AS an annual festivity, my dislike of Christmas is topped only by my hatred of New Year. All that middle-of-the-night razamatazz, carousing and - will we ever escape them - fireworks.

Fine of you've got something to shout about. But not if you haven't. New Year is a time when we make resolutions - to get a new job, to lose weight, to stop smoking, and in many cases to completely change our lives.

But 12 months down the line, when the next New Year's Eve arrives and we haven't got anywhere near achieving any of these goals, instead of partying and cracking the Champagne corks, shouldn't we feel just a teeny bit depressed?

Shouldn't we feel just a touch ashamed that we didn't make that bit of extra effort needed to go on an early morning jog or to stop eating four corned beef pasties at our office desks every lunchtime?

Shouldn't we feel a little embarrassed that we failed even to get around to exercising our fingers to telephone a gym for membership details, let alone actually joining one and going along? Or that we didn't get around to updating our curriculum vitaes so that we no longer sound like lazy slobs who haven't held down a proper job since 1988?

And, most importantly, shouldn't we feel angry and jaded to find ourselves in exactly the same situation as we were in a year ago?

In fact, for many of us it's not only a year - I haven't fulfilled any New Year resolutions for at least a decade. Perhaps that's predictable, considering that in the North of England half of all New Year resolutions are abandoned within a week and across the country 70 per cent find that their well-meaning intentions peter out by the end of January.

But knowing that doesn't help to ease my sense of failure, of being stuck in a rut. Last year my intention to lose weight flew out of the window on January 1 when, if my memory serves me correctly, we had fish and chips in Scarborough.

My plans to get out more - I've become a bit of a hermit in recent years - flopped primarily because I never had anything to wear and found nothing in the shops that would fit me (dropped waist jeans and skinny rib jumpers don't do size 16 women over 40 any favours).

My vow to be more calm around the children, shout at them less and read them bedtime stories collapsed as soon as I went back to work after the New Year break.

And a pledge to clean and tidy our house so that we wouldn't have to spend half our lives searching for lost bills, letters from school, keys and other bits and pieces vital to the running of our lives, literally bit the dust after a couple of hour-long spurts.

All in all, not a very successful outcome to a series of well-intentioned resolutions.

So I reckon that some form of wake rather than a celebration is more appropriate.

I propose that those who broke their 2002 resolutions write them all down again, in large letters, dress in black and sit beside them - stone cold sober - until the first light of 2003. Having a terrible time will surely spur us into some real life-changing action this year.

Updated: 12:43 Monday, December 30, 2002