Better late than never

Bert's Belated New Year Resolutions:

• I will be much nicer to my wife and show affection in a frequent, spontaneous and unprompted manner. Furthermore, I will be prepared to do this in front of family, friends and other associates.


• I will stop haranguing my wife with my worries about the kids' schoolwork and (lack of) fitness, and I will refrain from making her always be the 'bad cop' by issuing my dictats as if they were hers.


• I will stop haranguing my wife with worries about my broken elbow and any other miscellaneous health issues that arise from time to time. I will also try not to assume that these are more interesting or more serious than her own ailments, of which I understand there are quite a few. I cannot recall what they are exactly, as I have clearly paid insufficient attention.


• I will stop haranguing my wife with my rants about all manner of things such as wheelie bins, cars parked on pavements, Dixons, Natwest Customer Service, stiletto heels on my newly laid floor, cats scratching my furniture, my wife's family causing excessive 'wear and tear' to said floor and furniture, and so on and so forth. Or at least I will endeavour to make them mini-rants, and perhaps confine them to one per day.


• I will stop spending money willy-nilly on myself whilst querying every item of my wife's (generally modest) expenditure. With regard to said expenditure, I will remove my new turbo trainer from our newly set up dining room to the garage. I will stop referring to it as unobtrusive, and accept that it wasn't part of the original decorative scheme.


• I will fix our Internet connection so that other members of the family can have as much access to it as I have.


• I will finally arrange for my wife's car to be fixed now that it has been on blocks for 4 months.


• I will personally 'valet' her car now that it is covered internally with mould, having been on blocks for 4 months.


• I will stop insisting that we use the mechanic that I went to school with, and I will accept that reliability is as important as a cheap deal.


• I will be more supportive to my wife's new situation vis-à-vis taking voluntary redundancy from her job, and I will appreciate that the difficulties she experienced over the past year were very stressful. I will remember to praise her abilities to cope, and I will stop making unhelpful remarks like the one I made the other day to our accountant when I asked, "Did you hear that she's been given the boot?"

That is the first time I have had to make anything up on this blog! I asked Bert what his resolutions would really be, were he to make any. He came up with:

• get back on the bike [top of the list]


• dig the garden
  

Oh yeah - I forgot the garden!