Photograph: Martin Argles/Guardian
It's all depressingly familiar. The sky dull as an aged blank page, the sound of new year resolve splintering all around me. It comes around so quickly. It seems like only a matter of weeks. Oh, I see. It is only a matter of weeks.
It's the worst day of the year, again, but this time it's the academic nomination rather than the people's choice. Cardiff University researcher Cliff Arnall appears to have reached out from under the duvet to poke his triannual press release into the fax machine and get the media tolling the bells of misery.
It's the usual story of bad weather, debt and failed resolutions from Dr Arnall, the harbinger of gloom who has built a reputation for calling the seasonally-induced mood.
As well as the January woefest, Dr Arnall has also pronounced on the best day to change one's life and the happiest day of the year, throwing down the gauntlet to press officers everywhere to come up with their most unlikely tie-ins.
He appears to have sterling support in his quest to unmask the secrets of the emotional life of the nation from the business sector, with Walls Ice Cream commissioning his summer research and Sky Travel named as backers for his study of the peak of winter depression.
Being a scientist, Dr Arnall comes to his conclusions by way of a series of formulae. He arrived at January 23, for instance, via the following calculation: ([W + (D-d)] x TQ) ÷ (M x NA). (W: weather, D: debt, d: money due in January pay, T: time elapsed since Christmas, Q: time since failed New Year's resolutions to quit smoking, drinking etc, M: general motivational levels, NA: the need to take action.) I believe many of the terms are derived from Einstein's important work in this area, but cannot be sure.
Whatever holes people might want to poke in his methodology, Dr Arnall's theory has a ring of empirical truth about it today.
Then again, January Mondays are a pretty safe bet for despondency, so take your pick, while I close my eyes, put my coat over my head, inhale the fumes from my paper cup of lukewarm detox tea and gin and think of June 24.
