Running an eye over the past year's columns, I was astonished to see how many ended with fierce resolve.
With head hung low to the ankles, I must report that virtually nothing I promised to do has taken place.
That I am a man of little moment, a yawningly empty vessel, is neither here nor there.
But I did think the red letterbox would fare a little better than it has.
I entered this year with the letterbox, the third of three tortuous attempts, as secure and aesthetically satisfying as Hadrian's Wall.
But as Hadrian's Wall has become crumbling rubble on the Scottish border, the letterbox is teetering, it has become the words of the anthemic Green Green Grass Of Home, still standing, but its paint is cracked and dry.
Possibly I used the wrong paint; I did choose purely by colour after all.
The poet Brian Turner originally expressed dismay I had not put a back on the letterbox.
The wind will whoosh the mail right out of there, he said.
Like most poets, he was two steps ahead of the pace.
The wind did just this.
So I put on a back.
The wind whooshed that off as well.
Then one night in November, the wind whooshed the other way and blew the letterbox halfway up our street.
We found it lying there the next morning like a discarded wine bottle.
The first column of 2009 said we would be buying a car by June, as the 1992 Toyota Marino was past its sell-buy date.
We wanted, for the first time, a car made in the decade in which we bought it.
The Toyota is still standing, though its paint is cracked and dry.
And I still have nine days to go to pull off the same decade thing.
I am a glass half-full man, I am confident.
I am still making fusion food (September 8) which would reduce Gordon Ramsay to a one-word tape loop of profanity, no prepositions, no conjunctions, although he does use the F word for both of these.
But I still maintain you can mix Chinese with Italian, or French with left-over takeaway Turkish.
As Oscar Wilde once said, and I'm paraphrasing, just shovel it all in.
I still cannot dance (May 19), and have had a fortunate year at social occasions wherein I have been regularly plagued by gyp of the knee.
Eyelash-fluttering women have been clearly taken by the allure I put out whilst glowering in a chair at parties, but I have refused their extended hand.
I do not dance, I type.
I continue to fold T-shirts beautifully so they look like shop stock in my drawer, and I have taught many others this YouTube trick (April 28).
In fact, most of them can now do it faster than me, so I have taken to doing it in mid-air with an elan that has reminded many of Le Cirque du Soleil.
Coronation Street dived dramatically down to a nadir of creativity after I expressed excitement at Ken Barlow's book (November 17).
Ken burned his book the very next night.
And since then only Becky has kept this show afloat.
Train Guy discussed my piece on him (October 20) one morning at the bottom of our drive.
He was getting the column laminated.
It was not the first time he had been written about, he said, a few years before he had been featured as the man who collected cans from the university campus, when he was doubtless called Can Guy.
And the Aurora Cafe in Mosgiel were so delighted by my reference to their stupendously large lamingtons (July 28), they also did a lamination, which greeted customers at eye level when they paid for their tucker.
I go now to the great leveller that is Christchurch for Christmas.
I hope there is enough cash in my Christmas stocking for a new car.
- Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
