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From Blue Monday to Red, White and Blue Tuesday


Yesterday was a travel agent's dream, indeed it could well have been dreamed up by travel agents in the first place in order to encourage people to book a holiday in the sun), because, we are told that it was statistically proven to be the most depressing day of the year, although we should always remember Mark Twain's dictum casting doubt on the veracity of statistics. "Blue Monday" it was dubbed by copywriters who had clearly lived through the most depressing decade in living memory (ie the 80s) with New Order as the backing track... It prompted a lot of lazy vox-pops on TV and radio news programmes. One particularly inane piece on UTV had a "Life Coach" suggesting that in order to escape the gloom and doom of yesterday (which the accompanying roving mike piece in the centre of Belfast did not support as everyone said they felt fine) we should think about all the good thinigs in our lives... Is there not a little children's chorus about "counting your blessings"? And people pay life coaches for that sort of stuff!? That would make me despair...

But actually, yesterday was a far from blue day for me (despite Liverpool drawing with Everton)...

After moaning in a pronounced fashion last week about the various things that had gone wrong this month, particularly in relation to cars, my faith in human nature was restored this week, when a young mechanic who had heard about my difficulties, volunteered to sort me out, costing me half of what my normal garage would charge.

Then this afternoon, after a tense few days waiting for word on an emergency grant to cover the salary of one of our community project workers, a quick phonecall to the appropriate person, resulted in them cutting through the red tape and sending the cheque straight to us...

I hadn't realised how tense both of these issues were making me until they were sorted... It was as if, despite the dark clouds and driving rain outside, the sun had come out and the only thing blue about the day was the sky...

Which moves me on to today... I feel that a large proportion of the watching world are waiting for the storm-clouds to roll back and the sun to start shining as Barack Obama is formally installed... as we move from blue Monday to Red, White and Blue Tuesday?
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