Blue Monday

Now the sun has set on another Blue Monday, a few thoughts.

First thought - Grolz, responsible for our PA, got rather confused. Piping "Happy Mondays" throughout the Community instead of "Blue Monday" just confused everyone.

The Blue Act of Worship had its own issues. First up, because it attracted a load of "worshippers" in black macs that we thought had died out in the 80s. Secondly because with blue vestments, blue voile
swathing the Worship Focus, the Husborne Brook died blue, and the roof of the Moot House painted blue to reflect the sky - we wish - everything was just too peaceful.  The idea of Blue Monday is a time of existential angst that all the good stuff is gone from our lives and we've got Eurovision and the Boat Race to stagger through before we get to the Summer. Not for people to rock off to sleep surrounded by happy colours. Next year we're changing to "melantonin blue", the colour they try to screen out in phones.

And now it's all over, what are we left with? As ever, a sense of emptiness and disappointment. Once again we've suffered from the way that Blue Monday - originally a Pagan festival, which was Christianised under St Disgustin', has become over-commercialised. When all you see for weeks in advance is Blue Monday adverts, and reruns of Summer Wine "Blue Monday" special episodes. When the satellite channels switch to be "Blue Monday Gold" and "Blue Monday Movies 2". When Jeremy Corbyn and his Smurfs have visited your house, to take away an unexpected amount of your earnings and leave you with some Islington Spa mineral water and a hollow sense of having done the trendy thing - when it's all over bar recycling the blue wrapping paper and shoving the last remaining Smurf into the Sin Shredder. Well, Blue Monday is over for another year. As John Lennon said, "And so this is Blue Monday - and What Have we done? Written a hypocritical song about no possessions and pranced around in the Buff". And I think we can all learn a lesson from that.

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