At the start of every New Year I usually have a list of things that I would like to change or do differently. None of these things would be that difficult to do but they just don’t seem to happen in my life.

I would like to return my library books on time. I don’t understand why I find this so hard to do. Today I returned six overdue books and was fined 8 pounds and 50 pence. The books were due to be returned in October. I had read all of them before the due date and then just left them in a pile with loads of other books. And I don’t have any sensible excuses – I live facing the library.

I would like finish reading books and give them back to him. Tony lends me books and I always seem to be half way through them all. I have to stop starting the new ones until I’ve finished the old ones.

I would like to deal with my email in a structured manner. I get so much email in a day that I don’t get time to respond to it all. I have tried to come up with sensible methods for dealing with the mail but have failed. I had a great idea that I should only leave email that needs responded to in my various inboxes and that all other mail should be filed away as it arrives. I don’t seem to have successfully implemented this scheme as I couldn’t really have 2,567 messages in my UNITE box that need responded to.

I would like to come up with a way to make sure that I respond to all messages that need responded to. I always seem to have messages that I should have responded to a couple of weeks ago. And the longer it takes to respond the less likely it is that I will ever respond to them.

I would like my house to be tidier. One of my friends once told me that this could be achieved in small simple steps. Instead of trying to tackle everything at once I should make sure that I do at least one thing about the house every day, such as hoovering or washing the floor, and do small things whenever I am moving around the house. For example if I need to go up the stairs I should carry up something from downstairs that needs put away. Or if I go into the kitchen to get a drink I should wash a couple of glasses or fold the washing or some other domesticated thing that people do in kitchens.

So today I returned my library books, dealt with all the email that arrived, stacked the dishwasher, put away all the video tapes that were lying about the living room, and now I’m going to go to bed to read one of Tony’s books.