Stupid And Cheerful

Her name, I believe, was Dr Joy. 

I was half listening to a Podcast. Which may have been 'This American Life' and the narrative was about  a woman who, for many years, had consulted a radio Agony Aunt.

The caller first tapped Dr Joy for help over a boyfriend, sometime in the seventies. "Dump him." Says Dr Joy with no hesitation. Which, after a year, "Duped by a Dolt" duly did. 

There followed decades of advice-seeking:more flawed relationships, family problems, financial hitches, the usual sort of thing. What caught my attention was Dr Joy's answer to life's most intractable problems, you know the ones: a person who will never take, "No!"for an answer; the boss who  will run you into the ground and will never give you the credit you deserve;;the customer-service person who missed the memo about the customer being always right: the solution? "Stupid and Cheerful" 

It took a while to sink in.

So if ever you catch me grinning inanely at you, happily explaining how silly of me, but I am totally unable to comply with your wishes for a trivial but totally irreversible reason:"Stupid and Cheerful."  Brilliant. 

The podcast draws to a close. I am on the edge of my seat. I want to know more. Sadly the story does not have a happy ending. After decades of taking Dr Joy's advice, the caller embroils  herself in a string of dead-end affairs that she is  too  embarrassed to tell Dr Joy about. On extricating herself, she decides to call Dr Joy's show to thank her for her years of great advice,  only to learn that she has died two days earlier.

Today's lesson is two-fold. 1.Don't wait until someone dies before remembering to say thank you. 2. Everyday. Sit in front of a mirror and practise "Stupid and Cheerful" Both of these nostrums are recipes for a happier and more fulfilling life. 

Oh, For Christ's Sake!

I am so saddened by some of the terrible things that are written in the media about the poor, mmigrants, the 'other':especially by "Christians"! You want to know what Jesus REALLY taught ? 

A Franciscan worldview: 

"Who are you God, and who am I?" 

https://youtu.be/vEZ14Oiz3RE

Going To The Pub:1

 My earliest memories of a Public House are of family outing to the King's Head in Upton St Leonards.

It would have been a warm summer evening. Kids are not allowed in the pub, but there is a garden, with a wooden shelter and a grassy playground. A bottle of pop a bag of crisps (Smiths, in a blue and white packet that comes with a twist of oiled paper containing salt.) Mum and dad drink Watney's Pale Ale.

Supper was a Melton Mowbray pork pie, with cold pickles.

There were games to be played 'Grandmother's Footsteps', 'Hide and Seek', British Bulldog', 'In And Out The Bluebell Windows', 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', and 'What's The Time Mr Wolf'?' I teach them to my grandchildren now. 

And there were chants and rhymes, running and laughing ... lots and lots of laughing.

Ball games, skipping games, handstands, cartwheels and Tag. 

Always sunny, always suffused with joy. Evening falls and I can see Dad lifting a tired brother Mervyn over his shoulders as we trudge home down Winneycroft Lane and to bed.       

On My Mind

On my mind

I am going to tell you what I have been about.

No need to brace yourself, it is mundane stuff, but,

Deserving, I think, of record:

I wonder, I thought, ( and here, this being a low-budget poem, I advise insertion of your own quotation marks)

I wonder if I might garden in my pyjamas?

It's Warm, and Humid, and I considered it

OK, weather-wise, at least.

Besides, I reasoned, why bother to change? The hedges are high and the neighbours about their business. 

From pyjamas I came, and to pyjamas I will return, so,

It's just a matter of cutting out the trousery-bit

In between.

So I gardened in my pyjamas.

I hoed the herbs with careful attention to detail. 

With new hoe.

(£15.95 from Spear and Jackson, good for another nine years, eleven months, and twenty-four days ..) 

Coming close to a blooming foxglove, I turned up it's trumpets

And marvelled at the multitude of ants also

About their business. 

The cranesbill leaves I noticed, not sure that I approved, are laced with bug work.

And so on. 

There's something a little sixty-sixish about gardening in pyjamas. 

I think, when I was younger, I would have looked upon it as a worrying sign. 

Now I know, and I am laughing, it's no such thing.

When the hedges are high, and the neighbours about their business, you can do

What you bloody well like and really, REALLY not 

Give a damn. 

:)