By the time this comes to publication, the not-so-merry month of January will have come and gone and the pupils at my school will have been back at school for weeks, and already looking forward to the February half term.
If you have made New Year’s resolutions, you might have already reneged on at least one of them, and perhaps you are already thinking of the lost opportunities, lack of weight loss/copy of The Brief History of Time still languishing, unread, on your bookcase.
For 2023, I decided that I would have a year of ‘Highbrow Living’, as counterblast to the number of Netflix boxsets I watched over Christmas and the volume of detective novels I read. The advantages of these resolutions are such: I am not claiming that they will make me lose weight, get fitter, or even help my pocket, but they might just help stem the postChristmas intellectual slump I feel.
So, in no particular order, here are my resolutions:
Swap 80s pop music for Radio 3
My musical tastes as a teenager were, ironically, more eclectic and intellectually challenging than they are now. As a child of the 1980s, I inhaled the culture and music like a proper aficionado, but I was also a serious student of O Level Music, and could tell the differences between a motet, madrigal and anthem with relative aplomb. However, I was never a fan of Radio 3, eschewing its musical Brahmins for the delights of Gary Davies on Radio 1. Now, my musical diet is, in the main, in a time warp of 70s Disco and the decade of the Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys, and I decided that enough was enough. Therefore, instead of asking Alexa to play ‘It’s a Sin’, I have started to listen to Radio 3, with its dulcet-toned presenters and performances of Bartok and Bach. I haven’t yet had to endure any Wagner, but give it time, and I might be able to sit through The Ring Cycle and leave Bananarama behind.
Listen to podcasts at the gym, rather than Chic’s Greatest Hits on a loop
Each gym session so far this year, I have chosen a different podcast to listen to when I have managed to drag myself to do weights and cardio. To date, whilst avoiding looking at myself in the mirror on the rowing machine, I have learned, amongst other things, about the history of pubs in Britain; the history of perfume; the poetry of Thomas Hardy; and the concept of Transubstantiation. It took me a while to get into my stride: the incongruity of listening to a recitation of Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’ as I try to reach my PB on the treadmill was a bit off-putting, and it was tempting to put ‘Le Freak’ back on. However, I have persevered, and it has been remarkably enlightening, particularly the bit in the perfume podcast about the contents of ambergris: I will never look at my bottle of Coco by Chanel in the same way again.
Stop watching videos of pandas ‘hilariously’ falling over on Facebook and watch Ted Talks regularly
Much to my husband’s bemusement, I have a penchant for animal videos on social media, especially pandas and three-legged dogs who have overcome incredible adversity to find their ‘forever home’. Instead, I have started downloading Ted Talk classics such as Ken Robinson’s Creativity talk, and Andrea Duckworth’s Grit lecture. Both went down very well, but I still have a longing to see extracts from SuperVet, so this change might take a little longer.
Wish me luck!