A month or so ago, I couldn't wait for Christmas. For the last couple of years, I've taken hardly any time off over the Christmas period, but I was determined that this year I was going to have a proper break. After all the drama of the last few months - not only the whole financial Armageddon but also my personal headaches (hopeless staff, irritating break-ins, feckless debtors and so on) - I figured it would be a good idea to get away from the business for a while. Recharge the batteries. Clear the head. Relax in the bosom of my family. And then come back smiling in the New Year.

Sadly it didn't quite work out like that. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad that the events of the last year have made everyone a bit more clued-up about the financial news. But I’m sick of everyone I meet thinking that they’re Robert Peston. All through the Christmas break, I couldn't move for friends and family chewing my ear about the credit crunch, or telling me how bad things were going to get in 2009, and generally talking about my business with that air of sympathy that they normally reserve for relatives with a particularly virulent disease. The lowest ebb came on Boxing Day, when I ended up spending 20 minutes trying to explain deleveraging to my Grandma…

It made me long for those halcyon days when my friends or family were happy just to ask vaguely how the business was, and then move onto more interesting topics like the state of Uncle Graham’s haemorrhoids, or my cousin Sarah’s lovechild, or even Brad and Angelina’s latest adoption. In the past, our family parties were like an episode of Loose Women; this year it felt more like I was on Working Lunch. In fact things got so bad that after a few days in the aforementioned bosom, I decided that I was better off coming back to the office early and getting some stuff done while it was quiet.

Unfortunately, these days you can’t escape the doom and gloom. Seriously, I can't remember a January when everyone was so pessimistic about the year to come. It's a depressing enough month at the best of times, with its cold dark nights and post-Christmas guilt. But when you can't open a newspaper without some miserable sod telling you that we're days away from national bankruptcy, it's pretty hard to keep the old pecker up (or whatever the female equivalent is).

Still, (a belated) happy new year; I hope that despite everything we keep hearing, it's a happy and prosperous one for all of you...