Getting there slowly...

‘Resolutions serve to ease our conscience’, I read at the weekend. It was one of about 300 ‘truisms’ scrolling across an electronic display board, a piece by American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer in the Tate Modern (more here).*

Well, and they do for a bit, don't they. I'd been feeling quite chipper in the weeks leading up to Christmas as I thought about how much better things'd be in the brand spanking new year. Plans, lovely plans, bubbling away in my head. I am one of these people who spend so much time stuck in the lovely invented future that I leave little time for the real-world mundanities of Actually Making Things Happen. *sigh*

Anyway, my conscience is now not feeling eased, but slightly sheepish. Time's marching on and my plans and projects are following me around like people I don't want to see, tapping me on the shoulder and pulling disapproving and neglected faces at me...

So, I'm going to turn around and try to placate them. Set them out in type at least, and thrust them into cyberspace for all to see (ok, enough with the dodgy metaphor already lydia; onwards!... )

Without further ado then, my belated new food year's resolutions (always best to start resolutions in February anyway; January is such a terrible month for discipline...)

1. I will no longer cross with silver the palms of those huge multi-national coffee corporations!

Yes, I admit it, I have in the past had a bit of a weak spot for a Caffe Nero pain au raisin and macchiato, a Pret cappucino and breakfast baguette, a Starbucks tea and cookie. But every time I do it I think what a sucker I am to feed their coffers. How much better food I could buy with that money. I have found it more easy recently to stop seeing comfort and a guilty treat in these overpriced, mass-produced soulless products, and have been able instead to see myself buying an image and succumbing to the lure of instant gratification, which is all too often hollow and dissatisfying.

So from now on, I will not eat and drink that junk. I may yet spend long pleasurable hours reading the papers and drinking a latte, or writing notes on minor mishaps or pleasant surprises whilst enjoying a pot of tea. But it will be occasional and at smaller, more individual establishments. And........... I shall buy a thermos flask for my own hot drinks at my convenience and a tenth of the price!

2. I will post every week! No, really, I will. I really will try and get the momentum going and sustain it... This will be the year of lydia saucepan...

3. I will determine my position on meat! I became vegetarian once, for about 18 months. It was a general kind of misgiving that led me to take it up, but it was a vagueness about my misgivings which meant I lapsed so soon after (that, and the fact I was in Australia and enjoying the hospitality of many meat-eating relatives who I didn't want to inconvenience).

I like meat. I really do like a perfect fillet steak, a plate of good cured ham, some chorizo here and there, the occasional sausage sandwich...

But I have an issue with intensive meat production. I don't like the sound of all the antibiotics and the dinginess of living quarters. I'm not sure about abattoir conditions, I really hate the thought of those hens who can't walk because they're bred with short legs and fat bodies that grow too fast.

So I think I need to come up with a better stance on this. I'm going to do some research and then I'm only going to eat meat which comes up to my individual standards of what meat should be.

4. I will learn new skills and recipes! Yes, some kind of course, many kinds of investigations and experiments. All to be documented here of course...

So that's it. That's the aim. And now it's all here as evidence I can't just feel my conscience salved and move back into inertia; they'll be mocking me if I do. I'll let you know how it goes...