Editor’s Diary: Looking Ahead To The New Year

Welcome to the first Editor’s Diary of 2023. And happy New Year to you all!

I hope you enjoyed the festivities and are looking forward to the year ahead.

The “Friend” team certainly is! The magazine will celebrate its 154th birthday on January 13 — an amazing achievement.

At this time of year, of course, people often make New Year resolutions.

I’ve never been a big fan of doing this. So many resolutions seem to consist of depriving yourself of something.

January is a hard enough month to get through without making life more difficult!

But I did find myself wondering where this custom came from.

One suggestion is that it dates back over 4,000 years to the ancient Babylonians. They believed that if they kept the promises they made to the gods, those deities would look favourably upon them. And no-one wanted to fall out of favour with the gods!

Nowadays, of course, people mainly make promises to themselves instead of the gods. Which is perhaps just as well, as one study found that only eight per cent actually manage to stick to their resolutions. At least the other 92 per cent don’t have to worry about divine retribution!

I was interested to read that one of the most commonly made resolutions is to read more books. That’s definitely the kind of resolution I could get behind.

So one goal of mine for 2023 is to exceed the 30-book total I read last year. (Yes, if you were reading my last Editor’s Diary, not only did I finish “The Women Of Troy” before the bells, I also completed “The Wasp Factory”, too.)

Another is to spend more time with my Highland pony Texa. Though that one is more weather dependent!

And, of course, as a team, we resolve to bring you the very best magazine we can produce, every week of the year!

Read Angela’s previous Editor’s Diary entries.