30th December:

The New Year beckons and television is stuffed to the gunnels with serious commentators stroking their chins and musing over the current affairs that made the news in 2006. Does anyone know what the collective noun is for Dimblebys? A dirth, perhaps? Answers on a postcard, please. Thank god for the Muppets.

The 5 day period between Christmas and New Year is an odd time - a kind of temporal black hole between two huge hangovers. The choices seem stark: go shopping, drink your way through it or join in with the retrospective navel gazing, do your duty and try to come to some kind of meaningful conclusion about the 12 months just gone. Having decided that the country is going down the pan and the government are idiots, you may then wish to ponder the 12 months ahead and set yourself some goals, like learning the piano, or taking up Italian, or getting fit. Safe in the knowledge that all of these will have gone out of the window before the stilton in the fridge has gone off or the tree has come down, never mind been uplifted by the binmen. Which is usually around the same time as the Easter eggs start appearing on supermarket shelves.

The ancient Romans believed that people did not stand facing the future but instead had their backs to it so that as time passed you could only see events around you in the present and events that had already occured. The number of Romans who died crossing at traffic lights is unknown, but the model is an interesting one. So, here's to 2007 and the prospect of another 12 months of more-of-the-same.

Probably.

Although you never know.

It might turn out more like 1992.