Yesterday was Blue Monday (according to the Brits, who should know a thing or two about mood disorders). “22 January — officially designated by a psychologist as the most depressing day of the year.” Which goes a long way to explaining our recently sagging spirits.

Let us just in passing draw attention to the obvious misnomer: the injustice done to our favorite colour, blue. For us, blue suggests no season but summer: the warm air, clear skies, and a midday picnic somewhere appealing (such as: half a rotisserie chicken from the Thursday morning market at Bastille; the Herald Tribune; a shaded bench in Place des Vosges; ending with a glass of wine at Café Hugo preceding a leisurely walk west — windowshopping — through the Marais; OK: perhaps we did get a bit carried away…)

Yes, we understand the point being made by designating yesterday Blue Monday (one of the collective’s favorite books is William Gass’s On Being Blue), but why not Grey, or Leaden, or — alliteratively — Mud Monday; yes, Mud Monday would be so much better; it has a suitably sodden ring.

Most of our t&p colleagues went to great lengths to avoid us in the hallways through Monday (picture it if you insist: a depressed collective trudging glumly down the long red carpet towards the boardroom and our weekly meeting; I assure you that nothing deflates the soul quite as efficiently as the sound of hightop sneakers trudging in lockstep along nylon shag. True: a few of us managed to summon a weak smile between us when the Chairman grasped the boardroom’s doorknob — a blue spark, smoke rising wispily from his toupée — but it was just a brief release, and then gloom descended on us all again.)

If only we had had this article from The Independent to guide us, with its sure-fire recipes for beating the Blue Monday blues. Crammed — crammed!, we say — with suggestions that no one would ever have thought of independently! Everything from music (“Songs you should avoid are ‘Monday, Monday’ by the Mamas and the Papas and ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by the Boomtown Rats”) to meals (“Start the day with a good breakfast because, according to nutritional expert Fiona Hunter, that can help put you in a good mood”); Fiona certainly deserves her “expert” status for that bit of sage advice.

But somehow or other we made it through Mud Monday without The Independent’s guidance, and now have our eyes fastened rather grimly on the coming weekend, and the one just after that. I took a detour past the sidewalk florist’s shop at lunch time, the one tucked just inside the lobby at 455 Granville Street. There were daffodils, and buckets full of Crayola-coloured tulips. It was enough to warm almost any soggy heart.