Bulldoze all memories and sanctuaries; our birthright deserves a new city

Christmas is the reason why it is imperative that we sort out global warming. If you're not helplessly snowed into your enormous Edwardian mansion by Christmas Eve and forced to play Exploding Charades with your uncle's in-laws, it's almost not worth doing.

For the times when it is worth doing, however, Christmas is a fine time for opening presents, eating brussel sprouts with people you love dearly, and having a competition with your brother to see who can drink the most without being caught out for being wasted at 10am.

New Year's Eve, on the other hand, is a time for opening doors, eating the mint in the mojitos of people you love dearly and having a competition with your friends to see who can drink the most without being caught out for being wasted by 10pm. It always seems a bit ropy to me to welcome in a brand new year of promise, plenty and fresh resolve by being so criminally drunk and excitable that you kiss perfect strangers, fling champagne twenty feet into the air and end up wearing the new year but it seems churlish to raise the issue when everything is going according to plan.

Anyway, last year I demanded a 1920s party with all the trimmings. Despite some prompting and a couple of good excuses, I never did get around to doing it. Also I did a sort of retrospective of things I liked about the year which I'm not going to do this year, because I didn't go to Denmark and I've forgotten 90% of everything else.

This year, my New Year's resolution is to wake up seven years ago and just start again. I swear this time I'll get it right.