The mother of all New Year's Day hangovers

Everything is contagious. Laughter is contagious. If another's sadness doesn't infect you, it makes you angry.

I had been desperately trying to be positive long before the plague hit us. After a while, you become very exhausted in the attempt. Now, I become almost hysterically optimistic about the possibility of work which I would have never considered taking on only a year ago. I have to remind myself that  there are hundreds of thousands of middle-aged people who will be forced to turn their backs on careers which they expected to see them into old age, and this upheaval will begin in the bleakest months of the year - just after Christmas.

Looking on a brighter side, Dominic Chappell (the former bankrupt who bought BHS from the asset-stripper 'Sir' Phillip Green for £1 in order to save him the expense of putting money into the redundant employees' pension scheme) has been jailed for six years for using that money to buy luxury yachts and cars shortly after the sacked staff were thrown into poverty. I am no Corbyn, but it is a despicable system which does not ring-fence the pension funds of any company, let alone ones as large as BHS. The sharks who steal others peoples' pensions sleep well in the sure knowledge that the government will not let them actually starve, just so long as the Chancellor keeps borrowing money to keep them alive. It won't be free money for much longer.

On an even brighter note, the new series of 'His Dark Materials' begins on Sunday. A very well-made fantasy (remember 'Blake's Seven'?!) and not a wife-beater to be found amongst the cast.

I am not sure where the imminent deposal of Trump is placed in the spectrum of brightness. Just to know that the vote was so tight that you could not get a cigarette paper between him and Biden is cause for concern. When I said that half of America must be stupid the other day, what I should have said was 'angry', not stupid, and for that I apologise to all angry Americans - except the ones in hummers with guns.

I really don't understand the American electoral system, in particular the college vote bit of it. I suppose I should look up how it works in practice, but I don't have the energy or enthusiasm at the moment.