A Friday Fillip

On October 25, 2013 By Laura MorganIn Reasons to be cheerful3 Comments

So you know when something is super-funny, and you laugh till you cry, and then you go and have another look a day or a week later, and all it does is make you half-smile? And then you try to take yourself by surprise, to sneak up on yourself so that you can recreate your original reaction, but it doesn’t work and you end up feeling a bit dissatisfied?

But! You also know when something makes you laugh the first time you see it, and then you laugh even more each time? Today, we are talking about those things, the ones that are as funny now as they were when they first took you by surprise. Here’s my list, to brighten up my tired and hungover Friday, but I want to know yours too. To make it extra exciting, I am going to count them down in reverse order:

5. The restored Jesus fresco

4. The stuffed lion of Gripsholm’s Castle

3. This collection of autocorrect fails

2. The time that girl accidentally attached a photo of Nic Cage to her job application

1. This:

As a bonus, because it doesn’t make me laugh, exactly, but it does make me very happy indeed, I have also just watched the first Where The Hell Is Matt? video, and now I think you should watch it too:

Happy Friday, internet!

Lose some, win some

On June 4, 2013June 4, 2013 By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing, Reasons to be cheerful2 Comments

On the desk in front of me is a bottle of pills, labelled “digestive enzyme complex”. They are the only visible reminder of one of my less impressive moments: the time I went to a homeopath as a last, desperate resort when I was suffering from terrible heartburn that the usual meds didn’t seem to touch. He charged me £80 for the appointment, during which he wired me up to a machine which he said would pinpoint the cause of the problem, and I seem to recall having to pay another £15 for the tablets – tablets which, I discovered days afterwards, cost £6 at the health food shop on Farringdon Road. (The cause of the problem was apparently mobile phones, incidentally. I expect it usually is.)

Of course, none of it made any difference, and eventually the original prescription of Omeprazole did the trick. But looking at that bottle of pills just now, I started to think “what’s the most money I’ve ever wasted on something I didn’t need, want or use?” That trip to the homeopath is up there, but other candidates include:

The Vivienne Westwood shoes which I imported from San Francisco two years ago. They are beautiful, but they don’t fit, so they sit in a box under the bed awaiting the day when I can bring myself to do something with them.

The trip to the hypnotist who was supposed to make me stop smoking. He didn’t. (Though I did do it myself a couple of years later.)
The holiday an ex and I had booked before we broke up, for which we couldn’t get a refund on anything – flights, villa, hire car. I tried to hawk it around my friends but nobody could go away for a week at a fortnight’s notice. I am still cross at having missed out on a week in the sun, even though it was technically my fault for running away.

Together they represent about a thousand pounds’ worth of waste. That’s terrible! Except that there is a converse phenomenon, which is things which I have bought that have turned out to be worth way more than I spent on them. Things like:

Great Answers to Tough Interview Questions, which I hold 100% responsible for landing me my current job as well as the last three, meaning the £9.99 it cost me was actually worth six years’ salary (and counting).
The winter coat I bought for £90 in 1999, which I have worn regularly every winter since. That’s fifteen winters and (conservatively) fifty wears per winter, giving an average cost per wear of 12 pence (and falling).

The Saturday Guardian. Specifically, the Saturday Guardian‘s cryptic crossword, which usually takes me most of Saturday and which – along with a leisurely breakfast and some football in the afternoon – is the high point of my weekend*. The Saturday Guardian costs £2.30, which is the price of half a pint of beer and it’s more fun and lasts longer and doesn’t, usually, give me a headache.
My digital piano, which didn’t cost me anything at all (thanks, Grandpa) but which was nonetheless quite expensive, except that I’ve had it twelve years and it’s more like a flatmate than a musical instrument, and if I am ever bored or sad half an hour on it will blow away the blues and set me fair for a new course. I am still not very good at playing the piano, and I’m definitely worse than I was when I used to play properly, but even busking away at a Beatles song is enough to lift me out of all but the darkest funk. (For the darkest funk I need Agatha Christie, but since all my Christies were acquired for 70p a time in the second-hand bookshops of Colchester in the mid-nineties, they also make the list.)

So overall, I think I’m in credit. Which means it’s time to buy some new shoes from Vivienne Westwood! Right?

*I know that makes me sound like a retired member of the clergy. It’s not that I NEVER have more fun at the weekend than when I do the crossword, it’s just that the rest of the weekend is variable, whereas the crossword is guaranteed.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

On March 1, 2013March 1, 2013 By Laura MorganIn Reasons to be cheerful1 Comment

…or Happy St. David’s Day, if you don’t speak the language. St David’s is the best of the saints’ days that we take notice of in the UK (not counting St Nicholas), because he has daffodils and leeks, and daffodils and leeks are both brilliant. So in celebration, here are my five favourite Welsh things (not counting people I know):

5. Glamorgan sausages, which are the only vegetarian sausages nice enough that when you cook them, the meat eaters get jealous.

4. Bonnie Tyler (who narrowly won a close-fought battle with Shirley Bassey and really I love Charlotte Church the best, but I wanted an excuse to make you watch this again).

3. The Brecon Beacons. Every summer for ten years, from my early teens until my early twenties, I went camping in South Wales. We camped in the field of a farmhouse that belonged to friends, a farmhouse so remotely-located that its address wasn’t even a street name, but just the hopeful-sounding “Hillside”. We were so high up that clouds would often form below us in the green valley at the bottom of which nestled the village of Crickhowell, and across which loomed the Sugarloaf and Table mountains – not quite the height of their Brazilian or South African counterparts, but a sturdy day’s climb nonetheless. I think there’s a great deal to be said for being able to see mountains every day, and even more for being able to climb up them whenever it takes your fancy.

2. Second place is A TIE between David Edward Hughes, who invented the radio and is therefore directly responsible for both my favourite pastime and the way I make my living, and Little Johnny Williams (he isn’t particularly called that, but he is the same height as me, which for a boy I think is quite little). Johnny plays for Crystal Palace and we love him so much that we sing whenever he comes on the pitch. His song goes like this:

OHHHHH JOHNNY JOHNNY

JOHNNY JOHNNY JOHNNY JOHNNY WILLIAMS.

Maybe you have to be there.

1. This:

Not again.

On December 7, 2012 By Laura MorganIn Internet, Newspapers and magazines, Reasons to be cheerful

This, courtesy of someone I don’t know on Twitter called Rich Cook, has just made me laugh a lot.

Getting Away With It

On November 17, 2012 By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing, Reasons to be cheerful

I’ve said this before (but it’s early in the morning so I’m expecting you not to notice that I’m repeating myself) but there is almost no better feeling than waking up feeling better, after you’ve been ill. A week ago, the day I was due to see Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine at Brixton Academy, I did the Brockwell Park 5K Parkrun and I should have guessed from the pain in my lungs right afterwards that all was not one hundred per cent tickety-boo. That evening, after the show (about which more soon, of course) I had a sore throat but I put it down to singing along and whooping and didn’t worry too much, except that it woke me up a few times in the night so that the next day, the day I had to travel up to Manchester for the Radio Festival, I woke up feeling pretty rotten.

And it didn’t get better! I pick up the occasional cold, but it usually lasts a day or two. This got steadily worse over the course of the week, so that I couldn’t go into a meeting or a talk without ensuring I was fully stocked up with water and Lockets and painkillers, otherwise I was liable to begin a coughing fit that wouldn’t end, or else find my head and face aching so badly that I wouldn’t listen to anything anybody was saying.

My body usually waits for me to stop being busy before it gets ill, for which I am grateful, but this time around it must have decided that since there was no sign of any imminent letup in my busy-ness, it was just going to go ahead. I did two days of the Radio Festival, two days in the office, drinks with an ex-boss, work drinks and dinner with two lovely friends, all in a state that would usually render me bedbound and miserable. I was a bit miserable, but I was also busy and interested in what I was doing, so I could ignore it, sometimes.

But yesterday it reached my sinuses and left me with an excruciating headache as well as no voice, so I decided I would work from home, which was a terrible mistake because it allowed me time to actually be ill. Yesterday was the worst day of all. I thought I might never be well again, and that I would have to cancel Christmas. And then this morning I woke up at 7.30 (instead of 2am and 4am and 6am) with a sore throat and a blocked nose, but only the last vestiges of a cough and no sinus pain, and honestly, it feels like the best gift anyone has ever given me. It’s grey outside and I have chores to do, but this is already an excellent Saturday.

Happy songs

On October 18, 2012 By Laura MorganIn Music, Reasons to be cheerful3 Comments

I listened to Sleigh Ride this morning, because even though it’s not Christmas I was cold and tired and it is a song that never doesn’t cheer me up. It is also the most crazily complicated song in the world – if you are a musician, pick up your instrument of choice and try busking along with it and you’ll see what I mean:

But Dan says it’s too early to listen to Christmas music, so I turned it off and listened to some show tunes instead, and found myself shivering with glee at the lyrics to Thoroughly Modern Millie. I can’t decide whether my favourite is

Men say it’s criminal/What women’ll do

What they’re forgetting/Is this is nineteen twenty two!

What we think is chic, unique and quite adorable

They think is odd and Sodom and Gomorrable

Both are pretty perfect. What song lyrics make you happy?

Autumn!

On September 12, 2012September 14, 2012 By Laura MorganIn Reasons to be cheerful

Here’s one reason to live in Essex:

Another is that it is the driest place in the UK. That distinction belongs specifically to St Osyth, just up the coast from where the photo above was taken, but all of North Essex is fairly dry. One of my clearest memories of university is that it never rained – which can’t be true, of course, but it certainly rained less than it does in, say, Sydenham.

My other main weather-related memory of Essex, not including the one with the bottles of wine and the icy slope (it was, at least, cheap wine, the Co-op’s Vin De Pays Catalan at £2.49 a bottle being our staple in those days) is that it was very windy. Partly that’s because we were close to the sea, and partly it’s because the original undergraduate accommodation at Essex University consisted of six tower blocks (the tallest unreinforced brick structures in the country, we were told, thrillingly – so high that, less thrillingly, there was no fire engine in Essex with a ladder long enough to reach the top storeys). Here they are looming over the landscape from a couple of miles’ distance:

The way the towers were arranged – especially the four north towers, where I lived – meant that as you walked between them you were constantly buffeted by the most extraordinary winds; winds so strong and unrelenting that just leaving the building was an adventure. I have vague memories of late-night experiments with raincoats stretched out to their fullest extent in an attempt to create sails that would lift us into the air, though why we thought that was a good idea I am no longer clear. It never worked as well as we hoped it would, fortunately.

Anyway, the wind was exciting, and even when it was cold and sharp you didn’t have to wear any protective clothing and as soon as you were inside you felt alright again. Wind is not like rain, which seeps inside everything and makes the whole day miserable, unless you go out in something waterproof, which means airproof, which means sweaty. I don’t ever remember as much rain as we had between April and July this year – I expect even Essex got wet – and rain is wretched.

In contrast, the sparkling September sunshine of the last few days has been glorious, carrying it does the slight chill which promises bonfires and fireworks and roast dinners and Sunday walks through piles of crunchy leaves. Autumn is the best season. Spring and autumn are both full of promises, but only autumn always delivers on them, because there is supposed to be rain in autumn and winter, so nobody minds when it happens. Best of all, autumn is when you buy new boots. I am currently lusting after these:

If you spot a version which doesn’t cost £325, please let me know.

“Is it my imagination, or is it getting a little crowded in here?”

On March 28, 2012 By Laura MorganIn Reasons to be cheerful1 Comment

Just in case the last post didn’t make you happy, here’s something that will.

Beautiful things

On March 28, 2012November 4, 2018 By Laura MorganIn Reasons to be cheerful1 Comment

A change is as good as a rest, which is why I felt after my two-week dash around the Americas as though I’d been away for a month. It’s also why you should leave your office at lunchtime, even if it’s just for five minutes, to go outside, smell the air and have a look around. Your eyes and brain will thank you for it.

I am especially lucky, because if I leave the office for five minutes I find myself in Hatton Garden, home to dozens of jewellers of every stripe, all of whom display a tempting selection of wares in their windows. After a morning of spreadsheets and wireframes I can feast my eyes on the finest jewels in the city, and come back to the office boosted and sprightly and ready to work. Beautiful things, you see, make me happy – and when I’m happy I get more done.

I’m not unique in this. We all prefer a window seat, because we like to look at things, and hotel rooms with a view of the sea cost more than those without, because we especially like to look at the sea. The sea, you see, is beautiful. I like to write, but at home I often struggle to think of things to write about. Send me away to the seaside and within a day I’ll have dreamt up (literally: all my ideas come to me in dreams) five new stories and the basis of a blog rant. Send me away to the countryside, where I can look at flowers and grass and trees, and the same thing happens. In the absence of trees and seas, though, jewels will do the trick. My brain gets switched on, new connections get made and I come back to my desk with the answer to a problem that’s had me stumped all morning.

So beauty makes me, and probably you, happier and more productive. And I have always believed that happiness and physical health are directly and causally linked, not for hippy-dippy reasons but for the sound scientific reason that your mind is part of your body, and its health is as key to your overall physical well-being as that of any other body part. Which means that keeping people happy helps to stop them from getting sick, and stopping them from getting sick reduces the cost of making them well again, which is why beautiful things should be available to everyone on the NHS.

Fortunately, though, looking through the window of a jeweller remains free, as does looking at the sea, or the sky, or Marilyn Monroe or a Picasso. Beauty may only be skin deep, but it can gladden the heart as well as the eye.