One of my philosophies in life is to try to do one new thing every day. I don't mean anything big; like abseiling down the church tower for charity or inventing a new vacuum cleaner which doesn't lose the power to suck after a fortnight. No, just one new little thing every day. Potting up some cuttings, cleaning the picture frames, hemming a skirt properly with invisible hem stitches and without the use of a stapler. Starting to learn needlepoint again, it may stick one day. Just one little thing, to break the tedium of everyday life. Something to be able to identify Monday from Wednesday so that you can remember that on Monday you cleaned out your favourite handbag and threw away three dozen supermarket receipts and on Wednesday you ordered next year's seeds AND actually posted the envelope. Otherwise every day is about the same; getting up, cleaning teeth, showering, getting breakfast, or in my case looking for a lighter, finding clothes, wondering for the millionth time how some women manage to arrive at work in full make up and with perfect hair when at best I can find a lipstick and a brush. It may sound a little childish but it works for me. Last night, for instance, I didn't know I was expected to cook the dinner but then I found out I was and the cupboard was fairly bare. I did have some Turkish meatballs I had made previously to take for my lunch and dinner so, with the aid of a packet of pasta, tomatoes, onions, peppers and garlic I manufactured a less than authentic Italian pasta alla meatballs dish and nobody noticed the difference. It was a tiny achievement but I could count it as my different thing of the day, even if I then had eight fewer meatballs for lunch on Tuesday. It's not always easy, mind you, to find a new thing. I suppose if I were famous it wouldn't be too difficult. I imagine Tony Blair doesn't have any problems. Monday, sack two government ministers; Tuesday, buy Cherie's birthday present; Wednesday, invade Iraq... The man doesn't know how lucky he is.

The other thing I try to do is to either learn to do something new every year or go somewhere I've always wanted to go. The latter doesn't mean great big adventures such as exploring a remote part of the Amazon or finding long-lost civilisations, it can be as simple as visiting a Cornish town you've never quite got round to seeing. For instance, a couple of years ago I had never been to Padstow, now I regularly visit this delightful Cornish town, and all the surrounding beaches. I also haven't seem anything like half of the leading cities and towns in the Westcountry, let alone in the UK. I'm not alone. I've met a lot of Cornwall-born people who have never been to Penzance, let alone the Scilly Isles, and probably only once to their capital city, Truro. I have a little wish list of places I'd really like to go, although I don't suppose I'll ever see them all. I've been able to cross off Cairo, which, although it may have been a lightning trip, managed to take in most of the things you go to Cairo to see. I've walked on the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, experienced a very juvenile delight in saying: 'Eggs sunny side up' and 'Have a nice day', and spent the evening in a real casino with real cowboys. No, not WITH the cowboys, they were just there, you can't have it all. It's not just going some place though. It is a real boost to learn something new. Water skiing, paragliding, shooting, how to finally start a petrol driven mower without pulling your shoulder out of joint. My eldest daughter says she wants to learn to play the piano this year. She's always blamed me for her lack of musical talents because she says I used to shout at her to shut up when she was learning the violin at school. Actually, she's wrong. The whole family used to stick their fingers in their ears and shriek at her because early violin practice can be pretty painful to everyone but the learner. The other daughter and family has just bought some sort of computer karoake game which they tried out on Sunday. The sound issuing from the room sounded like a cat being doctored without benefit of anasthesia and I had to turn up Midsomer Murders to the highest volume to keep it out. I think they thought it was a kind of family bonding, to me it was more reminiscent of the Waltons on acid. My small achievement this year has come about by accident, mainly because we have moved offices and I can't face the walk from the Sun Girt Lane car park, a name which is such a misnomer for a gloomy wet area peopled, in the evening at least, by highly suspicious youths going into the bushes. So I have started parking up the road, getting up earlier to claim one of the few free roadside parking areas which are closer to Liskeard town centre than St Cleer. I have a considerable gripe with town authorities, all of them, who don't think that people who work in the area deserve any kind of cheap parking which doesn't involve a long hike. The latter may be fine in summer, but not so nice in winter. While they're quite happy to provide visitor parking, for a visitor who probably only buys an ice cream because they've brought all their own food with them, we who do all our shopping in the area because that is where we spend most of our days are left to the outer reaches of Mongolia, or Sun Girt Lane in this case. My new-found need for a parking space has not only made me develop parking rage in the morning, especially when cars have managed to space themselves so far apart that they have used up five spaces instead of three, but forced me to learn reverse parking. Now anyone who is a regular reader of this column will know my feeling about reversing in general, especially in narrow lanes. I've never really mentioned reverse parking because I've always avoided doing it. I've always been ready with excuses if someone is with me and a space which can't be got into forwards is spotted. I know a lot of other women feel the same. It does seem to be a feminine problem, never being able to remember which way to turn the wheel to get the back to go to the left, even though you are perfectly capable of driving forward even in narrow lanes. My theory is that men do things backwards anyway. Like washing up, washing all the big greasy things first then piling up the little delicate things on top so that if you touch so much as a saucer the whole lot crashes onto the floor. When my son was teaching me to drive he always said how easy it was to reverse park, and when he was driving chose smaller and smaller spaces to negotiate into at lightening speed just to show me. Showing off really, but removing any shred of confidence I might have had. It was fortunate that when I took the test it hadn't yet included the need for this kind of parking. Goodness knows, I had enough trouble with reversing round corners and it was only because the lovely, actually forever-adored, examiner obviously thought it was the nerves on the day which made me stop about two feet from the kerb so he passed me. Little did he know that I had managed to get closer than I usually did. Now, driving in every morning, I find that most of the free spaces – free in both senses of the word – are between two other cars, and after several mornings driving round in circles looking for something I could drive into forwards, I came to the conclusion that the day of reckoning had come and I had to face reality. Either I paid about a fiver a day for parking, or I learned to lurch backwards into a space without hitting anyone or anything. Funnily enough I haven't found it too difficult. All right, we've had a few meetings with kerbs, one close scrape with a Vauxhall – close but no contact – and the occasional totally annoying person who watches with a smirk on his, and it's always a he, face. Then I tend to lose it, and forget which way the wheels should go and have to come out again and the smirk gets wider but I can't do anything about it because my favourite space is right opposite the police station. So I'm quite pleased with my 2005 achievement. I've even tried reversing into the drive, which made the cats run up a tree in self preservation and my son-in-law grab his wheelbarrow and race it and himself to safety. If things continue to go well I may even try lanes for 2006.