Happiness

Did you know that today is The International Day of Happiness? Apparently the day is celebrated worldwide every March 20, and was conceptualized and founded by philanthropist, activist, statesman, and prominent United Nations special advisor Jayme Illien to inspire, mobilize, and advance the global happiness movement.

I'll be quite honest. I had not heard of the movement until Happiness Day was mentioned on the radio this morning.

I saw the television lunchtime news and there was no mention and not a single piece of happiness there.

Today is also the Vernol Equinox and therefore, in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring officially begins. Unfortunately these days few people worship Zephryus who is (or perhaps was) the god of the gentle west wind and the herald of spring. Consequently he is sulking. Zeus The King of the Gods and the ruler of the heavens was the god of clouds, rain, thunder and lightning and he still seems to be in charge here at the moment.

Anyway ignoring the abysmal weather, let us return to the subject of happiness. How does one determine whether the day has been a happiness success? Internationally the news is, as usual, not dominated by stories of happy events. At home as I type this a newsflash has just arrived on my phone saying that a short extension to Brexit is possible if MPs approve the Prime Minister's Brexit Deal next week. The effect of that would be that the deal will be approved or Britain will crash out of the EU without a deal. Unless, that is, something very spectacular happens. In any case the Royal Mint has issued a 50p coin to reflect the current mood of the nation. None of that indicates happiness so far as I can tell.

So I think we have to look to ourselves for happiness. I woke up this morning. So far as I am concerned that is always a good start to the day. I've been doing it for the last 27,317 days and I don't want to stop just yet. The weather was clement so I enjoyed my morning walk in the woods without getting my usual soaking. When I'd finished my walk and gone into The Woodlands for coffee, the young lady behind the counter greeted me with the diary I had misplaced the previous day. (I use my phone for almost everything except my diary so was lost without it). I'd been in animated conversation with a friend when I'd left and forgotten to pick it up. Silly me. This afternoon I met a lady who had at one time been the best buddy to our son Andy who died. We have almost no adult photos of Andy and whilst we were blethering it transpired that she has. I hadn't met her for years despite Stornoway being such a small place so that really was a wonderfully happy re-union.

Yes. All in all today has been a Good Day.

Winter

I left the Island on the 0700 ferry yesterday morning. When I left home at 0530 it was dark. Dark! Last time I left on the morning ferry it wasn't just light, the sun was almost up. For me the weather isn't the defining factor of determining when winter starts or ends. Nor is the solstice. So far as I am concerned it is winter when one leaves for the morning ferry in the dark.

Living on Lewis gives one a rather different view of life in so many ways. For me it is not really the weather that defines the seasons. It can rain cats and dogs at any time of the year. Summer gales are (or appear to be) becoming more frequent. The average temperatures in the winter and the summer don't appear to differ anywhere near as markedly as, say, Cheshire where I used to live before I came to Lewis in the '70s.

When I was writing that I wondered how much of it is perception (those long hot summers of my youth and the bitter winters of, say, 1947 - which I can remember!) and how much is reality. So I looked up the averages. What I've not been able to find out is what period of years the averages cover.

The one statistic that stands out of me is the daylight hours. Like all statistics though it they don't tell the full story. There may be only 18 daylight hours on average in June but that doesn't tell the whole story. The sun just dips under the horizon and, on a clear night, one can still read a newspaper at 1am (if one wants to waste those beautiful moments reading a newspaper - personally I'd rather walk along the beach).