My life so far

Things achieved thus far during my twenty two years:

1. Attending the University of Cambridge without going stark raving mad.
2. Acquiring and, miraculously, retaining a long term boyfriend. Significantly older, but remarkably appears to be ageing backwards, so by the time I hit thirty chances are he will only look about fourteen.
3. Unfortunate side effect of older boyfriend: two small children. Initially a bit of a concern for a committed paedophobe such as myself, but over time have discovered that I can indeed interact with beings below the age of eighteen, and they actually seem to quite like me.
4. Completing a TEFL course. This involved my spending a month in Rome whingeing endlessly to anyone who would listen about the poor structure, teaching, educational value etc. of the thing, then sulking because I didn't get a distinction.
5. Invaluable life lesson learned from said month in Rome: contrary to popular belief, it is possible to live exclusively on white wine and nectarines.
6. Erm... That's it.

Goals which require attention over the coming year:

1. Disabuse self of notion that the sun is over the yardarm at roughly 10.30 in the morning.
2. Disabuse self of notion that watching entire series of Come Dine With Me is an appropriate use of my time.
3. Disabuse self of notion that pretty much everybody is a total wanker, and put on this earth both to rile and unnerve me in equal measures.
4. Embrace fact that while explaining to people that I am currently "taking some time to decide what I want to do" is acceptable for perhaps six weeks after graduating, after several months sitting around on my arse doing nothing this begins to wear a bit thin.
5. Actually return to Italy, learn Italian. Could have done this while you were sitting around on your arse, you say? Erm... Yes.
6. Despite being possibly the world's worst teacher (though I do apparently have a rare talent for baffling small groups of middle aged Italians for up to an hour and a half at a time), make use of aforementioned TEFL qualification, get job.
7. Despite being possibly the world's worst Classicist (it is a point of personal pride that I survived four years of higher education without ever actually being able to read Latin or Greek properly), make use of aforementioned degree, get job.
8. Have a crack at writing.

Requires a bit of explanation, this last one. Have always wanted to, you see, but to be perfectly honest have always been a little bit scared. Fully intended to throw myself into the heady world of student journalism but lost my bottle, so doggedly clung to the theory that they were all just a bunch of tossers anyway and went to the pub instead. Amazingly, my ingenious tactic of doing sod-all failed to pay off in the long run. So, here we are. Not so much a New Year's Resolution as a much needed kick up the arse. As well as narrating what may prove to be a crashingly misguided adventure in la citta eterna, I shall also have a go at boring all and sundry with my quite limited sphere of interests. I like books written almost exclusively by long-dead depressives (with living recluses and alcoholics as notable exceptions). I like terrible television (see CDWM) and worse music (for me, the 80's was the pinnacle of creative achievement in this field). And, on the rare occasion upon which I find myself on the wrong side of two bottles of Chardonnay, I tend to enjoy crass generalisations cleverly disguised as social observation. Let's see how it goes. And, should no-one actually read the thing, the mere hypothetical notion that total strangers might find my life unutterably tedious should work as quite a convincing incentive to sort myself out.