this year (a cafe doing fry-ups opening at the bottom of Gomm Road, for example), I am resolved to try to muddle through next year as best I can. It may not sound like much of an ambition but at least it's realistic.

And who knows, maybe by the end of this year I'll be able to afford a house of my own in High Wycombe.

And then like our esteemed editor maybe I too will be putting out the traffic cones and putting up curtain rails.