I'M not one for doing resolutions -- my long standing resolution was always I don't do resolutions -- but things are slowly changing.

I'm knocking on in years (29 this year) and perhaps it's time to start looking at the way I conduct myself.

I'm not talking about a complete service, just fine tune a couple of points. Like acting my age.

New Year's Day was a total wipe-out this year which saw me stay in bed until the early hours of the afternoon nursing an unbelievable hangover.

My head felt like it had been trampled on by a Russian state troupe, and my eyes (when I could prise them open) had been replaced by pathetic watery marbles that could not focus.

My mouth was desert-dry while my balance was such that any efforts to even cross the room, were as treacherous as trying to negotiate an ungritted road.

So I stayed where I was, feeling sorry for myself.

It's obviously not the first time I have spent the first day of a new year in such a way -- I'm well into double figures -- but I think it should be my last.

As a teenager, new to the evil world of alcohol, it was only polite one should get as drunk as possible on occasions like New Year's Eve.

The whole drunk-feeling-ill-process was a learning curve from which one should shape one's habits.

And the inevitable scrapes that stumble hand-in-hand with drunken nights can be laughed off by others if done by a teenager.

I remember the attention I got when I turned up at a former job, my hand strapped in bandage after a heavy fall on the night of my 18th birthday.

All the housewives rolled their eyes in mock disgust as I played on my injury, milking the attention. Turning up to work now heavily bandaged, would only reap a stern warning from the boss.

My learning curve is steep and, it would seem, I have learnt nothing. I did fall over on New Year's Eve (so the Long Suffering Marjorie told me), although no harm was done.

For once the gaudy carpet tiles my landlord chose for the kitchen came in useful, cushioning my fall.

But the damage was done before that, at least to my reputation.

In a moment that, even now, is still very hazy, I scrolled through the numbers in my mobile phone, and pressed the green call key.

Those unlucky enough to answer were met with near-incomprehensible rantings from a drunken lunatic, and half-hearted insults.

The remedy I offered to cure the hiccups of a pal's girlfriend still makes me cringe when I think about it.

I even gave out the obligatory gushing sentiments (so I have been told) which I find hard to believe, because I never thought people actually did that.

I thought the "I've always loved you" lines were only said in obvious sit-coms. It would seem not.

It was New Year's Eve so there was some excuse, but not everybody laughed it off.

My ever-esteemed boss just so happened to be working the next day at 6am and was tucked up in bed as the bells of his telephone chimed sometime around 1.30am (why it took me one and a half hours to get around to him makes me fear for my mobile phone bill when it comes later this month).

Although he heard the phone he wisely ignored it (thank goodness for small mercies) but was still sharp enough to dial 1471 to find the offender. Little Old Me.

We 'had words' the next day but he took it on the chin and decided not to scold me, but he did remind me it was not the first time it had happened.

The last time, some months ago, he did answer, much to my shame, which I don't think I'll ever live down.

I'm expecting the favour returned when he is working early and I am enjoying a much-deserved lie-in, and as for those drunken nuisance-calls, there's only one thing for it.

I'm leaving my phone at home from now on.