Happy January 24th

“If you stumbled out of bed in the dark this morning, fell over the cat, found no milk in the fridge for your porridge, had a row with your partner, received a rude letter from the bank, got covered in snow at the bus stop and finally arrived at work in time to be made redundant, you will already know that today is the most depressing day of the year.”

According to Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University in this article in the Guardian today. It seems that this day is sufficiently far from the Christmas festivities and long enough for the bills to catch up with us, that combined with the realisation that spring and with it, Easter is a long way off makes it the most depressing of the year.

Certainly it felt that way this morning when the 6 O’Clock alarm went off. It was dark outside and a mixture of frost and snow lay on the roofs of cars parked in the street. Not the sort of morning I wanted to be going out on the bike, but I had no choice, so teeth gritting was in order. The traffic was the usual grind – complicated by earlier traffic light failures and the road conditions. I made my train by the skin of my teeth (again) having wasted precious minutes looking for my gloves.

The train home from Paddington was late arriving and delayed further after picking up passengers from a failed train – so it took over two hours to get home.

But, that apart, I’m not feeling particularly down. The decline in my finances caused by lack of work in October and November has reversed with work booking ahead until March, so I’m busy, which is good. All in all, I see spring just around the corner – our crocuses have started pushing through and we have hyacinths out too. Before we know it the buds will be turning the bare branches green, the daffodils will be turning the country a bright shade of yellow and winter will be a dim memory. Optimist? I hope so.

How was your January 24^th?