Wednesday 4th January

After my post of yesterday about the wet and mild weather I was truly put in my place by the ferocious gales that followed almost immediately after I had sent it on its way.

But isn’t that just the way of life; just when you are snuggled up safe and sound and sure of yourself, along comes some great big slab of reality to blow away your pretensions.   I suppose you might think that I have it made, don’t you; with my very nice house all paid for, and a bit of money in the bank and quite adequate income, and my settled little life with puddy-tat.  But you couldn’t be further from the truth.  Maybe it is innate in us human beings to never be quite happy, to never know true satisfaction, to never really be content.  And content and happy I am not, not really.

I wrote at the end of one of the chapters of my book ‘Catherines Story’, the ending little refrain from dear Mr. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair – Oh Vanitas Vanitatum, which of us is truly happy in this life, or having happiness is truly satisfied.  It was of course meant ironically and as a warning bell to the Catherine in the story (maybe a totally different Catherine than I – it was a work of fiction, after all) that her moment of happiness was just that – a moment, and that having grasped it, would she truly be happy.  I am not so sure that life is that cruel however.  We can sometimes bask in reflected happiness, the sheen that comes back when we prop the mirror up against our memories, and yes we can see it now, just how happy we were back then.  It is just a bit harder to recognize when it is happening to you; that is all.  And then something changes your state and you realise you were quite happy actually, though you would be hard-pressed to have known it at the time. A bit like the sudden cold and windy weather of yesterday, calm dreary rain, pale grey skies and then out of nowhere a really gusty old day to blow the cobwebs and sureties away.  I wonder what tomorrow will bring now.