Counting Ravens in a January that seems only Recently Gone

Condensation on the windows, and through them, in that obscured outside world, planes of sunlight and blue skies. The light that falls on the bed is white and clear, the colour of the end of Christmas holidays in the 1980s.
The year really begins tomorrow, despite the fact that I spent three and a half (very) slow days at work last week, it didn't feel very much like work. Moving further away from Christmas now and we must all begin to steel ourselves for the grey iron days of January and February. Inevitable and premature will take place to attempt to detect signs of spring, signs of the days lengthening, signs of something warming.
Long way to go yet.
I've always had an odd fondness for January though. The first three weeks or so anyway, when everything feels new and full of potential... but by the time we are into January's twenty-somethings, all the romance has worn off and we're left with a month that seems to have been produced in a grubby grey factory in a country where health and safety legislation is lax to say the least.
Playing Count Raven's doom metal classic 'Destruction of the Void' as I write. It was in the dead days after Christmas 2006 when I bought this, but it seems to conjure up the odd ambience of very-early January, those black deep nights, empty of celebrants and full of something much more like moors and hills and rain. Pre-industrial phantoms pushing hard into all the angles and straight lines. I remember listening to 'Destruction of the Void' walking along the Old Shoreham Road one night such as the above. Everything was cold and pure and clear, falling through the deep-pool air, like sinking underwater. Wire fence to my right, and Hove Recreation Ground all dark and vast, somewhere in there, the railway track cutting past the side of the school. Walking under the walled wood of that school, and in the cold late Christmas night, the trees were old and suburban and secret. That night was immutable. I could have walked or hours but I had an early shift at the petrol station the next morning.
Time is creeping up to 10:00am. I'll have a cup of tea and try to find something to take my mind off the fact that Christmas is over.