Oxford entrepreneur and man about town Max Mason, 37, shares his views on love and life...

January has well and truly got to me. My mother kidded me into believing that I wouldn’t like Christmas away, sheltered beneath a tropical palm on a balmy beach. She thus managed to ensure a family Christmas together... and Oxford over Christmas and New Year was the destination for the gathering of the Mason clan. For the first time in about ten years I haven’t spent any of the period away and the result is that I don’t think I’ve ever felt less enthusiastic about anything. I, for the first time, could imagine how much of an emotional prison having depression must be.

If you have family, house, full-time work and other commitments hanging around your neck, it must feel like an inescapable burden when the blues get to you. I’m reasonably fortunate in that I have only my aquatic home and my business to concern me. I tend to steer clear of loans or debt because financial obligations would weigh heavy on my mind if ever life started to become tricky.

However, I have to worry about making enough money to pay eighteen members of staff, the HM Revenue and Customs, suppliers, landlord and an array of other people. So when the annual January drought of customers comes around, I need to ensure I have a steady emotional footing on life or risk getting bogged down with worry.

I’ve got a sensible enough head upon my shoulders, so I had imagined that it would be easy to revel in the misery for a short while, crack open a bottle of something naughty, then buck myself up once the process had worked its way through my system.

But it’s really quite terrifying to appreciate that it’s just not that easy. I allowed myself a couple of days as a recluse, made ever-easier by the fact that I had a boat which nobody could get to, even if they had wanted to, then simply did nothing for a good few days.

I had a fridge full of good food, having taken an emergency dash to Waitrose before my enforced isolation, had plenty of good booze and was ready for the off.

I have to say, I’d make a pretty useless drunk. I just don’t like drinking on my own, so after just a single bottle of rather pleasant wine I gave up, put my glasses away and was back into the land of sobriety. So, what followed was a feast fit for Escoffier. Turkey, hams, pates and fine food, so plentiful I worried at times that I would sink my little boat. It was all spread over three days and I rarely gave a thought to the outside world – I was warm, well- fed and was able to marvel at the floods with a front-row seat.

I’m lucky that the story was both brief and had a happy ending.

Thanks to good friends, I was hauled out of it, was taken for a lunch, and managed to get on with life as normal.

But I got the feeling, from a very fleeting glimpse, that it isn’t that easy for some folks and that the condition can seem inescapable. That no matter who does their best to cheer you up, to make you realise that life ain’t all that bad and that no problem is utterly inescapable, you simply can’t get yourself out of your doldrums. What’s more, there were many people who were enduring a much harder time than I was selfishly assuming I was alone in – some people had real problems.

My advice, is always to have someone to speak to, even if it’s the Samaritans. They’re well trained, they’re used to dealing with people in a similar condition and are less likely than most to say the things which will push you further into your darkness. If you’re a chap, and you’re able to get away with it, simply do what I did, turn on the Xbox and get on with it. It became a luxurious few days of simply doing nothing, which in all honesty, I never really seem to allow myself.

Just make sure you can get yourself out when the time is right, and get back on with life.