I’ve been neglecting my blogs in the most dreadful manner, lately. Can it be that I haven’t posted in five weeks? That I’ve even forgone the customary Christmas wishes? Oh dear me! The fact is, December was the tiniest tad intense – what with A Christmas Carol and handing in Tom Walsingham’s Book 3…

Then Christmas came – and then… January.

Because, really – I don’t know about you, but I rather loathe January…

Coming as it does after December and Christmas, January is a sort of cosmic Monday morning – and is there really anyone who likes a Monday morning?

December is a month of waiting and happy work, of preparations, of candlelight, of holly wreaths, of carol-singing, of spiced biscuits, of memories… these past few years (if you discount the Plague) it has also become a month of theatre and writing… And I really can’t help a sense of happy ending, a sense of curtain closing. Only, the curtain doesn’t close at all (thank Heaven!), and January comes, and you remain with the Christmas tree to undo, and the carols to take off the iPod, and everything else to begin again. In the cold.

A whole new year before me always feels half like been thrown out in a chilly Monday morning, and half like a blank page: shivering, peering around, and wondering What now? My usual attempts to cure this kind of blues comprise the making of plans and resolutions, the beginning of a new notebook, the finding of some work to do – and a yearning for snow. Yes – snow magically makes everything and anything better… except it never snows anymore in my corner of the world, so I’m always disappointed in the end, but one can always hope…

Then again, this year I’ve hit the ground running, so to say – with a lot to do theatre-wise, a jaunt to London at the end of the month, and some lovely writing news… I’ll let you know very soon about it all. Meanwhile I mostly need many cups of tea and a tight work schedule – and, come February, I won’t even remember the January mooligrubs. It’s just a matter of prodding myself into motion again, after all. It’s just a matter of cold, blank, blue January. And, much as I hate to quote Pollyanna, once it’s gone, it will be all of eleven months before I have to worry about it again.

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How do you like January, O Readers? Do you like the sense of new beginning, or does it clog you down?