Inspired by my visit to Bring the Happy in The Light last week I decided to track my own happiness rating through a fairly normal day. In my own estimation I’m a rather equable, middle of the range kinda guy, so it surprised me to see how much I yoyo up and down the happiness scale in so short a stretch, one minute cast into a sludgy desolation of spirit, the next transported to a state of near elation. Is there something wrong with me? Is this normal? Like I said, this was just an ordinary day, nothing particularly special or outrageous about it . . . though I may have made a few details up (no prizes for guessing where I’ve stretched the truth beyond it’s snapping point) it’s only because I happen to live in my imagination for most of the day, and fabulation is part of my everyday life. The things are true in spirit if not in actual dull, cloddish, slack and porridgey reality. Most of us anyway live mainly in a made up world and happiness is just a slant on our favourite chosen ways of telling stories to ourselves . . . or at least that’s what I think. I shall have to check what Bring the Happy think.
Here’s my happiness diary, each moment rated out of ten . . .
5:30 am; Up with the larks . . . maybe that’s ornithologically inexact but it’s too early to be pedantic, so whatever those damn fluttery things are scrabbling and scratting about in the loft it’s them that woke me up. They aren’t sparrows, I know that much (and where have all the spuggies gone anyhow? Leeds was riddled with the pesky beasts when I was a kid.) Must buy rat pellets. Note to self; go to Nevilles. (1/10)
5:45 am; Coffee time . . . if it were any stronger it would kick sand in my face, mock my masculine inadequacies and nick off with my girlfriend . . . these beans are brutal. Positively accosted by caffeine . . . maybe I should brew another jug . . . Round two, ding ding . . . (7/10)
6:20 am; Jog around Cross Flatts Park at improbable pelt. One hundred and fifty bench presses and two hundred star jumps, hell it feels good to be alive! . . . jolt awake on the settee in a sweat, dribble on my chin, wondering what the hell a bench press even is . . . the coffee is making me delusional. Have another jaffa cake and ponder the futility of existence . . . where the hell is the postman with my Amazon order I wonder? (5/10)
7:00 am; Car horn blares, doors slam, steel toe-capped boots hammer down the stairs . . . my neighbour, Christopher, is off for another long shift leaning on a shovel. I have tried to educate him in the elegance and ease of the door handle mechanism (It’s twist and push, Christopher, twist, push . . . and therein lies the secret of silent transition from room to room.) I have learned that to some people the slam of a door is as the sound of a lovers voice to the more delicate and discerning part of humanity. I revel in our wondrous difference. Peaceful when he’s gone. (6/10)
8:00 am; Engage in scintillating debate on twitter with Deputy Chief of Leeds Inception, Leeds City Council’s new Dreaming a Better City Team. (8/10)
9:30 am; Blog like billy-o. Wield a keyboard the way Zorro wields a rapier, though with even more economy and precision. (9/10)
11:15 am; Finger ends bleeding, wrists wracked with pain, shoulders wrenched in soul shuddering spasm, eyeballs aflame . . . whoever said writing was for wussies has never truly struck a sentence from the living rock . . . I crawl under the duvet and assume the foetal position . . . tumble down a hill of ennui into slough of despond where a buzzing, biting plague of despair and infamy infects my very soul . . . teeter with my toes over the edge of the abyss. (0/10)
1:15 pm; Grilled halloumi and red peppers with balsamic reduction sandwich at The Midnight Bell for lunch. Chips. Pint of Blue Moon. Gaze longingly out of window at Tower Works. (7.5/10)
2:05 pm; Fire up the heaters in the office. Eat a tub of candy floss that survived the last show. Indulge in less than appropriate thoughts about candy floss. Huddle over tartrazine orange glow of the heaters. It’s as if Lucozade were ablaze. Snooze. (4/10)
2:30 pm; Conversation with a pair of cadaverous performance artists. Mention of body fluids. Inform them I don’t consider mucous art. At least they weren’t wanting to do mime . . . mime is just wrong. I was charming but evasive. (3/10)
3:15 pm; Back to the blog. Write as though psycho-zombie cannibals were prowling the car park brandishing freshly torn thigh bones. Must make a start on the comments. Feels like I’m bashing my bonce against the brickwork sometimes! (2/10)
5:47 pm; Brief indulgence in momentary self-flagellation. Cursed. Cross Keys for a double 18 year old Auchentoshan. Invigorated. (7/10)
6:25 pm; Text spat with Arts Council bigwig. No, I will not accept a grant in these “times of austerity.” Stop pestering and give it to the lesser talented but more economically unstable. (6/10)
6:42 pm; Exchange DM’s with Tom who’s just got a new job with the council. Assure him that all is proceeding according to design. (7/10)
7:00 pm; Arrive a little late for exhibition opening night. Have mortal fear of dimwit speechifying. Help myself to free Merlot in white plastic cup (positively ghastly!) Notice there’s lots of cardboard and boxes and bubblewrap. Suspect there’s a retail theme. And video, lots of tv’s and projections. Woman drooling tapwater into her hand which contains inky substance that spatters on her boots; woman leaning backwards, suspended from the ceiling by her teeth, sweating . . . can see this stuff live any night of the week in Holbeck. Just a different market. Calling it art certainly makes it cheaper (5/10)
7:20 pm; Friends arrive. Distract them with anecdotes about the wild times I spent on the road with Agnes Martin. Whisper a deliciously indiscreet revelation about Esther Stocker and a cupboard in Berlin . . . once we are all in the right frame of mind I require that we retreat to the pub. (8/10)
8:30 pm; Get another round in. Sat on balcony overlooking busy bar. Come up with brilliant idea for sorting out the parking palaver in Leeds City Centre. Write business plan on the back of a beer mat. Allow my mate Richard to assume all the credit. Noblesse Oblige! Happy to bask in the reflected glory. (7/10)
10:00 pm; Enjoy an hour’s innocent flirtation on Twitter with women from Rotterdam, Lisbon, Milan, Edinburgh and Belgrade (doing my bit for the European Union) and then a not so innocent twenty minutes with someone rather closer to home . . . turn the wifi off for an hour and prop my laptop on the pillow. Write in bed without feminine interruption. Produce half decent first draft of dystopian Rom Com. (8/10)
11:50 pm; Neighbours in bottom flat are rowing . . . “you fuck off!” . . . “no, YOU fuck off!” . . . “fuck off yourself!” . . . “go fuck yourself!” . . . “oh, just fuck off!” . . . I have, in the interests of good neighbourliness and community cohesion, on many occasions gone out of my way to extend their vocabulary of insult and invective, but evidently my efforts have come to no avail. Do they not know how much it pains me to hear the language so poorly abused? I am a man of letters for heaven’s sake! I wish they’d fuck off. (2/10)
11:55 pm; IM’img with Nicholson Baker. He is always there with a kind word. I thank him for his continual support. (9/10)
11:57 pm; Phone rings and it’s she-who-cannot-even-spell-ex with her daily reminder of all the little mistakes I’ve made over the last seven years, such as my foolish decision to carry on with my pitiful existence . . . all my faults, foibles, failings and fuck ups carefully enumerated, coolly dissected, and calmly displayed for my delight and edification . . . bless her, she is a treasure, I shall go to bed with a warm and fuzzy glow knowing there’s someone out there who genuinely understands me and knows my precise value. (0/10)
1:22 am; Phone battery gasps its last and . . .
1:23 am; . . . the landline rings . . . I decide it’s all a bad dream and roll over. Brain ends daily churn. Sleep. Perfectly happy sleep. (10/10)
Inspired by my visit to Bring the Happy in The Light last week I decided to track my own happiness rating through a fairly normal day. In my own estimation I’m a rather equable, middle of the range kinda guy, so it surprised me to see how much I yoyo up and down the happiness scale in so short a stretch, one minute cast into a sludgy desolation of spirit, the next transported to a state of near elation. Is there something wrong with me? Is this normal? Like I said, this was just an ordinary day, nothing particularly special or outrageous about it . . . though I may have made a few details up (no prizes for guessing where I’ve stretched the truth beyond it’s snapping point) it’s only because I happen to live in my imagination for most of the day, and fabulation is part of my everyday life. The things are true in spirit if not in actual dull, cloddish, slack and porridgey reality. Most of us anyway live mainly in a made up world and happiness is just a slant on our favourite chosen ways of telling stories to ourselves . . . or at least that’s what I think. I shall have to check what Bring the Happy think.
Here’s my happiness diary, each moment rated out of ten . . .
5:30 am; Up with the larks . . . maybe that’s ornithologically inexact but it’s too early to be pedantic, so whatever those damn fluttery things are scrabbling and scratting about in the loft it’s them that woke me up. They aren’t sparrows, I know that much (and where have all the spuggies gone anyhow? Leeds was riddled with the pesky beasts when I was a kid.) Must buy rat pellets. Note to self; go to Nevilles. (1/10)
5:45 am; Coffee time . . . if it were any stronger it would kick sand in my face, mock my masculine inadequacies and nick off with my girlfriend . . . these beans are brutal. Positively accosted by caffeine . . . maybe I should brew another jug . . . Round two, ding ding . . . (7/10)
6:20 am; Jog around Cross Flatts Park at improbable pelt. One hundred and fifty bench presses and two hundred star jumps, hell it feels good to be alive! . . . jolt awake on the settee in a sweat, dribble on my chin, wondering what the hell a bench press even is . . . the coffee is making me delusional. Have another jaffa cake and ponder the futility of existence . . . where the hell is the postman with my Amazon order I wonder? (5/10)
7:00 am; Car horn blares, doors slam, steel toe-capped boots hammer down the stairs . . . my neighbour, Christopher, is off for another long shift leaning on a shovel. I have tried to educate him in the elegance and ease of the door handle mechanism (It’s twist and push, Christopher, twist, push . . . and therein lies the secret of silent transition from room to room.) I have learned that to some people the slam of a door is as the sound of a lovers voice to the more delicate and discerning part of humanity. I revel in our wondrous difference. Peaceful when he’s gone. (6/10)
8:00 am; Engage in scintillating debate on twitter with Deputy Chief of Leeds Inception, Leeds City Council’s new Dreaming a Better City Team. (8/10)
9:30 am; Blog like billy-o. Wield a keyboard the way Zorro wields a rapier, though with even more economy and precision. (9/10)
11:15 am; Finger ends bleeding, wrists wracked with pain, shoulders wrenched in soul shuddering spasm, eyeballs aflame . . . whoever said writing was for wussies has never truly struck a sentence from the living rock . . . I crawl under the duvet and assume the foetal position . . . tumble down a hill of ennui into slough of despond where a buzzing, biting plague of despair and infamy infects my very soul . . . teeter with my toes over the edge of the abyss. (0/10)
1:15 pm; Grilled halloumi and red peppers with balsamic reduction sandwich at The Midnight Bell for lunch. Chips. Pint of Blue Moon. Gaze longingly out of window at Tower Works. (7.5/10)
2:05 pm; Fire up the heaters in the office. Eat a tub of candy floss that survived the last show. Indulge in less than appropriate thoughts about candy floss. Huddle over tartrazine orange glow of the heaters. It’s as if Lucozade were ablaze. Snooze. (4/10)
2:30 pm; Conversation with a pair of cadaverous performance artists. Mention of body fluids. Inform them I don’t consider mucous art. At least they weren’t wanting to do mime . . . mime is just wrong. I was charming but evasive. (3/10)
3:15 pm; Back to the blog. Write as though psycho-zombie cannibals were prowling the car park brandishing freshly torn thigh bones. Must make a start on the comments. Feels like I’m bashing my bonce against the brickwork sometimes! (2/10)
5:47 pm; Brief indulgence in momentary self-flagellation. Cursed. Cross Keys for a double 18 year old Auchentoshan. Invigorated. (7/10)
6:25 pm; Text spat with Arts Council bigwig. No, I will not accept a grant in these “times of austerity.” Stop pestering and give it to the lesser talented but more economically unstable. (6/10)
6:42 pm; Exchange DM’s with Tom who’s just got a new job with the council. Assure him that all is proceeding according to design. (7/10)
7:00 pm; Arrive a little late for exhibition opening night. Have mortal fear of dimwit speechifying. Help myself to free Merlot in white plastic cup (positively ghastly!) Notice there’s lots of cardboard and boxes and bubblewrap. Suspect there’s a retail theme. And video, lots of tv’s and projections. Woman drooling tapwater into her hand which contains inky substance that spatters on her boots; woman leaning backwards, suspended from the ceiling by her teeth, sweating . . . can see this stuff live any night of the week in Holbeck. Just a different market. Calling it art certainly makes it cheaper (5/10)
7:20 pm; Friends arrive. Distract them with anecdotes about the wild times I spent on the road with Agnes Martin. Whisper a deliciously indiscreet revelation about Esther Stocker and a cupboard in Berlin . . . once we are all in the right frame of mind I require that we retreat to the pub. (8/10)
8:30 pm; Get another round in. Sat on balcony overlooking busy bar. Come up with brilliant idea for sorting out the parking palaver in Leeds City Centre. Write business plan on the back of a beer mat. Allow my mate Richard to assume all the credit. Noblesse Oblige! Happy to bask in the reflected glory. (7/10)
10:00 pm; Enjoy an hour’s innocent flirtation on Twitter with women from Rotterdam, Lisbon, Milan, Edinburgh and Belgrade (doing my bit for the European Union) and then a not so innocent twenty minutes with someone rather closer to home . . . turn the wifi off for an hour and prop my laptop on the pillow. Write in bed without feminine interruption. Produce half decent first draft of dystopian Rom Com. (8/10)
11:50 pm; Neighbours in bottom flat are rowing . . . “you fuck off!” . . . “no, YOU fuck off!” . . . “fuck off yourself!” . . . “go fuck yourself!” . . . “oh, just fuck off!” . . . I have, in the interests of good neighbourliness and community cohesion, on many occasions gone out of my way to extend their vocabulary of insult and invective, but evidently my efforts have come to no avail. Do they not know how much it pains me to hear the language so poorly abused? I am a man of letters for heaven’s sake! I wish they’d fuck off. (2/10)
11:55 pm; IM’img with Nicholson Baker. He is always there with a kind word. I thank him for his continual support. (9/10)
11:57 pm; Phone rings and it’s she-who-cannot-even-spell-ex with her daily reminder of all the little mistakes I’ve made over the last seven years, such as my foolish decision to carry on with my pitiful existence . . . all my faults, foibles, failings and fuck ups carefully enumerated, coolly dissected, and calmly displayed for my delight and edification . . . bless her, she is a treasure, I shall go to bed with a warm and fuzzy glow knowing there’s someone out there who genuinely understands me and knows my precise value. (0/10)
1:22 am; Phone battery gasps its last and . . .
1:23 am; . . . the landline rings . . . I decide it’s all a bad dream and roll over. Brain ends daily churn. Sleep. Perfectly happy sleep. (10/10)
Hi Phil,
wonder if you could help with the dilemma l have scoring an event which took place last night when ‘Dave the cat’ took a shit in the bath! Extreme laughter at cute kitty in bath was juxtaposed with horror as we realised what she was doing + lm insure whether the hilarity has been cancelled out by disgust!
Please advise.
I’m not the only one who yoyo’s I see. Unfortunately I cannot advise. Happiness ratings are entirely subjective things; one persons “aww!” moment is another’s “eugh!” But just remember, the hilarity of the moment will remain forever, the offending item can be removed with a squirt of Domestos and forgotten.
Dave is female? . . . Short for Davina?
My cat was called Dave too! He shat in his bed in the middle of the living room once in front of my visiting friends to protest against being left along for 24 hours with his least favourite choice of food. My happiness rating at that particular moment? Probably 9/10 as his personality was the most hilarious of any cat I ever knew. Closely followed by -4/10 when I had to scrape it up and wash his bedding.
This is the first minus rating I’ve come across so far . . . I shall have to check with the Invisible Flock guys if this isn’t in contravention of the rules of happiness. They may demand a recount.
What is it with cats called Dave? . . . You only have yourselves to blame.
l understand the subjectivity of happiness but was unsure how to score when feeling two emotions at once. The hilarity WILL last forever, but so will the nervousness at the slightest pursing from Daves nether regions! You’d comprehend my reason for being so twitchy had you witnessed the event, it was no ordinary cat poo! (Imagine the girl in Exorcist projectile vomiting)! Not even Domestos could erase that image.
Helen, I hear you. What is it with Dave’s + does the same apply to humans of the same name? If l’d have called her something else, could l have avoided the incident?
I notice Phil, that your scorings are higher around times of caffine + alcohol consumption, I have a phone number if you need one!
Yours (6/10)
Debi
PS. Dave isnt short for anything, l just always wanted a cat called Dave.
Is the phone number for the 24 hour off license? That might come in handy.
No, but l have that too!
brass door handles are very elegant looking that is why we always use them at home *~’
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