The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Finally, it’s unloved January’s time to shine
Anna Hart always felt alone in liking the calendar’s underdog month, but is that about to change?
Christmas is over, and for once I cannot wait to welcome to the stage the dazzling month of January. People usually feel a sinking dread as we enter this annual period of buyer’s remorse, self-loathing, frugality and deprivation, a bout of collective hand-wringing at the excesses of the festive period. Traditionally, January is an unloved and unlovely month, underfed and underpaid. But this year, it is January’s time to shine.
As we enter 2021, we really don’t need to wilfully insert another iota of deprivation or isolation into our lives. We’ve had quite enough of that in 2020, and even the semi-social, semi-decadent Christmas we were promised failed to materialise. Gimmicky health initiatives like Veganuary and Dry January aren’t without merit; most of us should eat less meat and drink less booze. But the Dec 31/Jan 1 lifestyle U-turn has always struck me as capitalism’s crassest contortion of the year. One day we’re being aggressively marketed to buy Quality Street and mince pies; the next day it’s gym memberships, juice detoxes and yoga gear.
This year, however, our spending habits and our lifestyle patterns have been radically shaken up, and if you’re in the market for silver linings, at least we have been liberated from January health melodrama. After all, if you managed to have a decadent, debauched Christmas period, full of dinner parties, creamy cocktails, iPhones lost in nightclubs, expensive party attire that is already one size too small, champagne brunches and boozy business lunches – you’ve done rather well for yourself, you massive liar.
I know we are looking at a January with serious restrictions – on travel, on hospitality, on culture, on all social interactions. I live in Kent, in Tier 4, and I’ll be in a sling post shoulder surgery, so this is hardly going to be some sort of Jazz Age. But, for once, we’re all trying to make January more fabulous, more fun, more frivolous, not less so.
In past years, I tried to make the most of January, a period I relished after the social whirl of December. But after years of trying to persuade friends, family and lovers to join me on European trips, or decadent days in UK cities, or long walks followed by boozy lunches, I gave up – and accepted that January and I were on our own. My friends were at a spin class, or catching up on work projects they’d abandoned over Christmas, or on a keto diet where all they consume is coffee blended with butter and mayonnaise, or feeling too skint to spend the Tube fare into Zone 1, or unable to trust themselves to have a pub
lunch without drinking a vat of wine. So in recent years I’ve taken myself away alone in January – to Naples, to Seville, last year simply to London to charge around theatres and museums at this blessedly quiet period.
I’ve always felt sorry for this poor underdog of a month, a month of woefully untapped potential, and I’m pleased that January is no longer the annual month of grimness and deprivation. Because there are plenty of other contenders for that crown.
Looking ahead to January 2021, I’m planning to order a fancy at-home meal from a local restaurant every Saturday – to make up for all the lovely dinners that were abruptly cancelled in December. I’m going to watch old French movies in bed with a bottle of champagne, in the afternoon, on a random Tuesday – because I didn’t get to pop any champagne corks with friends at Christmas parties. I’m going to surprise friends with perfectly presented Irish coffees on coastal walks, something I’ve already worked out how to do with one working arm and a can of squirty cream. I’m making a map of seafood and oyster shacks in Kent and Essex that we can drive to for decadent car picnics. And researching National Trust properties and Botanical Gardens with light displays and walking trails. If restrictions lift, I’ll upgrade to an even more dazzling January, with a cosy weekend away in Kent or a trip north to visit my brother in Yorkshire.
But even the Tier 4 version isn’t too shabby, compared with the gloomy, guilt-ridden Januaries of past years. So don’t make the mistake of dreading this January, judging January 2021 according to the patterns and customs of January 2020. This January looks very different. And strange as it sounds, it might even look better.