Grey skies are going to clear up...

Put on a happy face 😊

Happy days

The sun is shining.

On Brighton beach no one is going into the sea because the water is contaminated with sewage. Families with small children stay in groups on the pebbles, avoiding the angry shouts of 'Don't look at me' from a red faced young woman, distressed and very unhappy, who has been throwing stones at the seagulls and is now being attended by three young police constables who suggest that screaming 'Fuck' every other word isn't appropriate.

My grandson, on an after school trip for an ice cream, watches with quiet fascination and concern. ‘She's a troubled young woman,’ Rosy explains. Her behaviour is affected by drink and/or drugs. She isn't in a great place. Eventually, she leaves the beach quietly enough, escorted by the officers.

I set up some larger pebbles beyond my feet and use them for target practice for a while. My grandson joins in.

We walk down to the sea where a couple of other boys are playing, attempting to dam a flow of water seeping from one of the brick breakwaters. It probably covers one of the sewer outlet pipes that run out to sea. ‘Best not to touch your mouth with your hands,’ I suggest, and start tossing pebbles into the sea, noting with pleasure the different pitch of the splosh as they land in the water, depending on their size. Something about the sounds make me and Rosy emulate them and we spend a happy few minutes chorally sploshing while the boys continue their efforts to dam the flow with pebbles. But of course the water just trickles through.

I wander along the beach a little. There I find, washed up on the tideline, a small furry toy. ‘This should help,’ I say and put the toy into the dam.

The boys are unimpressed and toss the toy away. I pick it up and lob it into the sea, where it now becomes an even better target. With no one in the polluted sea, there’s no danger of any accidental injuries. I start aiming a volley of pebbles towards it. Encouraged by my perhaps over-enthusiastic shouts of 'Bomb the bunny', the boys join in too, as do a few other children on the shoreline. We happily throw pebbles at the toy, enjoying the splashes, although there’s no direct hit.

On the beach above the breakwater, I notice two small, blonde-haired boys watching us, with what I take to be some concern.

When we've all had our fill of Bomb the Bunny, the other boys return to their civil engineering project. I watch as the small toy drifts around the breakwater towards the two blonde boys who are watching it at the water's edge. A while later, with a sudden feeling of trepidation, I see their bikini-clad mother wade into the water and swim to retrieve the toy through the unclean sea.

I walk back up the beach, guiltily. ‘Bomb the Bunny…’ I murmur to a man I'd met earlier in the queue for ice creams. ‘Naughty Grandpa.’

I'm suddenly aware of the precarious moral implications of making oneself happy.

Something Southern Water and the other English water companies should be too, when keeping their shareholders happy.

What makes you happy?

That was a question asked in the Italian class Rosy and I attend. A recent survey The World Happiness Report had shown that the the top ten happiest countries were mostly Nordic although Australia crept in at No 10 and Israel (who knew?) at No 5. Based on my experience of Finns, I think they are happiest because they drink so much. And don’t they have a high suicide rate? They must die happy.

When asked to name in three words the things that make us happy, the class most often mentioned Nature, Family, Friends, Animals and Health. Food scored pretty well too (coffee, cake and ice cream!) I opted for creatività, il mio cane e an abbraccio fisico.

If Grief is the thing with feathers (the title of Max Porter’s book) then happiness must be the thing without feathers. My furry friend, our Golden Retriever Wilson certainly fits the bill.

Walking with Wilson a woman comes up to me to tell me what wonderful dogs they are and how she had owned four. ‘The last one was an absolute saint. No surprise,’ she said, ‘as he had been bred by a religious community near Robertsbridge, Darvel Bruderhof.’

In fact Max Porter’s title is a twist on the Emily Dickinson poem:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

The Swiss on a roll

Talking of singing, Switzerland must be very happy after their Eurovision Song Contest win in Malmo. At the Orchestra Baobab concert at Brighton Dome last week, I was reminded that it was there that Sweden won with Abba’s Waterloo in 1974.

The pursuit of happiness

Thanks to Substack’s The Prism for this from 30 Useful Concepts.

‘The more you pursue happiness, the less likely you are to obtain it, because the focus on acquiring it only reinforces the fact that you don’t have it. Ironically, happiness comes easiest to those who don’t worry about it

“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.” ― Henry David Thoreau’

30 Useful Concepts (Spring 2024)

Swiss Movement

In our efforts to improve our Italian we occasionally play a game of Scarabeo, the Italian version of Scrabble. Last night’s game was accompanied by background music on Spotify. My ears, slowly getting used to their newly installed hearing aids, perked up when Compared to what by Les McCann and Eddie Harris started playing. The song, featured on their 1969 album Swiss Movement, became an anthem for the Black Power movement.

Be happy

Enough synchronicity for now. I hope the sun shines through your week from your own patch of sky! Till next time…