It’s amazing what little things can make you inordinately happy. This morning it was a little golden beaked glossy blackbird on my garden birdtable. Last week it was the robin pecking at the baguette crumbs I’d sprinkled outside the window on a frosty morning in France. Yesterday it was meeting a little Schnauzer puppy on his first day out socialising, all bitey and manic. These days I find I appreciate these miniature joys all the more. The clouds, the sunrise, the first snow-drops, the quiet. Anything in the natural world that flourishes outside of our control and influence, in sometimes the harshest of conditions, seems to bring with it hope, and a future filled with infinite possibility.

These days I can barely bring myself to watch the news. It’s like everything humans touch they ruin, out of greed, ignorance or hatred. The more I read on social media in the Dave Gorman comments sections, the more I think America has the president they actually deserve. You almost want to watch, peeping through your fingers from the back of the sofa as millions of people slip on their self-created banana skin. Same for Wrexit.

My dream is to retreat to a slower pace of life, where time is not kidnapped by meetings with incomprehensible buffoons, or stuck in traffic in a car you don’t own, to get to a job you don’t like, to pay for a home you barely see. Do we have our lives backwards? What do we actually need to be happy, because that’s the only thing that really truly matters.

So today, this week, this month, whenever, take some time to appreciate the little things. Slow down, breathe, dream, plan, scheme. Feel better.

“Here’s to the rebels, the ripples from pebbles, the painters and poets and plays. And here’s to the fools who dream, as crazy as they may seem.” – La-La Land.