New Year's Resolution: Do more silly things

This week The Times, which I buy for the crossword, published in the section of the paper conventionally referred to as 'the bit you throw away', i.e. the bit that's not the crossword, an informative poster in an attempt to be The Guardian.

The poster, entitled 'Offset Your Carbs: The Wallchart For Gluttons; listed fifty things which people commonly eat, alongside an activity, giving the amount of time you need to do that activity for in order to burn off the number of calories found in said item of foodstuff.

While some people might interpret this poster as a light-hearted take on the dieter's obsession with calorie counting, and others might follow it like a bible, I have chosen to take it as a challenge, Dave Gorman-style. While I don't expect this will be massively entertaining to many people, I shall certainly aim to be edified, if not bankrupted, by the amazing list of new activities I shall have to perform (as well as some which I used to do but haven't done for a while).

The rules of the game are as follows:

- I will select an item from the board, and must complete the eating of the food and the doing of the activity one after the other, in whichever order I choose. They must take place on the same day, but not necessarily at the same time (for practical reasons).

- Being, as I am, a damned non-alcoholic, six of the fifty items are not an option for me. In these cases, the task may be completed by myself in addition to a surrogate person known to me, and then I will buy them the drink.

- There is no time limit on when or how quickly the tasks must be completed, except that I must have completed all of the tasks by the end of 2010. This averages to one a week, not including the first week of 2010, which I have already missed (wasted), and one week off. My incentive to keep doing them will be this overall time limit, coupled with the fact that the chart will be stuck on the wall and I'll see it quite often.

This is not going to be easy. But it may well be fun. Here will follow 50 posts, or thereabouts, listing successes (and failures) and of course, including photos.

Wish me luck!