Cheers! / Why I'm doing wet, rather than dry, January |
Rainy grey skies so often compound the gloom of going back to work after the Christmas break. Not least in my hometown of Manchester, given its lousy – though justified – reputation for unrelenting drizzle. So as offices creaked back to life this week, the picture-postcard combination of winter sunshine and dusty snow has likely made the return to routine a little more palatable.
Can’t those who wish to rest their livers do so quietly?
Yet regardless of this uptick in the weather, the start of 2026 is, for me, anything but dry. In fact, it’s what I’m dubbing Wet January (don’t all trademark it at once). For unlike those worthies who, to counter Christmas excess, have pledged to give up the sauce in the month-long Dry January campaign, I’m doing the exact opposite.
Heck, why wouldn’t I? After all, January is already the dreariest month of the year. What with pitiful bits of stray tinsel still hanging over the office photocopier, and shops desperately trying to shift cut-price Christmas puddings.
It’s all so bleak. Days are short, pockets battered, and summer is an unfocused speck on the horizon. It’s also a period freighted with cheerless statistics: January is known as ‘divorce month,’ and its third........