Accentuating the Positive

Oh dear, I really should have come back much sooner to knock the knicker-confessional post off its prominent position at the top of this respectable blog and hide it in the archives. Not sure why I've been absent for so long, apart from the fact that there's been a lot of boring head down over the keyboard stuff going on here (which doesn't make exciting reporting) and not too much hanging out on the red carpet or jetting off to the Caribbean (which almost certainly would).


However, by a huge stroke of good luck and kindness Sally Clements nominated me for a Happy Cupcake Award, and not only is this right up my street (cupcakes being a diet staple of mine, if 'diet' is the right word in this context) but it also saves me having to stretch my poor, tired brain to come up with something to blog about. Hurrah! So, here are ten things that make me happy...


1. Hot bath. Cold wine. Good book

2. The daughters. Even though they leave the lid off the butter dish, towels on the bathroom floor, mugs in unlikely places and apple cores decomposing in the back of the car. It's most illogical.

3. Going to bed in clean, line-dried sheets.

4. Watching the children of friends grow up. So cool to see the tiny tots who used to spread chocolatey fingerprints on your sofa shoot up and blossom into people who teach you how to windsurf and borrow your shoes when they come to stay.

5. The change of seasons.

6. Dancing. Of the late-night, hands-in-the-air, hazy and elated kind in nightclubs with the Mum Mafia, or the Friday evening, in-the-kitchen kind with the daughters and Van Morrison.

7. Gorgeous packaging: cellophane, ribbon and those shiny carrier bags with silken rope handles.

8. Champagne in the daytime. Happy, happy, happy.

9. Thursday nights on the sofa in front of Secret Diary of a Call Girl. (Last one tonight - what will I do without my weekly James D'Arcy fix?)

10. Stories in my head. (They're always really excellent in there. It's getting them onto the page that causes the anguish.)

Thanks Sally - that was excellent therapy. If there's anyone hasn't yet done it (I've been AWOL for so long I'm probably the last) I can thoroughly recommend it as an exercise in positive thinking. I reckon it means you deserve a cupcake too, but since baking isn't top of my list of priorities at the moment I'm going to have to substitute something else. Jaffa cake perhaps?