Bernard O'Shea: Five reasons why we quietly quit in October 

It’s not laziness — it’s seasonal self-preservation.

"There is a moment every year when something inside us quietly calls time on the rest of the year. It doesn’t make a speech, it doesn’t issue a memo, it doesn’t even leave a note on the fridge — it just quietly packs up its stuff and slips out the side door of the psyche sometime after the last bit of late September brightness has vanished."

I knew October had got its hands on me when I found myself eating the kids’ Halloween sweets and pouring a few casual cans of stout “for no particular reason”.

The gym has become something I fully intend to return to — sometime between St Stephen’s Day and whatever version of January I keep imagining.