This is the new image for Estée Lauder Pleasures and I don’t derive any pleasure from it at all. The reason is that it reminds me that I have done nothing about my New Year resolution to learn the guitar. With two months and four days of 2008 to go, achieving that goal is not looking likely, let’s just admit defeat now. I was part way there. I had the guitar. I had found a teacher who looked suitably like some old bearded hippie and who was even more suitably called Barry. But I just couldn’t get the rest together. It didn’t help when one friend told me it would be callus-hell on my fingers. It also didn’t help that I didn’t have the time to take on such an ambitious project this year (ambitious because until now my musical experience has been playing the marching song on the recorder in year eight). But now, looking at Gwyneth and her perfectly rumpled regrowth-free hair and her perfectly arranged pink sweater (not to mention her perfect organic family and her perfect pretty new website, to which the likes of Deepak Chopra contribute), all I can feel is like a lazy under-achieving oaf. Which reminds me, I still haven’t got far in another resolution: being able to stay in handstand for longer than ten seconds. I should really get off my lazy under-achieving butt and get back to practice. But, well, super-yogi Gwyneth has already beaten me at that one too. Thank goodness I don’t like Coldplay. I’d really have issues then.

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