Wake Me Up When January Ends

I have always hated January. The post-Christmas anti-climax coupled with those extra pounds you piled on from all that festive eating and drinking lead you to smack back down to earth with a great big wallop, and suddenly all that was magical and wonderful feels very grey. Despite the fact my hearty post-Christmas dinner rear-end cushions most of the blow, I still find January bloody hurts.

For one, everyone is broke. Now that there is a recession this is felt ten fold. All those fools who spent Christmas Eve panic buying iPhones and Guitar Hero version 8327 will have already had their credit card bill through the letter box and sent it straight to the shredder in denial (No, you couldn’t afford it then and you certainly can’t afford it now). Suddenly those ‘oh, go on, it’s Christmas’ drunkard purchases that were made in a haze at 10.56pm at your local Wetherspoon don’t seem so wise. Penny pinching is very much the theme of January and that spreads over into all areas of life. We frequently have ‘leftovers’ for dinner and we ‘make do’ with 10 pints instead of 15.

Another reality that sets in during January is how much of a big fat failure you really are. You spent most of the end of December saying how 2010 would be your year. You made a list of the things you were going to achieve: better job, better ass, better bank balance. Everything seems possible and I put this down to December’s excessive alcohol consumption. Sure, everyone feels they can be as rich and successful as Bill Gates and as beautiful as Beyoncé after one too many sherberts. Even those lists you lovingly wrote that detailed how you were going to achieve all of this made it look possible. Then January comes. The job sites are bare and all you want to eat are deep fried Mars bars. The possible is made very much impossible. I call this the January effect.

When I lived in the UK I put a lot of the unhealthy resentment I have for January down to the weather. Anyone who has lived in the UK knows that the weather is more depressing than sitting through a New Labour conference. January in the UK generally looks like one big grey ball. You look outside and you can’t tell where the grey begins and where it ends. Every day since September you’ve had Christmas tree baubles and lights shoved down your throat by the High Street chains and while this may have seemed grim at the time, at least it added colour to the landscape. All of a sudden you are wishing that the Christmas lights were left up all year around to brighten your spirits. That man from Wiltshire who celebrates Christmas every day of the year isn’t so crazy after all – he was on to something.

It is also generally freezing cold and wet. Rain, rain and more rain. The bad weather means you are confined indoors, which means that any chances you had of burning off those extra post-Christmas pounds are zero to none – NO one wants to eat salad when there is a blizzard outside to contest with. Instead you fry everything, add a load of stodge, and cover it all with mounds of gravy and butter.

I genuinely thought that by moving to Dubai, some of my January-orientated hate would be alleviated. For one, at least the sun is always shinning. If you are a lady it is also still possible to be as drunk as you were in December thanks to those wonderful things called Ladies Nights. However, the anti-climax is still hard to shake off. The job sites are bare, my next holiday is months off and my bank balance looks like it’s been hacked by Alistair Darling. I can’t afford to go away when all I want to do is escape reality. The end of the year is supposed to herald new beginnings, yet everything is the bloody same. To top this all off, any hope I had of some entertainment has dissipated, as my pre-Christmas fling has disappeared into the ether; quite possibly, I suspect, another victim of the January blues.

I have therefore decided there is no trying to dress January up to be something that it isn’t. That would be like trying to transform Skegness into Miami. The conclusion is, this month has always been miserable and will continue to be miserable in the future. It is best to write it off and hope things will be better in February. That way you save yourself the disappointment when nothing materialises.

Therefore, I am off to hibernate. Remember to wake me up when January ends.