Reasons to be cheerful?

As if we all haven’t had a surfeit of the stuff over the festive season, food industry boffins are apparently claiming to have “discovered” a new flavour for chocolate.

This is to follow in the established footsteps of good old milk, dark and white. Not so much a new flavour, in fact, as a new type of taste, if one has the kind of palate sensitive enough to make such a fine distinction.

It has been extracted direct from the ruby cocoa bean, so it is said, with no added extras or fake flavourings. But asserting that it offers “berry fruitiness and luscious smoothness” makes it sound more like some beleaguered advertising copywriter somewhere has been carried away by the ghost of John Keats or Gerard Manley Hopkins than a scientific addition to the great confectionery family.

I hae ma doots, as they say, as it will take more than a pack of pink-hued sweetness to overcome my longstanding passion for at least one traditionally tooth-melting Scottish treat.

They can take the sugar oot of our Irn Bru but just let them try to get me to stop taking the tablet. New Year, Same Old has ever been my mantra. Fat chance, I say, and I use the phrase advisedly.

Take the recent claim that newlyweds gain up to four or five pounds in weight in the first year of marriage. I suppose one ought not to be too surprised, what with all those date nights and candlelit dinners and still trying to impress the other half and resorting to the cairy-oot because you are far too busy enjoying an active married life to find the microwave, let alone switch it on.

But that amount of weight in the whole first year? Amateurs! How about the first 24 years? Try marrying a good cook. It’s a nightmare. Just think how the odds are stacked against you.

You’re a person who loves their grub, you’re in love and the person you love loves to cook and to cook for you because you are, let’s face it, the perfect subject, with your permanently enraptured cries of: “IS there more?” “It’s restaurant standard, definitely!” and “Mmmmmm!”

Not to mention: “Slurp”, “Yum!” or even “Yes, yes, yes!”. I will definitely have some of what she’s having.

Result? Weeble-hood. Never mind wedlock deadlock or holy matrimony.

You’re bound together by the unbreakable bonds of pulled pork, smoked haddock risotto, sausage casserole and a certain sense of smugness engendered by the knowledge that processed foods rarely pass the threshold, let alone your lips and that you are never likely to be subjected to the trials of a £2.50 Marks & Spencer cauliflower steak or a bag of Lidl ready-peeled onions.

Of course, the first few weeks of any year tend to be taken up with days and dates when you’re supposed to start stuff or suddenly adopt a different outlook on life.

I always thought January 2 was carefully placed after January 1 as a buffer against the three-day hangover. But no.

January 2, believe it or not, is the day when most people decide it would be a good idea to start a family; hence a plethora of happy events on September 26. If that is your date of birth, now you know why.

January 9, in contrast, is Divorce Day because of the record number of breakups purported to take place on that date; not, I hope, in the same year as the January 2 when everyone decides to go forth and multiply, unless some of the potential new parents know something their partners don’t.

And no further ago than the beginning of this very week was the infamous Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year.

And there are currently more than a few strong contenders to give it a run for its money.

As things stand, it’s hard to chose as Brexit is happening all the time and nothing, whether you are pro or con, could be more depressing than that.

Let’s face it, even the Norwegians are getting stroppy about it now and they’ve just been named top of the list of the 20 happiest nations in the world.

They’re not chuffed about what they see as potential preferential terms for the UK in new trading arrangements and they want something done about it.

Me, were I a Norwegian (I wish), I would just count myself lucky that, back in the day, I had a government that knew what it was doing with its oil revenues, hence much of the national happiness splashing its way around the fjords.

You’re bound together by the unbreakable bonds of pulled pork...

Picture: Getty Images. Don’t worry, be happy... like the Norwegians, who should be with scenery like this. Although even they’re getting as grumpy as Helen these days.