Reasons to be cheerful...summer, mostly.

The sun is shining and there are kittens and puppies, and I have a sufficiency of cake and chocolate and my bed is comfortable, so things could be worse.

Some kittens. Mine, not just random ones, which is even better.

Yes, that's a chicken on my washing line. No, I've no idea why she was there either, but she seemed very pleased with herself, and it made me smile, so I added 'chickens on the washing line' along with the kittens and cake thing. You can tell that I've been making a list of 'reasons to be cheerful' can't you? It's because I got the electricity bill, and now I need to distract myself from how awful it's going to be to pay off, so I started thinking about nice things and how much I prefer them to nasty things, and there were lots of them, so here are some.

I'm hoping that soon I shall be able to show you the forthcoming cover for the forthcoming book which is full of forthcoming words, and has the unforthcoming title of 'I Don't Want to Talk About It', and that's another thing that makes me happy; even though the actual writing down of the words can be very frustrating, it's lovely to have an end product.

I'm always more cheerful in the summer, I might also be cheerful in winter, but my cheerfulness is so muffled by the ninety layers I have to wear in order not to freeze to death, that nobody (including me) can tell whether I am being cheerful or just itchy. And I like the heat, I like the fact that my sartorial choices are between t-shirt slogans and not 'least bobbly jumpers', that I can wear the same clothes indoors and outdoors and the opening of a door isn't greeted by groans and the donning of additional layers.

There is soft fruit, which is a good thing, although I can take or leave the tennis that seems to come as a free gift whenever there are strawberries. And Pimms in the garden.

Running naked through hay meadows. All right, so I haven't actually done this, it's mostly silage round us and running naked through a silage meadow sounds a bit nasty, and certainly not something that you'd want to feature in an advert for Flakes or Cornetto or anything, and besides it would probably be scratchy and there are, you know, insects and things and I'd probably get an earwig in my bits. But I could if I wanted to, and that's what counts.

Yeah. Looks a bit 'bitey' to me too. But, you know, if I wanted to...

And now, because I know that you are all imagining me thundering around grassland, wobbling frantically and yelling 'whoops, there goes another earwig!', I'm going.

You'll go blind, and serve you right.