Ericka Waller column: I resolve to give up on my New Year resolutions

My resolution was to be more patient with my children, then I had to get them out of bed for the first time in two weeks.

Screaming “GET UP GET UP GET UP” in their ears whilst pulling off their covers was the only thing that worked.

I resolved to wash out the milk cartons before putting them in the recycling bin (fail), to start liking avocado (fail), and stop swearing. I resolved to keep my car empty and clean, to put records back in the right sleeves. Fail, fail, fail.

I don’t know why we put such pressure on ourselves to improve on the first day of the year.

Why do we think that somehow, after 11.59pm on the December 31 we will suddenly find it easier to stop smoking or eating biscuits?

There is nothing about it being the first day of a new year that will make my tea taste nice without two sugars in it.

I know this because I’ve tried to cut down/go sugar free loads of times before, at various points in the year. It’s never easy and it always makes me miserable.

We all need our little vices don’t we?

I once asked a friend of mine why he drove a motorbike, and he said ‘sometimes you feel the most alive when you are closest to the edge of danger’.

Now I’m not saying sugar in tea is dangerous, but there is some illicit pleasure in being a bit naughty.

NINE people from Brighton and Hove have been caught getting trains without paying.

We all know what their resolutions should be, don’t flipping bother getting on the train in the first place, it’s quicker to walk.

They won’t be allowed on the locomotive Steve Salford is planning to hire to help people get to work.

Steve doesn’t need to travel, he works from home, but he wants to "Put the Great back into Britain, back into rail."

To charter a train for a day costs thousands of pounds, but Steve, reckons he is the man for the job, the man to get the service back on track.

He even "intends on having a trolley service available for light drinks, snacks, sandwiches and pastries."

I am not sure why all the drinks and sandwiches have to be light.

Maybe Steve is on a blessed New Year’s diet.

Let’s hope he falls off that trolley and on to one laden with crisps and cake.

My friends Irenka and Woody (who got married in secret on Tuesday - whoops) recently took their kids to London for the day.

They went to the Science Museum and the London Dungeons, they went on the London Eye and round Madam Tussauds.

When asked what their best bit was, all three replied “the picnic on the bus.”

Their biggest treat was being allowed sausage rolls and mini cheddars from Co-op whilst sitting on a bus.

Food never normally permitted, eaten whilst clutching onto smelly seats as the bus careered round bends. Childhood heaven.

If we are going to make resolutions, maybe we should resolve to simplify our lives, not complicate them with fastidious diets or intense exercise programmes.

I resolve to stroke my dog more indoors, to hell with the hairy carpet.

I’ve been gently patting the poor lad for almost four years.

From now on I’ll rub his belly and scratch round his ears, as I sit with him by the fire.

I resolve to learn how to use the XBOX so I can play my brothers online, while we all swear and laugh at one another.

I resolve to get back on the road bike my husband bought me (I fell off it on my first try, threw it in a bush, stomped home and have refused to get back on it since) so we can enter bike rides together.

I resolve to spend more time with the people I love, doing the things they love, making memories not miserable low fat dinners.