There’s a Brian Bilston poem that does the rounds about this time of year that takes the classroom rhyme “Thirty days has September” and adapts the final stanza to read: “All the rest have three days more / excepting January / which has six thousand / one hundred and eighty-four”.
January rarely passes swiftly. Are you exhausted? I’m exhausted. It’s because we’re meant to be in a kind of low-level state of hibernation, rather than gearing back into busyness and work and good intention. There were six weeks between my last two pay days; there have been whole weeks of rain; it felt like everybody gave up on saying “Happy New Year!” five days in. All of this is a roundabout way of saying I don’t have much in the way of meaty longreads to give you this week, but I have collated the best little things that have made January less greige that I strongly recommend you indulge in throughout the rest of the year. Without further ado: