"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” (Churchill)

I was part of a rather coxcombical conversation recently where everyone urged everyone else to Take Pleasure in The Moment, to Digest the Here and Now and to See Joy in Small Things. Etc. You can find happiness, gratification and comfort when you least expect it, went the general theme. It was, to be very truthful, not massively my kind of conversation,  but - fain to deny it - there is within its cliche a point worth the making.

In view of this, then, I can hardly describe the excessive happiness-gratification-comfort I found in one small moment this morning, on the school run, in the sight of the local recycling collectors in a knee-bent struggle with my friends' recycling box.  "Heave HO" one puffed, delightfully for me, as they staggered, weaving under it's clinking and clanking weight in a desperate zig-zag towards the truck, where the crashing cascade of a week's worth of wine bottles resonated up the lane behind me and my mirth.

There was certainly happiness to be found in the spectacle, but even this was outdone by waves of gratification.  Gratification that other people as well spend a fortune they probably haven't got on wine.  And yep, comfort too.  Comfort in the idea that when my pickled-pink liver and I shuffle sheepishly towards a frowning St Peter at my end (my premature end, as this government would no doubt remind me, while wagging a nannyish finger towards its haloed guideline of 14 units a week), then at least I should have a boozy buddy or two to meet me there.

So. Thank you to my supportively intemperate friends for jolly good 30 minute chuckle, which took me all through the stacking of the dishwasher and into a good ten minutes of Women's Hour.  Lovely.



(Cartoon from the rather super Jackie Fleming.  Always worth a look)