Dry January, Veganuary and Tri-January: The rise and rise of well-meaning New Year fads

Are you taking part in Dry January?Are you taking part in Dry January?
Are you taking part in Dry January?
Ah, the first few balmy weeks in January when we start to sink into a life no longer defined by the time we scoff our first Quality Street and when we realise lunch time is no longer acceptable as gin o'clock.

We are back at work (not that may of us ever left but we still wore Christmas jumpers) and it’s starting to become clear that those well-intended resolutions made in a haze of alcohol, written in our spanking new journals and tattooed on our forearms might be a little bit harder to pull off than we thought.

And it’s only week one.

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Back in the workplace, the air is alive with the sounds of beeping and vibrating as smart watches acquired as gifts guilt-trip the professionally sedentary.

Are you taking part in Dry January?Are you taking part in Dry January?
Are you taking part in Dry January?

At random moments colleagues leap up from their desks and dive down the stairs in a desperate attempt to get their steps up, while others perform yoga in the kitchen area and meditate in any available cupboard.

Every workstation is accessorised by gleaming new water bottles containing life-giving water and freshly home-pressed green juices and smoothies while a queue forms outside the bathrooms as the extra liquid and fibre takes its inevitable toll.

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The air is ripe as newly deprived bodies sweat off the cheese and booze Christmas excess while gym bags which have been mouldering in car boots since last January make an unwelcome and slightly smelly reappearance.

Meanwhile, lots of plans to take part in Dry January, Veganuary, or the particularly horrific sounding Tri January are discussed earnestly and at length on desks still sporting tins of chocolates, mega-packs of crisps and bottles of fizz from Secret Santa - all of which are being studiously ignored.

For now.

Above the hum of unhappy Ryvita and celery-crunching, the snivelling is getting louder and louder.

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Bodies coming down off a Christmas high and fresh from interaction with small and highly infectious children begin to succumb to multiple illnesses, none of which will be stopped in their tracks by a cheeky gin and tonic, thanks to Dry January.

The misery gets louder until we all cave - and rip open the Roses.

Happy New Year.

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