Early January is supposed to be the most depressing time of the year after the excessive jollity of Christmas and New Year. But there is no need to suffer from these seasonal blues. You can keep yourself fully occupied buying a new sofa and fitted kitchen, booking a holiday, quitting smoking, losing weight, and taking up interesting new and fulfilling hobbies. Judging by the advertisements on the TV, these are just some of the activities expected of the populace in the post-Ne'erday period. (I saw a sign in a Glasgow restaurant which said the place would be "closed on Nerdy" - but I digress.) So many adverts for sofas. Who buys all these sofas? Don't these people already have perfectly good sofas? Have sofas suddenly become disposable objects? Has some law been passed by the Scottish government forbidding citizens to have the same sofa for more than a year? You will gather that I will not be buying a sofa. Nor will I be buying a new kitchen, despite the daily phone calls telling me I have a £1000 voucher towards replacing the old jawbox and kitchen range with a state- of-the-art culinary environment reflecting my personality. (Something dark and morose would suit.) I will continue to smoke as many Cuban cigars as people give me. My diet will be unchanged, although I will carefully follow the new medical guidelines that drinking less than two-and-a-half bottles of wine a week may damage your health. I can probably exceed that target three or four times over.

I have been researching the prospect of embarking on new hobbies. I may take to the tango if I can pass the medical. Or I could build my very own Flying Scotsman locomotive. I purchased the first issue of a part-work magazine which enables you to construct a scale-model of this famous piece of railway history. It was only 50p and for this you got the magazine, a DVD and the first bit of the kit, to whit a rectangular brass template. Closer inspection of the small print revealed that there are another 124 parts to go, 123 of them at the not inconsiderable price of £4.99 each. To buy all of the Flying Scotsman part-work will cost £617.26p. I suspect for all that money you could buy a pretty spiffing ready-made Flying Scotsman engine, should you desire such an item. Or you could even get a life and spend the £617.26p on a trip aboard the Trans-Siberian express.

For the Buffer, the construction of the Flying Scotsman has hit the buffers. It's not the money. It's just that I couldn't face reading 125 magazines about building a bit of a train. Or telling people in the pub: "Guess what? I'm getting the footplate for my Flying Scotsman next week."

Apparently, because most of the parts are metal, the construction involves a fair bit of soldering. But I will not be soldering on. Look out on Ebay for a copy of part one of build your own Flying Scotsman (one careful, extremely disinterested owner).

There is another, slightly less demanding, part-work hobby option available. You can build your own solar system. At 52 issues, it takes less than half the time to put together a solar system than the effort required to build a Flying Scotsman. And at only £2.99 a pop it is cheaper, too.

I think I'll wait for the God version which takes only a week. I should explain that you don't get to build a real solar system. It is a model of our solar system. Or an orrery, as you probably already knew if you've been in the Kelvingrove museum.

My one Nerdy purchase was on the travel front; a £10 Ryanair flight from Prestwick to Barcelona, where they too have part-work magazines. One which caught the eye in the newsagent quiosco is called Sexologies, dealing with that most eternal of hobbies.

The free piece of hardware with the January edition of Sexologies is a plastic device described as a "localizador del spot G". I don't think I need translate. Sounds a bit more interesting than trainspotting or boldly going into a solar system.

I DON'T do New Year resolutions but I am always interested in hearing other people's vows. Particularly a young lady who had decided to make a resolution on behalf of her boyfriend. She announced to his family that in 2008 her beloved would "stop pimping". It transpired that the young man was not involved in a management role in the sex industry. Pimping was his girlfriend's euphemism for farting.

AFTER a landmark legal case, purchasers who were overcharged for replica football tops are to receive refunds of up to £20. The Which? magazine legal team pursued a class action on behalf of 600 customers who bought England and Manchester United jerseys from JJB Sports. JJB folded their cards before the case got to court and agreed to pay compensation plus legal costs. It occurs to me that there is a very strong element of caveat emptor when it comes to buying football strips.

When you embark upon such a purchase, you know that a bargain is not involved. You realise there will be a substantial loyalty tax involved as you fork out an unreasonably large sum of money to wear the colours of your club or country.

It is the profit from these shirts, made for 4p in a foreign sweatshop and sold for £40, which enables your team to pay weekly wages equal to a working man's annual salary to players of indifferent talent and dubious commitment.

It is very nice of the Which? legal people to protect gullible football fans but there are other areas of over-charging to which they might direct their efforts. Lager, for example. There is a bar in Glasgow's Merchant City that charges £4.20 for a pint of Erdinger, which is a bit steep for a drink made from water and a pinch of wheat, hops, and yeast.

More scandalous is the Kronenbourg Premier Cru lager retailing, apparently, at £5 a bottle. Also worthy of legal intervention is the bottle of average plonk which costs about £2 when it falls off the lorry from Italy but which is priced at £16.95 on the trattoria wine list.

Then there is the inferior brandy on sale at your grand hotel function suite for about £3 a minuscule measure. That works out at £120 a litre. And, eau dear, don't get me started on the price of bottled water in restaurants. Or that business of restaurants imposing an extra service charge on parties of more than eight customers. Whatever happened to discounts for bulk purchases?

While we are it, how about an independent tribunal to investigate the price of Scottish seafood in Scottish eating establishments. It is not just about food and drink. Could the Which? team please get a court ruling on the ticket agencies who impose hefty handling charges on customers who have already been ripped off by excessive prices for concerts?

Those Apple computer people deserve a day in court for charging UK customers £1000 for kit which sells at $1000 in the USA. Haven't they heard about the exchange rate? Last, and very much least, can you believe it costs £617.26 to build a Flying Scotsman model engine that doesn't even move?

THE Which? chaps might also care to investigate the £10 million cost to the taxpayer of the inquest into the death of Princess Diana. This money would be well spent if it came up with a verdict that it was Prince Charles who done it. He was posing as a paparazzo and was riding the lead motorbike with Camilla on the pillion.

The inquest is more likely to conclude that the chauffeur had a glass of wine too many at dinner and, anyway, was driving too fast. The point of the process seems to be to supply readers of the Daily Express with gossip about the royal family. Such as last week's revelation that Prince Philip wrote cruel and derogatory letters to his daughter-in-law.

Phil the Greek being cruel and derogatory. Who would have thought it?