I've lost count of how many times I've been asked what my New Year's resolution is. On a personal level I want a day now and again when I wake up wondering what to do, instead of knowing exactly what I'm doing and realising there aren't enough hours to fit it in. On a more noble level I want an end to conflict around the world, a return to common sense in our national life, less smut and spite and more genuine laughter. Let's hope 2005 will not provide the stark snapshots 2004 gave us. That terrible, hooded figure at Abu Ghraib and the grinning face of Lynndie England as she held a man on a leash. The faces of parents waiting outside the Beslan school. The emptiness of Morecambe Bay after the Chinese cocklepickers were swept away. Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan in their final pleas. The terrified eyes in Darfur and - final horror - the tsunami rolling in, bringing death in it's wake. But there were hopeful images too. The fine old men gathering in Normandy to remember D-Day. Kelly Holmes's face as she breasted the tape. The joyfully resolute protestors in the Ukraine who refused to be fobbed off with a fake election and proved that peaceful protest can be effective. The boy whose skin fell off, Jonny Kennedy from Alnwick in Northumberland, cheerfully educating the nation in his final hours and the unbelievably heroic Jane Tomlinson, dying of cancer but completing challenge after challenge in spite of pain and failing strength. When such men and women still exist how can we be too down-hearted? A happy New Year to you all. * Denise Robertson cannot enter into any personal correspondence. ******** Any of us could end on the streets I want to tell you about Grahame. Seven years ago he had a top job, a happy marriage, two grown children and a comfortable home. Then he came home unexpectedly to find his wife in bed with her lover. Divorce followed and then a series of misfortunes which found him living in Heathrow Airport, a place he knew well from jetting off on holiday. At 57 and of no fixed abode, his job applications didn't even get a reply and eventually he had no means of making them. He washed in the toilet and pretended to be a passenger in transit to get some sleep. Evicted from the airport he wound up in a cardboard box behind St Martin's in the Fields. "Did you ever cry while all this was going on?" I asked. "Just once" he said. "In May this year when the Salvation Army gave me a room in a hostel and I had a door I could shut." He doesn't drink, apart from an occasional pint, has never touched drugs and keeps himself miraculously clean. Not the stereotypical drop-out, is he? Fifteen years ago my editor sent me out to spend the night with the homeless on London's streets. I was smug in the certainty that it could never happen to me, and even if it did I'd be off the street and in a job in 24 hours. That night I learned a harsh lesson. The one thing you think about on the streets is getting out of the wind. Then you think about where you can get a bed for tomorrow night. In London you queue up at dawn for a safe room. There are dormitory hostels but the violence and drunkenness in them means that the non-violent shun them. And "no fixed abode" on a job application is the kiss of death. I lost my smugness that night and I discovered that at least half of rough sleepers are decent people like you and I. As Grahame said: "The one thing I regret is the fact that I was so sure it could never happen to me that I despised the people it did happen to." Last week I filmed at the Dome, a vast, ugly white elephant which ate up an alleged £750m of our money, as volunteers from Crisis at Christmas sought not only to feed the homeless but to rehabilitate them. The organisation was awesome, but on December 30 the homeless had to be turfed out onto the streets again. No glad New Year for them. The volunteers told me that for every hour they overstayed the charity would have to pay £1,000. A grand an hour for using a facility built with taxpayers' money and doing something useful for once! Christmas or not, the tables of the moneychangers are ever with us. ******** The full picture is much clearer In the dying hours of the old year I learned the folly of rushing to judgment. When journalists told me Government minister David Miliband had slipped abroad to adopt a baby I expressed surprise, even mild disapproval. Why had a British couple adopted abroad when they were young enough to have adopted here? Why was he alienating people who would otherwise have beamed with approval at a child finding a good home? Enlightenment came with the morning when I learned that his wife is American and a few years older than him, so they are probably outside the age range adoption agencies prefer. To have adopted here would have meant jumping through hoops for months, even years, perhaps until they were deemed too old. So I apologise for my hasty reaction. I wish the Miliband family well and I rejoice that we now have a minister in government who might just bring pressure to bear on our creaky adoption system so that others, less fortunate, may experience the euphoria I'm sure he now enjoys. ******** Wind of change High spot of my Yuletide viewing was a 60-year-old film, Gone With the Wind, which, for some unearthly reason, they put on in the early hours of the morning Thank God for the video recorder! It was stunning, even ninth or 10th time around. Perfectly cast, faultlessly produced, a score to die for and a gripping storyline. Remarkable too in that it was the first time fine black actors were seen as real people (Hattie McDaniel won a best supporting actress Oscar if I remember correctly) and not as the simpering half-wits Hollywood had portrayed them as before. ******** Sobering fact. Worldwide, 130 million children are not in school. Without education they have little or no future. Their own governments can't afford to educate them because they have to tie up all their spare cash to repay debt. Sub-Saharan Africa alone pays £20m back to the developed world every 16 hours, much of it interest. This Christmas Britain spent £4.2bn on cosmetics, which was nearly as much as the £4.14bn we gave in aid to underdeveloped countries in the whole year. If we spent a little less on goo and gave a little more to provide schooling, the day might come when those children would be self-supporting and we could squirt our scents and pat on our aftershave without a qualm. | 
