The Day of Gloom

Lewis and Rose Rita battle a magician and musician in The Doom of the Haunted Opera as they try to make sense of the score entitled, The Day of Doom.  It sounded dreadful and unworthy of a sequel, but someone has now, all these years later, come up with something that sounds like a follow-up.

According to Cliff Arnall - a psychologist at Cardiff University in Wales - today, Monday, January 23, is the gloomiest day of the year.

Arnall devised a formula combining personal and seasonal factors to calculate the year’s emotional low point: 1/8W + (D-d)3/8 x TQ / M x NA. The variables are weather (W), debt (D), monthly salary (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failure to quit a bad habit (Q), low motivational levels (M) and the need to take action (NA).

For the record - and to not make us sound like complete pessimists - the happiest day of 2006 is June 23.

Summer. Of course.