If you believe what you read, January should be a mammoth slog to get through.  I must be  bucking this trend because relatively speaking, January – so far – has been very good to me.

I think the bad press January gets arises from the media’s obsession with naming days.  If I found myself a bit flat last Monday, I read that this is because it was ‘officially’ ‘Blue Monday’ (which I later learn was originally just a ruse from travel companies to identify the calendar date on which most of us annually start researching and booking holidays); if I manage to get through Monday and then struggle to get to boot camp next morning, I am sagely advised by the media that this is  because it is ‘Quitters’ Tuesday’ the day of the year when the majority of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions (strange because all the regular gang of boot camp nutters are there, swimming against that tide of slackers who have been shamed for throwing off their good intentions).

Then, if I can get through the ‘hump’ of the week (when did seven days start to become camel shaped?) I am allowed to punch the air as I greet ‘Win Wednesday’ and sail through to Friday (TGIF,’It’s Friday I’m in Love or Freaky Friday – delete as appropriate.).  If I have energy enough to storm the weekend, the songwriters forecast : Saturday night will be ‘alright for fighting’ and that there might be a ‘Sunday kind of love’ before it is officially ok to admit that ” I hate Mondays and I am going to shoot the whole day down.’

All this labelling must have started with that nursery rhyme, ‘Monday’s child is fair of face’.  Clearly the writer was being paid to promote a weekend feel-good system and favoured Saturday’s child (working hard for a living) and Sunday’s child (naturally being ‘bonny and blithe’).  Ok, I  may be a tad biased against this nursery rhyme having been born on a Wednesday (just missing  ‘full of grace’ and landing instead on ‘full of woe’), but I still fail to see how we should be expected to have qualitatively different experiences on days of the same quantitative length.  Saying that, I feel compelled to confess that I held on to my contractions long enough to ensure that FS (Favourite Son) could be ‘Loving and Giving’ (he is) and FD (Favourite Daughter) could be ‘full of grace’ (and so she is). I must be a rare mother to admit that I wrote a birthing plan for the NHS based on a nursery rhyme  rather than anything I had learned at my antenatal class.

I am starting a campaign for Wednesday the underdog, just as I am rooting for oppressed January, mislabelled as the month of doom and gloom and blamed on the poor two-faced Roman god of Janus on account of his superpower – being able to look backwards and forwards at the same time. Incidentally, don’t believe all you read, he was actually the god of doorways, passageways and choices as well as the god of endings.

It is years since I worked in marketing, so it may take a while to rebrand both Wednesday and January and to get some traction.  Wonderful, Winsome or Wanton Wednesday?  Woke Wednesday?  Mmm.  Needs some work.  January is proving even harder; rather than Jagged or Jaded January, I am thinking along the lines of Jocular or Jovial Jan.  I may need to knock some days off the length of the month to get buy in on this campaign. At least with January I have got a year to do my market research.

Perhaps I can harness the world of emoticons and at least market ‘days of the week’ pants.  I could go wild and save all the bright colours and smiling emojis for Wednesdays and Thursdays.  Perhaps I could market a range of ‘Love January’ clothing – nothing too top end as we would all be too broke after Christmas to get this trending.  Something cheap, cheerful and recyclable, perhaps something you could regift on February 14th to a loved one?

With just under a week to go until January ends, I insist on giving her the love she deserves.  I am going to embrace this last week before I get all excited about February and in fickle fashion forget I ever had a relationship with January. Admittedly Jan is a bit sluggish – she could do with picking up the pace on inviting pay day to the party, but I do love the way she encourages us to embrace the baggy jumper without judgement, feed our boxset addiction and turn down unwanted social attention on account of ‘being broke after Christmas’.   She is a sage and reliable friend and deserves more recognition.

Likewise, although I forgot to make any meaningful new year resolutions on January 1st, and therefore couldn’t join the Quitters’ Knees Up last Tuesday, I am now going to make the commitment to focus on making my Wednesdays more Winsome.  I might treat Wednesday as a little mini break refresh each week.  Just for the record, I am not diving into this rashly without any thought: I tried it with the gals last Wednesday and although more Diet Coke than Prosecco was imbibed, I think as an inaugural outing, Winsome  – or ‘We’ll Do it Again’  – Wednesday showed some promise.

Anyway, I can not be doing with any more blue sky thinking right now, I have a lot to cram into the rest of my Sunday.  Just for the record, I have never been much of a fan of a Sunday night – too much focus on getting my school uniform ready and catching up on homework.  Perhaps choosing a career in teaching was a mistake? I always was graceless.