"F… off 2002" – no, that's not how I feel about last year at all, but is the inscription on a Christmas card from a girlfriend who didn't have the best of years. It made me laugh out loud. She wasn't laughing when she got home one Friday evening to find a tabloid reporter on her doorstep trying to persuade her husband to give an interview. When her husband refused to talk to the reporter, my friend asked what she wanted.

It emerged that the newspaper was interested in getting a comment from him on how it felt to lose his job over a long-standing office affair. In one fell swoop my friend discovered that not only was she about to become a single mother but she was also going to have to provide the entire household income. No wonder she was keen to see the back of last year.