Category: Small Happinesses

You know when you’ve found the perfect notebook, but you don’t know it’s the perfect notebook until you get home and you take out your perfect pen- the one where the ink flows at the perfect rate so you don’t end up with some strange ache you can’t describe on the back of your hand between your wrist and your middle finger that wakes you up at 2.13 am; the one where you feel you finally have a shot at writing like the man you pick your Indian takeaway up from, where the whole family admires how he’s written “Tikka Masala” on the receipt, and you explain learnedly to your children as they gather round that it’s probably because he’s studied Sanskrit?

I knew you’d understand.

The marriage between the perfect notebook and the perfect pen is hard to find.

What complicates matters more is when the relationship between you and your perfect notebook is long distance. When you’d first struck up a relationship, you were travelling quite a lot, and you took it for granted that there would “be another time”. That for sure you would be able to walk into any old bookshop again, waltz over and grab one off the shelf, where it was inaccurately placed between the school supplies and the envelopes and just take it. Just take it, because you could.

Because it was EASY.

So imagine, after years of famine and drought; after years of writing on the back of cicadas wings who’d become too tired to fly; on the labels of clothes your children had grown out of SO DESPERATE WERE YOU to find that same feeling again, that when you walked into your local bookshop that you just drove to! The one next to the sushi shop with the five-minute park outside that is your local and there she was.

The Composition Notebook. You bought all five because never again would you take this moment for granted. Never again would you be the person who assumed there would always be Just One More Page.

Loss of access to stationery will do that to a girl.

Let me take you back:

I was walking with Tania, my friend, in Birmingham. It was early. I wanted to look around. Tania wanted to get her steps up. We walked through the mass of boobs and bums that only Birmingham can provide, making comments like “Aren’t they cold?!”, where every person coming towards you makes you look feel an accidental perve due to the intentional nature of where their clothing choices draw the eye. And with one final shouted instruction from google maps we were there: Waterstones.

The Sound of Music came on in the background, and the hills were, indeed, alive. Tania and I parted ways and set to work. I consider buying the drink bottle with the hare on it, that was quite random for a bookshop, but then again, I do really like hares. My book choices were piled high. The shop was multistory, so we burned calories as we made it to the checkout, but we made it.

The next few moments played out as predicted. I placed a book down. Thud. The nice man behind the counter scanned it. Beep.

Thud. Beep. Thud. Beep.

And then for a brief moment— a pause.

I placed my hand atop my notebook, take a long breath in and look into the sky (which was actually the ceiling of the shop, but they’d done a good job with the display, and it was lovely).

“Isn’t it just so SATISFYING?! “I breathed out.

Beep.

Exiting the shop, Tania burst into a mountain of tiny snorts.

“I think you made that man’s day. What with your tone and your ‘satisfying notebook’’.

You know when you do something and you don’t realise that you are doing something, so innocent are you, until it’s pointed out?

But I will say that it seems appropriate to have turned my notebook purchase into a potential Only Fan’s moment for stationery.

The placement of the hand. The tone of appreciation. The subtle lingering known only to a person who really appreciates the quality of paper.

I mean, let’s face it. If anyone will get it, it will be the man behind the counter selling books. A man what had dedicated a good chunk of his life, even if he only worked part time, to serving lovers of good covers like me, who understand a book not just to be a book but an EXPERIENCE?!!

I mean, I would do it all again if I had to.

 

Sid. I heard his name, and I knew the deal was done. It’s funny how names work, isn’t it? They give you a feeling.

It’s like that with your children too- yes, Tommy works. He definitely looks like a Tommy! (we all understand each name has a very specific look that we can’t know until we see it)- except you aren’t picking your children up from strangers who’ve advertised them on the internet, although that would probably be easier.

Not usually anyway.

We ran through the necessary names. There’s Darwin of course. And Gordon, Darwin’s friend. And then Stanley, our dearly departed, who most definitely sent him.

Sid, Sid, Sid. You have to let it roll around your tongue. Sid, Sid, Sid, Sid, Sid.

So, one of my dearests, Tania, set off across the hills of Scotland towards Inverness and as I lay in bed, I imagined her journey like a little animation in my mind. Darwin was in the back seat of course, pressing his wet doggy nose up against the window. Probably sleeping a little. Snuffling a little. Hopefully not farting because that’s atrocious when one is trapped inside a car.

And Tania would be chattering to him and telling him of their adventure, and Darwin- like all impending siblings- would be unsure, and they would both sing and wind down all the windows until it got slightly too cold and then they’d wind them up again.

And then they would arrive, and we would hope that it’s not a house that you are scared to knock on the door of, with people who look like they might grind you up and put you in in a sandwich making you completely untraceable, but rest assured, lovely reader, it was not.

Or at least, if it was, Tania did not tell me much about it. And she’s not inside a sandwich, so there’s that.

So now there is Sid, and he is home, and he has landed, paws upright, with his people.

There’s something about the words ‘he’s a little thin’ that makes you equate that precisely with the love, and the lack thereof, and at that point, a human’s heart spills over.

And you are, of course, forced to feel nothing but the surge of absolute loveliness for a creature who has come from being not-that-wanted who will now know nothing but love. Sid, Sid, Sid, and all the doggy love.

What could be a greater happiness than that?

To be found and loved and wanted.

Sid, Sid, Sid, Sid, Sid.

Sid of the Lochs. Sid of Bonny Scotland. We salute you.

xx Jane

Tania sent me a photo and of course, I had to draw them. She wasn’t in the photo I was sent, but I added her in. Sid and Darwin and their people.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s a very specific walk people do at pedestrian crossings when they’re aware they’ve left things just a smidge too late, and it’s started to feel dodgy.

At this point, they break into a Ralk- the hybrid version of a walk and a run. This involves the upper body becoming stiff and upright, while the lower body moves into a kind of camel lope.

The face does it’s best to not look self-conscious, which is a terrible idea. We never look more self-conscious than when we’re trying to *not* look self-conscious. It’s one of the Great Human Paradoxes.

Your Road Crossing Style- and specifically your Ralk- can never be repeated in any other context other than at traffic lights. It’s a recessive gait that only makes itself known at very specific times.

I tell you this because yesterday, I discovered a new stride.

My lovely mother-in-law is in hospital, and I went in for the afternoon to keep her company. It’s deathly dull in there so we’ve taken to stealing the rather inappropriate wheelchair for outdoor use and burning around town. The flaw in yesterday’s plan being that it was raining.

Aware that I might arrested for making a patient hypothermic, Jill and I really upped the ante. A new stage of Running Style Jumanji was unlocked. My Ralking was next level.

What a Rocket Pusher like me must also be aware of is not piffing your Precious Person off on the little gutter ridges that you ascend into and then must traverse out of before you hit the main runway between the lights.

If you Ralk too quickly into these bits, you risk catapulting your aforementioned human into the road, which is neither preferable nor wanted.

At one point- and you’ll love this part- I’d bought Granny a crossword with Extra Large print that was hanging in a paper shopping bag astride the handle, when the bottom just fell out.

Around the same time, I also noticed the rubber grip that my hand was holding onto- a quite important piece of kit because the handles in control of the whole chair- was in danger of slipping off. Mid-Ralk, I had to do a stealth manoeuvre which sent Granny into a brief acceleration like she was bending through poles in an agility competition.

But she stuck the move and we both had a good time.

And later, while we sat in her room and did the crossword, I got her to pose for my Ralking Rocket Granny illustration, to which she merrily obliged.

Which is something, it turns out, that makes me happy:

A frolicking, Raucous Rocket Granny and her dedicated Ralker.

And we all know now you’ll be watching people extra carefully wot are crossing at the lights.

Mark my words: They’ll all be out there Ralking.

xx Jane

PS. Kudos to those of you in wheelchairs. There is not enough attention paid to access in pretty much all place, and I take my hat off to you. You are Ninjas of the Highest Order. Rock stars.

I started a little project and shared it with my Creating Wild community this week. I called it Small but Mighty Making. The premise behind it was pretty simple. Choose a thing, set a time limit, and do it every day for the next week. A dedication to a short creative practice.

To be honest, nothing about this project was planned. The motivation was purely personal. I was launching a private SOS. I needed to hold onto my sanity as week of chaos washed around me.

It makes sense logistically, of course, that in times of turbulence things like drawing or writing or art of any kind get pushed out to the side, but I craved them with the same ferocity as a thirsty person needing water.

I threw seeds into the air and when I woke, there was color all around me. My community, it turned out, had joined me, unexpectedly, on my little mighty mission.

All week, I’ve been surrounded by images and stories of all different kinds.

Put together poems from cut out pages of old nature books.

Experiments with soaking paper in handmade oak dye.

A drum bag being made from scratch, for a drum also made from scratch- a first time for both.

Ink and watercolour paintings of the mesmerizing kind.

Drawings of Sandhill Cranes from a recent visit to witness their migration.

Illustrations and contemplations on how we might keep our head above water when times are tough.

A beautiful torrent of creative confetti of all different kinds.

If there’s a better balm for a weary soul, I’m yet to find it.

I started with my own ideas of what I would make, and mid-week found myself shifting. I had planned to begin a slightly complicated piece with careful, detailed lines but it turns out, I am at my most peaceful when I am crafting illustrations of the ordinary everyday, the little moments that catch me in a smile.

These last few days, I have been frequented by Flutterings of Fantails. Winged delights that are fast moving, other worldly. They flit and we chatter and they dance and I giggle, even if moments before I felt quite heavy.

I wasn’t planning on writing a Happiness today, but as luck would have it, here we are.

A happiness built on community and birds and creating of all the different kinds.

This might just be my favourite.

Beth, my glorious hair cut person wot is very compassionate with my feral locks, has me on a strict hair cutting regime. Every 10-12 weeks I trot in for my Surprise Appointment in which I apologize for being late and then proceed to tell her about the previous three months of my life like a Days of Our Lives serial (and I say Surprise Appointment because I never note the next appointment down. Every text reminder’s a little shock that past me could be so organized).

This hair appointment regime exists because when it doesn’t, I quickly begin to look like I’m part of some religious cult wot doesn’t cut their hair. All I would need would be a little scarf to make people wonder if I was one of many wives and perhaps also to stop wearing mascara.

Anyway, this is quite a long introduction for a story that has nothing to do with haircuts, but it provides you with the context of why I was in town. Said hair cut had been finished and while the smart thing to do would have been to go straight home, the week before had been so awful, I decided some mooching and pootling was in order.

Let it be known that it’s been many, many years since I’ve been to one of those walk in massage places (no, not *those* places) but on this particular occasion I pootled right inside.

I have no idea what I was doing, and the math was not mathing on those prices, but because my guard was down and the lady behind the desk was quite persuasive, I nek minit found myself on the massage table staring at the ground.

In my mind, I had envisaged something relaxing. A time where for twenty odd minutes, I could check out and let the busy world go by. Recharge, if you will.

It seems I was mistaken.

It all started well. I pride myself on being slight of frame but with a density of muscle that can handle a surprising amount of force.

PRESSURE OK?? She breathed breathily into my ear.

‘Yes,’ I replied, thinking how she would be impressed at what I handled.

I’m not sure if she got enthusiastic, possessed by what she perceived to be a muscle knot, or if she lures all her unsuspectings in this way, but it appears that after some brief slaps around with oil, the jet engines started revving on the tarmac.

The space between my neck and my mid-section became her runway and her elbows took the stage.

Released with the force of a thousand buffalo, she pierced those pointers down the pot-holed express lane of my rib attachments.

I immediately knew what she was up to: I had chosen the type whose massage mission is to break you. I needed to sub-consciously send her the message that I was game.

‘PRESSURE OK??’ She jeered again. I gave her a weak thumbs up as there was no breath left in my body to reply.

For the next 15 minutes, it seemed as though she left my back and pressed her persistent little thumbs directly into the nerve centres of my brain. I activated all the techniques I would rely on if I was ever kidnapped and interrogated or enlisted for the army.

I stared at a dot on the floor.

I forcefully wrinkled my nose and did strange things with my lips.

I thought about how I could write about this afterwards but instead of calling it ‘Small Happinesses’ it would be the beginning of a new series called ‘Tiny Tragedies’.

I squinted my eyes in case limiting my vision would be helpful.

She wrapped up with a move I’ll never understand where they thump your back with their fists, and make the sound of an armpit fart, as though this is something we all really want to pay for.

Fortunately, I had the final word:

In a closing, passive aggressive parting, I lingered in the room for slightly longer than necessary getting changed, leaving her with more time to consider her life and actions.

That parting shot is my Happiness today. That, and the fact the massage ended as quickly as it started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It all started when my eldest small person said I was ‘so cringe’.

His words travelled across the room and lit a match within my insides. Poor thing. So innocent. So young. So unsuspecting.

He thought The Cringe he was experiencing in that moment was the worst of it, but it was only the beginning.

A wee nail scratch on a mountain.

The first light drop of rain as the tropical storm approaches.

The light mist from the end of a fire hose.

After all, what’s even the point of being a parent if not to let the full force of your weirdness unleash on your children?

To go Full Cringe.

There shall be no suppression of The Cringe. Not on my watch. Not today.

Let it be known that I have little knowledge of the lingo of the kids on the streets in the Gen of the Z, but I have watched enough educational Instagram reels of people being chased by emus which bleed into movie trailers of films I’ll never watch where they call each other ‘Broski’ and shout things like ‘This hits different’ to be Just Dangerous Enough with my words.

It does, by the way, hit different.

(A point of clarification here: I’m not really that old and my kids are most definitely not on the streets. If they are, they are more like to run into a blue-ish black swamp hen called a Pūkeko than a gangsta human bean, but that fact is not useful to my story).

So here we go:

You have to eat and leave no crumbs. Don’t be mid.

I wonder all the time; do I have the aura to pull this off?

The thought leaves me low key panicked.

But then I remember: Bring Full Main Character Energy.

You got to pass the vibe check. Step into your Save The Planet Era.

It’s giving, don’t you say?

You heard me: Eat and leave no crumbs.

And when you’ve done that, come back and spill the tea.

(To be honest, I’ve used up the full extent of my vocab here so I’m not sure how to tie this off, except to say: My Happiness today is the Full Cringe. Do it for the people. It just hits different).

 

This past few days in our household, we’ve had a situation. You see, my boys went to stay in a little cabin we own a handful of hours away, and a few years back, we planted there some grapes.

This year was the first year they’ve really properly fruited.

“There were four bunches of grapes,” my husband proclaimed, “and I put two in the fridge and told everyone, ‘THOSE ARE FOR MUM.’”

But when they got home to me, 100 percent of the grapes were mysteriously missing.

“I mean, they even grow in shareable packages,” I lectured my children. “You don’t even need a knife!”

Both looked more delighted than remorseful.

And then I remembered:

I wasn’t going to tell you this story, not because I am ashamed, but because it wasn’t a story I’d thought to tell.

We have an orchard in front of our house that produces a sizeable fruit explosion every year.

Apples are our most reliable resource, but we’ve also gently tend to peaches and apricots, and a sprinkling of others. So far, the more exotic fruits have arrived in disappointingly tiny batches. We just take it in our stride.

There was one tree though that put up a particularly good effort this time round. A brief count came in at half a dozen. I casually walked past and noted one particularly good-looking peach hanging from the tree.

I gave it the kind of squeeze you do when you’re an Official Peach Tester.

‘Not yet,’ I noted, ‘but I will most definitely be coming back tomorrow.’

Tomorrow came and let the record show that I was starving. I managed to find a small herd of plums that were too heavy to carry, so I ate them all instead.

And then I remembered:

That giant peach.

As far as peaches go, she really was a beast. She was truly enormous.

Answered back with just the right amount of firmness when squeezed.

Completely unpecked by birdlings.

As you can imagine, I was elated.

It did occur to me as I drew her closer to my mouth that I was potentially breaking an unspoken family rule:

That when there is a limited number of fruits, there’s automatic sharing. That you must cut it up and hand it round because that’s The Right Thing To Do.

But I didn’t feel like sharing. I wasn’t feeling in any way sacrificial and quite felt that I deserved it. So, I did the next best thing:

I sat down and ate that whole massive peach in one short sitting. When I finished, I was almost over full.

Wandering back inside, the family were gathered round the kitchen table.

‘I just ate the best peach I’ve ever had,’ I told them, juice all over my jumper and possibly up the sides of my face.

Immediately, the room fell silent.

‘Was that the peach overhanging the fence?’ They answered back. ‘Flynn’s peach? He’s been checking on it every day.’

I did a quick scan of my mental google maps and confirmed that indeed that was the peach.

‘Mum! I Can’t believe you would do that!! That was MY Peach.’

‘He has been really excited about that peach,’ the rest of the room echoed, as though that was something I should automatically know.

Perhaps, to feel guilty would have been the most right thing in the moment.

Perhaps I was high on peach juice.

Perhaps it was just a really good peach and it made all other consequences worth it.

Perhaps all three.

But at the end of the grape conversation, I added:

I’m so glad I ate that peach.

It still was 100% worth it.

 

 

It’s easy to think about happiness in a very specific way. Joy is much the same. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been sold down the river of such experiences existing within a certain Feeling Framework.

‘Come live on Happiness Island,’ they tell us, ‘where life is bump free, your skin is smooth, and you’ll never have to cook for yourself again!’

Weirdly, despite my dedication to Happinesses, I’m untrusting of people who appear to be perpetually that way. I had a neighbour once who you could never talk to about anything that didn’t have a pleasant and neat ending. I found this massively boring and had very little to say.

Her censoring to the pleasant snagged my tongue because it reduced life to black and white, when it’s actually many colours and tones and spots and speckles (isn’t speckles a lovely word?!).

No, it seems that happiness and joy are actually quite gritty. And once again, perplexingly and mysteriously, they’re wholly dependent on their opposites to come to life in any meaningful and fleshy way.

One of my most best writers, Ross Gay, had this to say about joy:

“Far be it for me to define someone else’s joy, but the way I’m defining joy is that it’s what shines from us as we help each other carry our sorrows.

It implies many things, things that we would mostly think of as sorrowful, like the fact that we’re always heartbroken, every one of us. Among those heartbreaks is that we’re going to die, or who we love is going to die or change.

I think of joy as a grave emotion, because it almost emerges from the fact of the grave. If we ignore that, I think we’re talking about something else.

But there’s often a kind of immature approach to joy, which is why “serious” people will often say things like, “How could you talk about joy at a time like this?” First of all, it’s always a time like this somewhere for someone. Secondly, joy emerges from times like this.”

I know up until now, I have shared my happinesses of leftovers and dogs doing the zoomies and memories of childhood rides, but today, I want to talk about shared worries and sorrows, and how when you meet both of those things in a truthful way, there’s a very specific kind of joy that leaks in through the edges.

I’ve had a week of that. Of health scares with my most loved, and being witness to others  regress in matters of their health, and finding myself sitting quietly in the room squashed up against the feeling of mortality. We know this, of course, all the time, that we are mortal. But some days, her reality shines bright and we hold the vision more clearly of life danced on the edge of a volcano.

My happiness today is for all my most dearest who have held my worries with me for this week. And how, in amongst it, after the necessary words have been said, a laugh always carbonates herself amongst our insides.

I think it’s the most human of things, to find our happinesses this way.

I was going to start this letter by saying “I installed a widget” but actually that’s a lie. I didn’t install it at all. I tinkered with it, yes. Made it magnificent *flips hair*. But the installing part I left up to Sir Randall.

Sir Randall is a tech genius wot lets me email with computer complaints that I gaslight him into believing are ‘invitations’ or ‘requests’ by the use of strategically placed emojis.

For instance, I might be saying this:

Sir Randall, can you please help me install this widget wots being a little pesky? 

When what I mean is:

Look, this thing is giving me hot sweats and makes me want to poke my eyes out. I’m about to throw my laptop in the ocean. I might have to sell my kids (that’s unrelated). I beg of you, Sir Randall, please. Save me.

Because I like you, I want to break this conversation down.

You can see what I offered here was an “Emoji Sandwich”.

A quick tutorial, if you will:

You start with the something that leads to a positive emotion

… followed up with the truth of how you feel

… and then leave it as though it’s easy breezy

It works, because what I have now is a chat box on my website. So, you know… proof.

The thing is, I am in New Zealand and Sir Randall is on Eastern Time, which means there’s exactly eleventybillion hours between us.

At some point, Sir Randall went to bed, and I was left, acting cool  dealing with some rather massive questions.

‘Do you want to install an AI chatbot’, the chat thing asked (so meta), to which I frantically replied that I did not. AI be gone! *Flaps around sword*

And just when I thought I had it sorted, upon testing, a strange window popped up.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT.

Lord above.

….complete with a strange little man who seemed to do a lot of talking.

What follows is some two hours of my time figuring out how to change the text, delete the man, and fiddle with the contents of that window.

Let it be known that Customer Support has been transformed into the Department of Creative Curiosity.

My welcome message states: You’re talking to a real Human Bean, in case you’re wondering”.

Side note: High on my own tech skills, I told this to my friend. She replied, ‘Together we rice’. The calories from that comment have been feeding me for days. I may never need to eat from this point forward.

But THIS, my friends, is the whole reason (aside from being unemployable and some other practical logistics) that I am self-employed.

I can write Human Bean as an official title on my own damn website on an almost-self-installed widget, and there’s no-one around that’s here to stop me.

And if that doesn’t make you happy, then I’m afraid, I’ve got nothing here for you ( ).

Widgets, Department of Creative Curiosity and proper Human Beans are today’s Small Happinesses.

xx Jane

So far, it’s just been me and Randall chatting back and forth but it’s really boosted the page views on my website.

We’re unsure if we’ve spoken of Tango previously, but as time moves on, it seems we have no choice. Yesterday, he made a shock announcement:

Tango is running for Prime Minister of New Zealand.

With job suitability not being a requirement, and the understanding he’s free to say what he likes over the course of his campaign with zero expectation he’ll follow through, he feels confident his chances are as good as any.

The thing is (and this is where the family feels the stress) the opposition have really started digging. They uprooted a viral video that Jane, his human, posted on her Facebook business page a while back, eclipsing everything she’d ever shared. Over a short period, it ticked upward of a million views. It was only 15 seconds, but they were telling.

(What follows is adult content, and discretion is advised: Footage showed an irreverent, hairy horse bucking his small big bottom in her face. The fact that she found it funny was an inappropriate reaction to the stress).

Jane has also been heard on more than one occasion saying that her cause of death will most likely be Tango:

When approached with a feed bucket amongst other horses, he absolutely will not yield. Jane fears she will be sandwiched between him and a much larger horse, and that one day she will be found with them all intensely eating round her limp and lifeless body.

As you can imagine, people are talking.

That Tango is part of the Tiny Horse Mafia, going on secret missions at night.

That he is too Food Motivated for the role.

That he will let go of his morals if there’s dinner.

That he has “Small Horse Man Syndrome”.

That he is orange.

It’s a tricky, delicate time, and we ask for privacy while we garner our responses.

But in the meantime, we feel pressured to say:

1️⃣ Vote One Tango.

And if that turns out to be a bad idea, it will be too late anyway.

xx Jane

The other nasty rumour is that I make up ridiculous stories for my children in response to basic questions like, how are the horses?
This may or may not be a Small Happiness (for me, not for them. I think for them it’s suffering).

If (hypothetically speaking) it was a Happiness, it would be #17.