It's actually quite easy not to be depressed, even in mid-January. Airlines and public-health leaflets refer to this state as a "sense of wellbeing", and to achieve it, according to a shrink I met over the festive period, all you need to do is dance, have sex and sing a lot. Furthermore, she added, the less inclined a person feels towards any of the above, the more urgently they probably need to try them.
But it's all very well. These bossy to-do lists come at us from every angle. Have you had your five-a-day? Have you taken care on slippery surfaces? Drunk 43 litres of water, used an antibacterial hand wipe, read a good novel, filled in your tax return…? It's not that easy, really, to get round to everything. I explained to the shrink, as she was pausing to inhale, that some people have insurmountable psychological problems related to getting laid. Other people, I reminded her, are much too fat to dance. Others still - and these are the ones I feel really sorry for - aren't very good at singing.
It so happens that the last time I sang in public, the man on the treadmill next to me tapped me on the shoulder and ordered me to stop. I had my iPod in, was lost in the moment, hadn't realised how much noise I was making. He said, "You've no idea how stupid you sound," and seemed genuinely angry. I apologised profusely.
The time before that, now I think about it, I was back at school, auditioning for the chorus in Guys and Dolls. Mid-performance the teacher - "Mr Paedo", as we called him - started laughing, the vicious bastard. But all's well that ends well. I don't think he works as a teacher any more. In fact, he may even be dead.
Where was I? Nobody should sing with their iPod in. Clearly. Mr Paedo, if alive, should probably be in jail. And tone-deaf people chasing that essential third ingredient in the wellbeing dragon can either lock themselves in the bathroom, or - better yet - they can force/bribe/blackmail a few trusted and forgiving old friends to accompany them to the Karaoke Box in Soho.
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I went with a couple of old school friends, who were under no illusions about the singing. Actually, I needn't have worried. Turned out nobody - not my friends, nor their husbands, nor mine, nor anyone in the entire establishment - would have earned a place in Mr Paedo's chorus line. The maniacal wailing emerging from our booth, and echoing gruesomely from booths up and down the corridor, sounded like a 19th-century lunatic asylum.
You wouldn't guess it from the skanky reception area, the slight smell of drains around the urinals, the plastic wineglasses, and the breathtakingly disgusting snackettes, but the Karaoke Box is supposed to be the chicest karaoke bar in town. This, I'm told, is where the famous people go! Not that it makes much difference. Famous or not, customers are closeted away in private rooms, with their own private karaoke TV and microphone sets, so even if the prime minister was in the next-door booth, caterwauling along to that 2006 classic, Who the F*** are Arctic Monkeys?, there'd be no way of knowing.
The room was very hot, and painted red, and our small party drank an awful lot, very quickly, to get over the initial awkwardness. But the trouble with being in a small, hot, red room, quite pissed, with people who know each other extremely well, is that manners tend to be forgotten.
We had difficulty agreeing on the songs. Certain members of the party had a Gordon Brownesque adoration for the wretched, ear-splitting Arctic Monkeys. Whereas I wanted to sing Hopelessly Devoted from Grease. Also, obviously, that nice Celine Dion song from Titanic. Got as far as "Every night in my dreams I see you, I fee…" and somebody stopped it. Replaced it with - something else. Didn't matter, actually. Two-and-a-half hours later we sang ourselves out to Nirvana: "… Load up on guns and bring your friends. It's fun to lose and to pretend."
Never mind fun. We left our hot little booth positively buzzing with wellbeing. It led us on to a club on the King's Road, I'm embarrassed to report, packed to the brim with genuine Sloane Rangers. It was like being back in 1985. Except, of course, we had husbands in tow. And what with the wellbeing, and the dancing, and so many strapping young men fresh from the powder snows of Europe on the dance floor, maybe that was a good thing.