Competition | 3 January 2009

In Competition No. 2576 you were invited to submit New Year’s resolutions of well-known figures past and present.

There can be no finer example to the goal-setting constituency than Jaspistos who, in his late forties though not necessarily at New Year, resolved to do three things which he had regarded with particular dread: to attend an encounter group, to make a parachute jump, and to answer a sex advertisement in person. He achieved all three and emerged in one piece, which puts to shame those unimaginative souls who annually pledge to lose weight, assert control over their finances, find a soulmate, and perhaps do some sort of voluntary work.

I liked Derek Morgan’s Samuel Plimsoll: ‘Draw a line and move on’, and W.J. Webster’s Lord Mandelson: ‘In due course I shall float the Lord Home precedent, but not yet.’ And Shirley Curran proposed the following resolution for one of her fellow competitors, Bill Greenwell: ‘I’ll stop entering Speccie competitions so that other people have a chance to win.’