24 January 2005: Happiness

So today is the most depressing day of the year, according to Dr Cliff Arnalls from Cardiff University.

I disagree.

I've long maintained that November is the most pointless and depressing month of the year, a halfway-house between the end of summer and Christmas, a month containing nothing of joy for your average Brit except for November 5th, Bonfire Night, when we celebrate some prat who failed to blow up the king. As I said many years ago, how typical to celebrate a failure. Do we have no successes?

January 24th should be a happy day. Look at the facts:

• We're a week away from February, when Spring Training starts in the baseball and Camp Leo gets the Braves rag-tag company of makeshift pitchers and turns them into the consummate fighting machine that will powerhouse the Braves to another NL East title (and thence to tumbleweed week).
• Saints have just won their first game under Harry, and thoroughly deserved it having outplayed Liverpool of all people in the best game of the year yet at St Mary's.
• The sun is shining.
• The AKT Workshop is about to begin.
• I've managed to get another cheapo flight to Texas for a week or so around Easter.
• England are quite possibly about to win the test series in South Africa, confirming them as the second-best team in the world and ready to take a shot at the title in the Ashes series this summer.
• The daffodils in our garden have been out and in full bloom for over a week now, believe it or not.

So smile, you dumb depressed people. And if you don't I'll make you drink tapwater, and that will sort you out good and proper.