Brew Monday

23rd January 2026

We’ll come back to Monday but for now thank you for your efforts this week. We’ve all got through to Friday pretty much unscathed. The pupils and the students will have had a great week at school or college. We keep moving forwards, with positivity and a (metaphorical, if not actual) spring in our step – well mostly and most of us.

Monday? You know what this will be about. As annual and regular as some of our national holidays and festivals. Blue Monday? I saw this week something more uplifting and to reset the focus – let’s call it Brew Monday! And any brew will do, any Monday will do.

You do know there’s nothing scientific about the concept of Blue Monday. As I discussed at this time last year, it is something that was ‘invented’ by holiday companies to try to encourage people to book their summer holidays. Cynical marketing.  Put some sort of pseudo-scientific formula behind it and it becomes real and real science. And as is the way these days, the idea has picked up momentum and a life of its own via social media – the TikToks and the like. Built on our ‘doom scrolling’.

There is an argument that the presentation of this concept is damaging; in particular to those who have vulnerabilities around their mental health. I can see that. I can see that individuals could be affected by something that we have collectively allowed to run and, through the sharing and algorithms, has become something that is perceived to be real.

So, what’s the remedy or distraction that we all need? We might just embrace a Brew Monday – whether that’s your cup of Yorkshire tea, your strong back coffee or your herbal infusion. There is something scientific about that. Studies have shown that having a cuppa is physiologically and psychologically good for you. That might be the benefit of the brew. That might just be the process of pausing, taking a moment.

I think there’s something more than that. It’s the social. It’s the offering to make a colleague or friend a brew. It’s the conversations that occur during the brewing or the pausing to drink. It’s the human connection you can’t get if you haven’t switched on that kettle in the workroom, the staffroom or the kitchen.

Let’s own Brew Monday. Let’s promote positive connections and interactions. Let’s use the brew as an opportunity to talk, to ask others how they are, to make that human contact – real human contact, with real people, who exist in the flesh, in the room with you. We need connectivity to survive, to prosper and to act as a bulwark against the horrors of isolation and separation.

We are fighting the blues with the brews.

‘You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.’ C.S. Lewis

‘Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.’ Chaim Potok

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