Mr T urged me to send out a copy of Matthieu Ricard’s Happiness: A guide to developing life’s most important skill to someone he had lunch with the other day. As I stuffed it into the envelope it occurred to me that maybe I should take a look at it myself since I could use some pointers.
I got to the first Exercise which counsels one to ‘examine the causes of happiness’ and to remember when you were last happy. Suddenly – wallop - the speeding train straight from Misery Central mows me down then reverses back up the line just to make sure I'm well and truly flattened.
Okay, so that won't work.
Somewhat opposed to Mr Ricard’s views of cultivating inner harmony, my agent tells me to wallow in the grief, to grab it with both hands and write my way out of it. ‘We need a second book, darling, get going on it.’
The idea appeals. I could be a tortured muse, banging away on the battered Olivetti of life, churning out a masterpiece. I could be Elizabeth Barrett without the Browning and write Hallmark Greeting Card rhymes for Rejected Wives and the Recently Bereaved. But instead I just whine to my friends looking like a Basset Hound with a hangover. I want to sink into the armchair of gloom or take to my bed with one of those Victorian illnesses that requires invalid food and a couple of housemaids to serve it, fresh linen, smoothed brows, drawn curtains, and maybe even a little fire burning in the grate to keep off the chill. I want to take my meals on a tray and waste away. I want to swoon and brush my forehead with the back of my hand like a pre-Raphaelite heroine, and generally look tragic.
Sadly, or should I say even more sadly, there’s little chance of that. The only thing that looks a bit tragic about me are my decades old jeans that since I began to live on cup-a-soup, I can miraculously fit into, though they are flares and come up to my navel so I look like Simon Cowell doing ladies’ leisure wear. All I need to do is get a chest rug and have my teeth bleached. The hair’s a bit tragic too. I used to have a side parting but I haven’t looked in a mirror for a week and so I fear the coiffeur has suffered somewhat and now looks like I’ve been raising fledglings in it, or keeping mice, a la Russell Brant. What with the too tight trousers and the big hair, if I could squeeze into PVC shirt (another 7 pounds to go) and I could almost do stand up impressions of him. Well, except for the accent.
My publisher at Waddling Duck wants a picture for their publicity department. Who of? The old me or the new me? A month ago I was blonde. A week ago I was a stone heavier. Yesterday I came in wearing my dress inside out. I told her to wait another week – who knows, by then I could be Sienna Millar in the big pants.
Exercise two is ‘developing attention’. Well, I suppose I could start by checking that I’ve got my shirt on the right way round.
Does that count?
