HOME GOALS

Of the six people whom I tagged to list Five Goals That Are Relatively Simple and Which Might Make Me Successful If I Kept to Them, four have responded.

CAFRINE is suitably teasing with an interesting selection of goals desplayed on her blogspot that include being more disciplined --- and eating more chocolate!

I'll just let her EXPLAIN!

And here are the responses from my three friends who don't have their own blogspots...

It is interesting to see what aspirations, ambitions and obsessions we all seem to share...

BOLL WEAVIL aims...

1) To be a bit more like a rudderless ship and realise that there's quite a lot to be said for drifting around aimlessly at the whim of the current whilst the rest of the world floats on by in the nautical equivalent of a 4x4.

2) To keep the weight thing under control, carry on doing as much exercise as I can and playing footie as long as I can, even if it means not eating all the chocolate fingers or feeling compelled to finish all my Easter eggs by the end of the day.

3) To occasionally turn the computer off and go off in search of that Xanadu men have called reality.

4) To travel a whole lot more than I have done and, just for once, set foot in a commercial aeroplane.

5) To write a Christmas hit so that, like Hugh Grant in About a Boy, I can just sit around all day collecting the royalties.

Can I have a signed copy, please, providng I promote it on my blogspot??

And now here are SUZANNE's goals...

Five goals... Gosh, this is a tough one. I'm not sure if I can distinguish between goals and things that I want!

1) One definite goal is of course to LOSE WEIGHT AND GET HEALTHY - how original is that?!

2) Try to FIND A JOB THAT I LOVE, like working with books... And that doesn't mean me sitting at my computer writing articles and poems that nobody's going to read.

3) STOP WORRYING - that's something I've been trying to do for years. Occasionally, I do manage to convince myself that it is pointless, like asking myself what is the worst case scenario and realising that it really isn't quite so bad.

4) After proving to the world and to myself that I can live on my own, FIND A LIFE-TIME PARTNER, and stop falling in love where it's not wanted.

5) And last, but definitely not least, the I WANT. I want to sell up everything here, move to the Vendée region in France and live with Marc. I can say that here because he doesn't read your blog!

Are you absolutely sure?! Anyway, good luck, Suzanne!

Meanwhile GILL lists her goals as follows...

1) Take more exercise...

Walking is painful, and this, combined with a job which is sedentary but busy, means that I spend a lot of hours sitting behind a desk then jumping into a taxi to sit behind a meeting table, then into another taxi to sit on a train. I sometimes make resolutions about swimming but it doesn't actually happen! Exercise would give me more energy and maybe I would lose some weight!

2) Be more patient...

I need things to happen "now", always. When they don't I am scratchy and difficult. I work at top speed, why can't everybody else? And why can't everybody understand everything immediately? Patience might not make me more successful in any material way but it would make me a better person!

3) Care about detail...

Because I don't! Detail [this is about work] bores me to death, it is somebody else's job. I want to get on to the next thing. This is not good. I do care about detail when I am decorating a room or setting a table so I ought to be able to translate this into the rest of my life, it would make me a better boss if I wasn't always saying "I don't know. Ask so and so."

4) Give up smoking...

I like smoking, it gives me pleasure. It also costs a lot of money and is anti social. Trouble is that I am deeply contra suggestible and the more the world in general tells me I can't do it the more I revert to adolescent rebellion and want to! Be good though not to have so much of my life ruled by when and where I can have a cigarette. The success would be social acceptability.

5) Creams and potions...

I have never been any good at moisturising and so on, it's boring! I almost never wear make up so don't need to use gunk to clean off other gunk. Still, I think I am certainly at that age where I should be religiously applying something to stave off wrinkles. I'm not sure how this would make me more successful, perhaps just to have a daily discipline would be a success.

My goodness, what a lazy grumpy person I am!

Not at all, Gill - just one of the hazards of goal-keeping...


[Cartoons: Mike Baldwin's Cornered]