Bogus Blue Monday equations and an age-defying president

Monday

Today is Blue Monday, the day – according to some bogus equation involving the weather, debt and time since Christmas divided by low motivational levels – when people are most likely to be feeling depressed. While anything that raises awareness of mental health issues can’t be all bad, equating depression with feeling a bit glum doesn’t really help that much. If depression was date sensitive it would be a lot easier to deal with. I could just pre-book myself into a psychiatric ward and have done with it. One of the most pernicious parts of my depressive episodes is that they are impossible to call in advance. Right now, my mood levels are low and my anxiety levels are sky-high; even going up the road to buy a paper, that I normally manage without a second thought, seems like a big deal. The problem is that there have been many times in the past when I have felt like this and have come through relatively unscathed, and others when I have gone on to a proper depression. After more than 20 years of this, I am still no clearer which outcome is the more likely. So all I do is keep talking about it, keep taking the medication, keep going to the gym, keep trying to remember to socialise and keep muddling on.

Tuesday

New levels of pointlessness may have been reached in a new trend, popularised by the interior designer Lauren Coleman, to display books with their spines faced inwards. The aim being to avoid any awkward dust-jacket colour clashes by having only the white edges of the pages on view. If your senses really are that delicate, it strikes me you would be better off not having any books at all, so that nothing can interrupt your view of pristine white walls. Or, if you will insist on reading, then have white cupboards to lock away any errant books when they are not in use. For me, books are an extension of my psyche, reflecting both the different stories I’ve been told and the narratives I’ve imposed on myself, and seeing them on display on my shelves is a source of pleasure and comfort. Turning them the other way round so they were unrecognisable would be like turning my back on myself. As a collector of old books, I also find it incomprehensible why someone could fail to appreciate some dust jackets. The covers of first editions, such as Brave New World and Murder in Mesopotamia, are artworks in their own right.

Wednesday

President Trump’s medical has raised as many questions as it has answered. For one thing, the Donald appears to have defied the ageing process by growing an inch over the past few years, thereby giving him a bit more leeway on his BMI index so that he comes in at overweight rather than obese. The US president also managed to score a perfect 30 out of 30 on his Montreal Cognitive Assessment test, which only goes to prove that Dr Ronny Jackson probably measured the wrong thing as Trump clearly suffers from a personality disorder. Though I am fairly confident I would also get 30 out of 30 on the same mental awareness tests, as all it involves is being able to identify a lion and a rhino, tell the time and say “A” every time the doctor says “A” when reading out a list of letters, I am absolutely certain I would make a completely hopeless world leader. I’m just too crippled with self-doubt and would struggle to make a decision about anything. There again, I’ve also often wondered if the sort of people who are self-confident enough – make that borderline delusional – to believe they can run a country are the wrong people to be doing the job anyway.

Thursday

After a long career marked by publicity stunts, Richard Branson finally appears to be losing his touch. Having got a load of flak for stopping the Daily Mail from being sold on his trains, the Virgin boss has now reversed the decision. Why? I couldn’t see the fuss in the first place. Branson never had a reputation as a defender of free speech to protect and if he didn’t want to sell a newspaper that had been consistently rude about him, then why should he? As I wrote last week, I was far more bothered about the standard of service and pricing on his rail networks. But having endured all the abuse he was going to get – it was only ever going to be a two-day storm in a teacup – why bother to reignite the debate by going back on his original decision? If Branson thinks that by being nice to the Mail then the Mail will be nice to him, then he really has no idea how the paper works. Or why it dislikes him so much.

Friday

January is usually a quiet time of year for books, with publishers focusing on self-help manuals – new year, new you – and first-time authors who wouldn’t normally get a look-in on newspaper review sections. And it’s fair to say that no one in the trade thought this January would be any different. The UK branch of Macmillan Publishers had so little interest in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the White House that was being published by its sister operation in the US that it didn’t even bother to bid for it. Nor was there much of a flicker from any other UK publishing houses, leaving Little, Brown to pick up the book for next to nothing. Fire and Fury has – with 10 days of the month to go – already proved to be the most profitable book ever published in January in the UK, and Wolff and Little, Brown have been laughing all the way to the bank. And, bizarrely, because all their other books this year are certain to be less successful, every title Little, Brown subsequently publishes will lower their profit margins for the year.

Pictures of the week:

Digested week digested: The missing Carillions