Blaise Tapp: Surviving January with one warm finger at a time as the cold sets in
Unless you earn your living by saving lives or manning the tills then this is the week that most of us dread.
The first week back to work after the festive break is evidence for many that humans were built for fun rather than enduring endless drudgery. There is no argument that January is the most unpopular of months - although travel agents or gym owners might beg to differ - due to the fact we are either skint, fat, stone cold sober or all three, for its duration, which seems to last for 90 days rather than 31.
For the 11th year in succession, I have resisted peer pressure to engage the services of a personal trainer and there is zero chance that I will participate in Dry January as this really is the one month when alcohol is required.
Perhaps the toughest aspect of January is that it is nearly always freezing, which not only means that I end up paying a small fortune in extra gas for the central heating but also that it usually means that I lose all feeling in my fingers and toes.
However, there is a ray of hope amid the cold and darkness of this month which comes in the shape of perhaps my favourite Christmas present for many years - a pair of heated ski gloves. While I am not the target customer for manufacturers of ski equipment I am not exaggerating when I say that this is a gift that is already promising to be life changing. This isn’t any old pair of mitts - the Tapp children have dubbed them the Darth Vader gloves on account of them being black and boasting a set of red lights, which signal how much charge is left on the batteries - although the seven year old in my likes to think that it’s controls for my own personal forcefield.
The thrill of instantaneously feeling heat being transmitted to my fingertips on the push of a button, makes it almost worth my digits turning white from the cold in the first place. For the first time since baggy jeans and Kickers were a thing, I’ve received interest from others about a piece of clothing I own - strangers in my local pub were keen to know where I got my magic gloves from. It was at this point that it dawned on me that I’ve reached peak middle-agedom.
The fact that I know I'm going to survive the tedium of January due to my new favourite gift is testament to just how dull a month this really is.