New Year: Are you nearly a *New You* yet?

Lunch

How many de-toxing, juicing,  5:2ing and stonking get-fit regimes can magazines come up with? My first resolution is to ensure cost centre #2 takes all the party packs of crisps and jaffa cakes to his room. The kitchen is a danger zone, coffee, warm toast and sizzling bacon aromas waft across my work area which is way too close for comfort.

I stood for what seemed like hours watching juicer demonstrations in Brown Thomas recently, while everyone else was buying DVF wrap dresses or vertiginous Louboutins. Wish I hadn't given away the food processor I got as a wedding present, I'm sure it sliced peas and peeled grapes, but what are children for anyway? The juicer was fascinating, but too expensive, the blender beside it, a Kenwood KMix would take up less space in the kitchen. They patiently explained to me how it worked, I waited a half hour for them to find me one in the stock room, no hurry then, it’s only 300 euro to park for the afternoon. They only had it in red, I struggled with that, but i'd never get on the path of new year new you if I didn't start there and then.

This machine will be transformative, we’ll be renewed with  inspirational  soups and exotic smoothies. I stocked up on bananas, apples, celery, ginger, blueberries, pineapple and low-fat yoghurt and handed the lot to CC#2.

Children must have useful hobbies, they can never learn early enough how to peel and chop. By the time I had all the vegetables prepared for soup, the kitchen was like a compost heap. Hours later we had two delicious smoothies out of several kilos of fruit and gallons of bland vegetable soup which I managed to spoil by adding cayenne pepper to give it a kick.

That evening, to confirm I was truly on a health programme I cycled 2 miles to the pub. While out the back, I met a blonde, smoking doctor. The subject of girth somehow crept into the conversation and she told me she lost half a stone with a juice delivery programme, just three days she said. I was hooked, we lit up another one and downed more wine.

I already know I'm a new, new  me, there's loads of things I can't do anymore, tolerate late nights and loud pubs, can't watch University Challenge with the same pleasure, my brain is fried from college. Things that used to really bother me, don't. Window envelopes are top of the list, if you don't open them, no stress. Political corruption, wastage, pension overpayments and general unfairness bothers me, but there's always Twitter to give the impression that you are actually delivering your message to the offender.

In landladyhouse, my flame-haired Texan prospect found a room she could move into the very next day. I've to decide between a pretty young woman with thousands of tiny black hair plaits, doing a PhD in chemistry, a german IT specialist who’s very German and an Italian who struck me as very German. But then, I haven't brought myself to read about the Italian lodger who killed his landlord over a chess game, mainly because I was in France when it happened and I assumed it was in some crazy part of Europe. No. He's incarcerated around the corner from me.

I’ve a craving for someting that's decidedly intoxicating.

The bottles of juice arrived yesterday, I started the beetroot juice this morning and managed to get through a night in college, despite the off-license industry holding their annual awards in our dining hall, with welcoming free wine and beer as we walked in. Only 68 more hours to go.