So it’s goodbye to hygge, readers. Move right along, nothing to see here. I don’t care what you spent on blankets and socks. Your new watchword is lagom – if you can get it past the evil eye of predictive text which is up there with Audi drivers on my list of ‘Things I really hate’. And if you are not at one with me on the car question just keep a note of every time you are tail-gated, under-taken or cut up at a roundabout for the next week and I guarateee it’ll be on yours. Join hygge as last years fashion, White Van man, once the terror of the tarmac. You are now toast, but not too brown obviously or you’ll get cancer.

Incidentally predictive text really is the curse of the educated writer, given that whoever designed it only knows twenty words and no foreign languages. Bet I know what car they drive to work …

Unfortunately, unlike the needs of a rich bachelor as identified by Miss Austen, this may not be a universal truth. Other countries might have their own road demons. It’s a cultural thing. I hear, for example, that pit bull dogs are actually regarded as ideal family pets in Australia

Back to lagom which early adopters will know is like hygge also a Scandinavian concept, Swedish for the pedant and that means you Harrison, and roughly translated for the mass market means balance. Not too much, not too little. Just enough. You may well be thinking that I am going to find this quite a challenge to implement, given that my life has never been one of moderation but that merely illustrates the limits of your lateral thinking. Taking a broad view of my life between the ages of 21 and fairly recently, it was mostly spent dashing about like a headless chicken, running round after other people, a waitress in the dining room of life. Ergo, in order to achieve lagom I shall have to relax and please myself from now on. Not selfishness, balance.

No emails or letters demanding further explanation, please. Sort it out for yourselves. I have already started.

So the Russians have been up to no good and have hacked into everything and everyone. Respect, Russians. I can’t even get into my own accounts – this blog would have appeared yesterday but I kept being told I didn’t exist. My work website requires me to change my password Every Single Time I log on. Average time to convince it I’m not Slavic is about 20 minutes and those in charge wonder why people aren’t using the site. My worst nightmare was trying to regain entry to my Facebook account, hardly a treasure trove of international secrets, which involved me having to send a copy of my passport to California. By post obviously because they of all people didn’t trust the internet. If Mr Putin can guarantee me access to my own damned sites, first time, every time, I’ll do whatever he wants in a Presidential Suite.

So onwards to the vexed question of the Donald and his latest shenanigans. I was listening to Frederick Forsyth on the wireless, practically the only man on the planet with a brain even bigger than Stephen Fry claims his is, and Mr F was of the opinion that not even someone as dim as Mr T would put himself at risk of a honey trap. God knows, I knew enough to have checked my hotel room in St Petersburg for cameras and I’ve never been a property developer. Or President. Or much photographed.

Somebody, somewhere would like to discredit Mr Trump, despite the fact that he is doing a fairly good job on his own. The problem is that there are just so many suspects with different agendas. It might be Putin but it could just as well be the first Mrs Trump – God knows she’s got a motive and enough money. It could be the FBI, CIA or any other combination of the alphabet. Who actually does want to see him successfully installed as the next leader of the Free World? Answers on the back of a postage stamp.

The Democrat Party hate him but not I suspect as much as the Republicans. Let’s face it, how are they EVER going to get elected again after God knows what the next four years will bring? No wonder Mr Trump is reluctant to move to Washington which at one time had more deaths by lead poisoning, two lumps rapidly and involuntarily ingested, than any other city in America. So using my tried and tested method of working out who has most to gain I put forward my candidate of choice – Mr Pence, the Vice President in waiting, with a laptop in the library. I wonder if the Russians agree?

The phone rang while I was sorting out the cupboard under the stairs. “How quintessentially January” remarked the caller on being appraised of this exciting news and I had a lightbulb moment, up there with Saul of Tarsus. January is in serious need of a re-brand.

Being British we see this, the darkest time of the year on so many levels, as something to be Got Through, shoulders to the wheel time, let’s clean the hamster’s cage but wait just a moment, folk. This is one twelfth of your life you are wishing away here. What if we turned it into ‘Be kind to yourself month’?

God knows you’ve probably had more than enough of being good to others over the last few weeks, queueing like a Cold War housewife in a million shops and making more beds than Ikea. Step one is, I hope it goes without saying, abandoning the threadbare notion of rustling up tasty meals from leftovers. My turkey carcass flew out of the kitchen window on Christmas night in order to give the local foxes a little festive treat and spare those indoors the horror of a turkey curry. DO NOT, even under the extreme influence of Bounty-flavoured Baileys, delude yourself into thinking something good can come from re-heated Christmas pudding. Let it go. Let it all go. The withered satsuma, the stinking Stilton, the untouched dates. Chuck them out with the tree. You will thank me.

Take to your bed or the sofa, swaddled in something soft and fluffy – this applies to the ladies as well – and treat yourself to a diet of After Eights dipped in cream-topped hot chocolate and daytime telly. Having ditched the idea of Dry January, what WERE we thinking about?, the possibility of a detox should follow hard on its heels. Detox is for a time when there are more than four hours of daylight. Weight loss can be filed under Wait Loss, do it later. We can and we will turn this time of year into something we look forward to. You are in need of some serious cosseting and I’m putting you personally in charge of making it happen.

Always an early adopter I’ve already started. A Happier January everyone.