PROMISES, promises! We all make them, we all break them.

Some may deny that, but no-one can go through life and keep every pledge.

Look at all those promises we make to ourselves at New Year. My own -- to lose weight -- has gone swimmingly. I've only gone up from size 14 to 16 (that took a couple of glasses of Chardonnay to admit in print).

Days before the General Election, we are swamped by them. Political parties promise to do this, promise to do that. We WILL bring taxes down, we WILL shorten queues for a hip replacement on the NHS, we WILL build that by-pass, we WILL give everyone who votes for us £50 and a cruise around the Greek islands (that would be a guaranteed way to Number 10 -- it would certainly get my approval).

All promises that -- in all probability -- won't or can't be kept. Hearing the spoutings of politicians reminds me of my children: "PLEEEZE can I have an ice cream, mum?" they say as we walk into town.

"PLEEEZE. We PROMISE we'll be good girls, we PROMISE we won't pull out all the leaflets in the racks while you queue in the building society, we PROMISE we won't squeeze out all the toothpaste from the new tube and smear it all over the toilet seat, and we PROMISE we won't mess around for three hours after you've put us to bed."

So I look down into two pairs of spaniel eyes and, of course, I succumb.

But, as soon as we hit the Abbey National, I leave them for a couple of minutes, turn around and there they are, adding to their vast collection of bumf on ISAs, unit trusts and fixed rate mortgages.

The toothpaste business does not recur, but the bedtime antics carry on as normal night after night. One promise in three kept, not bad. Better than most political parties. Empty promises, that's what we call them.

My husband has been promising to replace the missing knobs from our kitchen cupboards for the past two years, but there's been no action yet and the dreadful realisation that I might have to learn to use a screwdriver myself is slowly dawning.

It seems that promises are made to be broken. Put it this way, they don't hold much clout. Look at the marriage vows: "I promise to love, honour and obey." Not many do all three -- particularly not the third -- for more than the duration of the service.

Still, it's an improvement on the olde worlde vows (17th century, I'm told) where women promised to be "bonny and lusty in bed," or something along those lines. I could certainly honour a promise to be "grumpy, frosty and plagued with a permanent headache."

Then there's the expression "on a promise," to describe someone who's got lucky on a night out and believes that the chances of going all the way are worthy of a wager at William Hill.

My husband thought he was on a promise on his first date with me.

All he got was a cup of weak coffee and a stale bourbon. Now all he gets is the coffee -- a biscuit is a bonus.

Promises are taken with a pinch of salt. We listen to Tony Blair, Willam Hague & Co. promising some sort of Utopia, yet as a nation we're becoming wise to the art of electioneering and find it all hard to believe. I wonder what will be the first promise to be fulfilled -- shorter NHS waiting lists or my cupboard doors.

I''ll keep you posted on the latter -- and that's a promise.