After my posts yesterday about wine and chocolate, plus pondering the end of the world, I’ve decided to list the twelve daily deeds of delight for health and happiness. Each must be performed every single day. Each must be done without hurry, without thinking about what comes next.

  • Drink tea. (I like hot Irish breakfast with a spash of 2% aka semi-skimmed milk, but some strange people prefer it cold, with ice in it, and I’m okay with that, as long as the tea is freshly brewed and not some vile packet thing.)
  • Eat chocolate. (I mean chocolate not brown ‘candy’, and I most definitely do not, notnotnot, mean Hershey’s; may be combined with drinking tea.)
  • Drink wine. (May substitute beer.)
  • Eat a piece of fruit. (I mean fruit, a whole something you could pick from a tree or vine: an apple, a nectarine, a pear; not juice; not sorbet; not a disgusting frozen pie; a plump ripe luscious piece of mouth-watering fruit grown without herbicides or pesticides.)
  • Eat fresh vegetables. (I mean a brightly coloured, vitamin-stuffed vegetable, not starch, not french fries or creamed corn or frozen peas, but some still-glistening with the dew courgette, lightly sauted in olive oil; roasted butternut squash; steamed cabbage tossed in Danish butter and freshly-ground white pepper. Vegetables.)
  • Have a conversation. (I don’t mean an information exchange about who’s cooking dinner tonight; I don’t mean a shouting match or politely modulated torment about politics; I don’t mean an angsty confession about childhoold trauma, or a monologue about javascript; I mean a relaxed, lively, back-and-forth exploration of what gives each of you joy; maybe combined with eating vegetables and drinking wine.)
  • Have sex. (Why would you do Kegel’s exercises when orgasm is the best way to exercise your pelvic floor? Why would you do step-exercises when you can use all major muscle groups and get a good cardiovascular exercise with thrills? Why do couples therapy when you can bond the old-fashioned way?)
  • Get out in the fresh air. (Walking from the office to the car doesn’t count; I’m talking about the park, the beach, the city at one o’clock in the morning: breathe deep of cool, living air.)
  • Do nothing, think nothing, say nothing for at least 5 minutes. (It gets easier with practise; beginners should start in the bath.)
  • Look at something with attention—a bird or a beetle, the back of your hand or a glass of water, a shoe or a pencil—until you see something new. (Newness is all around us; trust me, this one puts a sparkle around your day for hours, and it’s a must for beginning artists.)
  • Read a novel. (May substitute a good poem or two, or a play or script, but not non-fiction.)
  • Enjoy a glass of cool water and feel very, very lucky.

A bad day is when I do fewer than seven things on this list. A good day is nine or more. A brilliant day–which I’m planning for tomorrow–is every single thing on the list (some more than once) plus a few extra.

What makes a good day for you?

Oh, and by the way, this is my 200th blog post since the very first one exactly six months ago.

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