Bernard O'Shea: Why I'm making my New Year's Resolutions in February

Setting my goals in February as opposed to when I usually did and failed possibly keeps my brain happy. My wife, however, still thinks I just forgot

Bernard O'Shea: 'I'm not setting any weight loss targets, something I've always done before.' Picture: Moya Nolan

"I wouldn't tell anyone that, My wife said sternly as I begrudgingly emptied the dishwasher. "It just sounds lazy and that you forgot." I had revealed to her that I had initially planned to announce my new year's resolutions six weeks into the new year in February. "I know you too well, Bernard. You just couldn't be arsed to do whatever idiotic plan you had conjured up in your head. Now you are backtracking." Her initial evaluation of my resolution hypothesis, to a certain extent, is true, but not this year.

Every year I have visions of myself shedding the pounds and looking like a Mark and Spencer middle-aged man model as I cycle around Longford in wafting linen (Center Parcs, to be exact). Every year I plan to gorge my underdeveloped brain in the Russian classics and to proudly crowbar quotes from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Bulgakov into a conversation and then be able to back it with the safety net of actually having read them. Not to mention eventually finishing James Joyce's Ulysses. Oh, and learn the accordion.