The future is bright despite it being January

When it comes to months of the year, January is the fat kid who always ends up in goal – the black sheep of the calendar family. Nobody likes the first month unless like me you have a birthday in it, but now my anniversary has been and gone, I am free to join the January loathe-fest. The New Year is all about fresh beginnings and achieving new goals but resolutions traditionally tend to be broken before most of us head back to work after the extended break, leaving us to worry about paying for the excess of the festive period while facing up to the fact that our lofty ambitions for a new start won’t fulfil themselves.

It is for the above reasons that I have never fully understood the logic behind Dry January as surely this is the month when a drink, albeit an occasional one, would come in most handy for all bill paying grown ups.

This month is so miserable that PR people came up with Blue Monday, a day so called because it is deemed to be the grimmest on the calendar, one that could only be made bleaker if radio stations everywhere were compelled to play the works of Morrissey and Joy Division exclusively for that 24 hour period. It could be argued that this year, every day of this month should be prefixed with the word Blue given the predicament we are all facing. At the time of writing the vast majority of the nation is effectively in lockdown, with even tighter measures expected to be imposed on us all in the imminent future. I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of 2021 resolutions centred around getting out more and seeing more people than we did last year, neither of which will be realised any time soon. Even the usually ubiquitous post-Christmas television ads for foreign holidays are scarcer this year and their ‘we are here when you’re ready’ tone doesn’t provide most of us with anything tangible to look forward to. By now my calendar is usually on its way to being half full but so far, I haven’t even bothered opening this year’s because our engagements are so few and far between that even I am capable of committing them to my wholly unreliable memory.

However, feeling sorry for one’s self isn’t an option this month because the one thing we have learned from the ordeal of 2020 is that you can quickly be consumed by the grim reality which we all face and before you know it you have embarked upon a never-ending helter skelter ride of gloom and doom. Positivity is key to surviving the pre-vaccine period of this year, however long that may be, even if the idea of bright-eyed enthusiasm is enough to make you want to spread that leftover brandy butter all over your gluten-free crumpets.

There is plenty to be thankful for, including the fact that 99.9 per cent of us are not conspiracy theorists and don’t believe the pandemic is an invention of a mythical global government that is dead set on robbing us of all our freedoms. The existence of such morons serves as a reminder that there is always somebody worse off, not to mention dafter, than you.

I am keeping my spirits up by counting my blessings that my loved ones and I have managed to remain virus-free while hanging onto various silver linings such as the things that were cancelled last year have been, in theory at least, carried over to the next 12 months and have already been paid for.

I’m even looking forward to losing weight in the coming weeks and months – yes you read it right – and have rescued the crosstrainer from the shed.

The future is bright and I want to be able to fit into my best jeans when I experience it.