What does a new year resolution have to offer apart from a trail of unmet targets and disappointments? But there’s an expectation, isn’t there? After fending off newspaper articles with headlines such as Your 25 top tips to a perfect Christmas, all of which appear to involve eating and drinking too much, we are now trying to avoid being sucked in by promises of a Five day De-tox and Banishing the festive bulge; neither of which, probably, would be necessary if we hadn’t been seduced by the fleshpots of the supermarkets’ Christmas offers. How many different, alcoholically-enhanced creams do you need to adorn a tiny slice of Christmas pudding?

This year, I have resolved to share my commendable lack of resolve. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Failing to set out a list of resolutions is not a sign of weakness. So here, instead, is a list of just a few of the resolutions I am not making for 2014.

Joining a gym: Some people, I realise, enjoy getting sweaty and achieving calf muscles that look like subcutaneous melons and stomachs so flat and hard they could complete the Cresta run without a bobsleigh. They enjoy slipping effortlessly into Lycra and feeling the rippling, potentially dangerous, power of their toned musculature as it presses provocatively against the pliant elasticity of the glossy fabric... sorry, that started to read like a naff scene from Fifty Shades of Something Slightly Titillating.

Losing weight: There are as many diet plans as there are celebrities alleged to have used them. There are old school diets like the F-plan ? you get so hungry you end up eating the furniture (joke originally translated from the Rosetta Stone) but they are always being supplanted by new ones. I see one of the latest involves “intermittent fasting”. This involves way more than going overnight without eating. Nor can you congratulate yourself for managing to go from breakfast to lunch without the usual packet of crisps and optional apple. No, the fasting idea is that you eat normally five days a week and diet two days. I’m fine with the five days but the other two days on around 500 calories each? That’s not much chocolate at all.

Taking up an activity/sport to improve fitness: Speaking as the one who was always the second last to be picked for the hockey side when the class was divvied up into teams (a system I hope has been abandoned in this era of PC enlightenment), I find team activities exposing. I include pub quizzing in that, even though it is not strictly an activity unless you count the occasional beer/fag break that normally occurs between rounds. According to my post-operative knee notes my new knee should not be used for breast stroke (stop making up your own jokes) and it will not be great for playing tennis. Darn it. I suppose I could get a bicycle ... nah...

Exploring my spirituality: I don’t think have any. Like the guy in Ghostbusters who, when asked to empty his mind of all thoughts, conjured up a giant marshmallow man, I am incapable, I believe, of meditative calm. The idea of being “chilled” fills me with anxiety. I am much happier when stressing.

Giving up a bad habit: The trouble is, I already gave up smoking and don’t drink much; may be a couple of units a week (would that be industrial units, Lynne? Ed). As for the increasing incidence of wind; I don’t do it deliberately. The only way to make this work would be to acquire a new bad habit I could then kick.

Being a better person: Nope. If I were to start baking, put on a nice dress and lipstick to greet my husband on his return from work, prepare him packed lunches etc, he would assume I had been replaced by a cyborg Stepford wife. He wouldn’t want that... would you darling? I said, would you, darling?

More patience: Get on with it.

Improving my mind through intellectual pursuits: If this means giving up flippancy and triviality, I’m not interested. It’s all very well being stupendously well-read or knowing what all the words Will Self uses mean but though I may have my knockers, I can’t help enjoying a well-placed double entendre.