New Year Resolutions

So....... It’s 2015 then.

Wow.

I could, of course, rabbit on about how fast 2014 went and doesn’t time fly and before we know it, it will be Easter… yaddah yaddah yaddah, blah blah fishpaste… . But I won’t mention a word of it – because you will no doubt be sick of hearing such stuff by now.

Instead I’m going to write about RESOLUTIONS! You see one day, towards the end of December, I was sitting on my deckchair at the Sedgefield traffic lights thinking. I had been there an hour or two and gotten bored of smiling and waving and trying to hawk Mrs Ed’s clothing to anyone driving a vehicle with foreign number plates, and my mind started wandering....

Or was it wondering….?

Or both?

I suppose my wandering mind was wondering what it could wonder about whilst wandering about….. Then it suddenly dawned on me. I needed to work on my New Year’s resolutions.

“Wait!” I exclaimed out loud (hence the exclamation mark. Impressed?), “How can I work on my New Year’s Resolutions for 2015 without assessing how I did in 2014?” (It may have been my rather high-pitched squeal that made the Gauteng lady in the exceedingly posh 4x4 (they must have heard about our roads) zap up her electric windows and hit the central locking button. I could see her telling her children that I was probably just ‘special’ and that they shouldn’t stare.)

But I cared not – with this new train of thought steaming along I started looking back to last year and seeing whether or not any of the 2014 resolutions were worth carrying forward…..

Of course my first resolution was a given – it’s the same every year. Resolution Numero Uno, as they say in Parys, will always be “To become wealthy enough to live in a manner (or manor) to which I would like to become accustomed.”
Not filthy rich, of course. It’s not like I intend to go into politics or anything like that. I fully understand that money is something that should be earned with toil and sweat – that’s why last year I made sure Mrs Ed always walked to the shops to buy the lotto tickets.

The next resolution? Like many others, last year I resolved To Reduce My Carbon Footprint. But I have to admit, whilst this was a politically correct resolution, I found it presented a bit of a dichotomy....

In order to leave a footprint, one surely has to walk… or run… or even stagger (perhaps after being over-served with amber nectar).
And walking / running / staggering are pretty well known as non-pollutive occupations aren’t they? Or, to put it in ‘carbon’ terms, they don’t use any. Carbon I mean. Do they? Unless of course you run very, VERY fast….. then stop suddenly, causing your shoes to skid….. and thus the rubber soles to smoulder acrid blue, ozone-damaging smoke. And of course the REPLACEMENT of such soles would require the use of at least some fossil fuel*.
(*For those under 30 like my son, it should be pointed out that ‘Fossil Fuel’ is not the beer anyone over 40 drinks before dancing).

The long and the short of it is this year I am going to reduce my carbon footprint by not walking anywhere, and more importantly reduce my carbon TYREPRINT by getting Mrs Ed to run to the bottle-store with the wheelbarrow…. Barefoot.

In 2014 I also resolved to exercise more. And this is a resolution I am using again this year, with a slight addendum. (sounds like part of the digestive system doesn’t it? “The small intestine had a bit of an addendum on the side’).

This ‘addendum’ comes following last year’s early January attempt at jogging, which caused quite a stir when I blacked out and collapsed on the grass, only forty metres from home. The reason for this sudden downfall was, of course, my over-competitive spirit, which caused me to launch into a brief sprint to prevent another athlete catching me.

Fortunately after collapsing I wasn’t lying there long – Mrs Ed found me minutes later on her way home from the bottle store and loaded me into the wheel barrow, pausing only to scold my athletic adversary (at 89 he really should have known better than to challenge a new runner to a sprint). He apologized, but reasoned that he had, in fact, simply been trimming his hedge, though perhaps he may have misled me into thinking he was running when moving his ladder.

So in 2015 there will be a slight difference. I resolve to ‘Exercise More (caution when exercising)’

But it wasn’t ALL bad in 2014. One of my most successful resolutions was to not have any more children – something which I achieved with flying colours. I make the same resolution for 2015. (I just wanted it in writing)

And there is another of my 2014’s resolutions worthy of repeating. Notice the apostrophe in the ‘2014’s’? Well, “Improve the Planet Earth’s Punctuation” is my quest for this year as well. You may see me out at night – I’m the guy on the ladder wearing the mask and cape as I paint over the sign-writer’s misplaced apostrophes in Pizza’s and DVD’s and ‘Special’s.

On the other side of the coin, despite Mrs Ed’s claims, I don’t think I did well on my 2014 Resolution No5. “To be appropriately eccentric”, and for this I must truly apologise to the community. Especially the visitors.

No one wants to holiday in a village of totally normal people. There should at least be one or two wild-eyed, drooling locals who are obviously one-pothole-short-of-a-full-intersection. Otherwise what sort of holiday memories will our visitors be left with? That’s why, as a service to the community, I started early this year. You may have seen me at the bank’s ATM, shouting “YES!!! Come to Mamma!” in my best Brooklyn accent and doing a victory dance after the machine actually spat out a R50 note. (It only happened twice last year).

One 2014 resolution I’m not sure I’ll repeat is “To whistle more”. To be honest I was hoping to restart a trend, maybe even earn some money out of it, but it really didn’t work. Whistling is a dying art. Blame it on Facebook or Whatsapp or whatever – nobody is bored anymore, so no one whistles (what do they teach kids at school these days?)

Indeed, despite hours spent last year walking up and down the supermarket aisles, whistling a most talented rendition of Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t you forget about me’ at the top of my cheeks, not one person stopped and offered to pay me for lessons.

Sigh.

My last resolution of 2014 will DEFINITELY be one I carry on with this year:- ‘To be more cool with technology’. (I was going to use the term ‘au fait’ but apparently that would be counter-productive in my quest for ‘hipness’…) ( actually I think that’s the last time I’ll use the term ‘hipness’ too).

Having got tired of being ridiculed by younger members of my family, who endlessly (and quite cruelly) whisper amongst themselves that I have the technological savvy of an inebriated squid, DESPITE the fact that I got my phone to talk once… (admittedly by mistake...), last year I decided to do something about it. Whenever I was alone in the bathroom or car, I would practice using phrases like
‘Hey, Check out this trending insterjam on my eyepad’ and ‘Dude, bluetruth me a screensnot’. I got quite convincing actually. So much so that my daughter would often purposefully engage me in ‘techno-talk’ in front of her friends - and they were so impressed they used to giggle about it.

So by the end of this year I am determined to go a big step further. I will work out how to store ichoons on my phone so I can listen to music. Until then I’ll continue hiding my ignorance by plugging in my headphones and nodding my head in rhythm..... to my ringtone (it’s the only song my phone has).

Sometimes I carry on even though nothing is playing.

– The whistling helps….

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