Joy to the World

Bloody Lana del Ray. With her haunting monotone voice and zombie doe eyes. I turn on the wonderful radio station that is BBC 6Music and there she is singing about Video Ga-ames.
** I wrote this intro a year ago, now she’s singing about her sum-sum-summertime sadness; plus ca change as Nigella would say and I’d have to look it up.**
Hang on, wait. I should set some sort of scene. Picture a middle-aged man at a laptop on an early December morning. It’s still dark-ish, but the sun is making an effort and the sky is clear. Soon it will brighten Belfast’s day. Maybe it will even brighten the day of those who get all upset about the colours of flags and whether or not they should be flown outside City Hall.
Outside my window the good people of the Lisburn Road are doing “hurrh” sounds and making steam come out of their mouths and scraping frost off their cars. Bear, who is a one eyed cat, is gazing from this window in an aloof manner. It is pretty much the only manner he has and he excels at it. I am freshly washed and dressed and my hair is going grey. I have all my own teeth and a couple of someone else’s.

Okay, that’s enough scene for you. Lana del Ray. Bless her. Singing dolefully about love and loss. She’s what seventeen? Crap. What the hell does she know about tragedy? Not as much as forty-something me & you (or whatever nn-something you are) that’s for sure. See also Mumford and Sons, average age nineteen and three-quarters (probably) and all precociously multi-instrumental and full of folk. Wankers. They’re so talented and I’m sure they’re lovely people. But still… wankers.
Lana kicked off a memory which led to a sudden feeling of utter misery. She and her heavy eye makeup have a lot to answer for. Plus what did she look like in those H and M adverts with her hair all backcombed? Anyway the misery thing. Let me tell you about the misery thing. No, no, it’s interesting. Really. Come back.
I hope it’s interesting. But I digress. I do that a lot, you’ll need to deal with it. I also do a lot of brackets, but I use them properly; that means you can miss out what’s in the brackets (like these words here) and the sentence still makes sense (it’s just less fun). See how that works? Sorry. I say sorry a lot. Old habits…
My beloved has driven off in Mabel (yes, she’s named her car. That’s normal. Very normal.) to Derry to do work stuff. I’m all alone, except for a one eyed cat (not a euphemism, see above). Actually no. Go on about your business it’s me I’m writing this for. The future me, who’ll look back fondly on his foolishly maudlin younger self and say things like “Why did I keep veering off the subject?” and “Another set of brackets? What a cock.” And “Farnsworth, bring me some tea and get my bath ready.” My future self has a manservant, which is brilliant.
Yes yes, I do appreciate you’ve made an effort to get this far and so I kind of owe you something. Like dinner and a movie perhaps.
Right. Misery. Let’s exorcise that demon. Lance the boil. Watch the X-Factor. Choose your metaphor.

Diary entry from 2 years ago: “Some days are just bleak and awful. Problems amass into a grey amorphous cloud that smothers me. My faith in the future fades and I start thinking that it will always be like this, it will never get better, this is now my life. It is different from my old life, but no happier. I went to relationship counselling a few years ago. At one session, sitting on my own in a carefully neutral suburban living room, the counsellor asked me if I could draw a picture of the future what would it look like. Without much thought I said it looked like a never-ending road across a grey desert landscape, no colours No joy, just existence. I wasn’t upset by this, I didn’t cry, I didn’t feel anything different. it was just how I perceived my life was and was going to be. I’d made my peace with it."
Which, looking back is a bit shit, but at the time it was just the norm. Funny how we can get used to anything, even misery. Anyway - I’m sure I had a point to all this.
Yes – the point that I wanted to communicate to you in an amusing and quirky manner is this. Choose. Yeah, you invested a feck of a lot of time for that didn’t you? Choose what? Choose everything, I reply, inscrutably.
“You are who you choose to be.” Ted Hughes said that. I watched the cartoon of “The Iron Giant” that’s how I know that quote.
“I’m going off the rails on a crazy train”. Ozzy Osbourne said that.
Don’t get used to misery, choose instead to get used to joy. Fuck knows that’s not easy. But surely it is possible? I reckon it is. You’re the boss of you. Choose to be that. Choose what mood you’re going to be in and don’t let outside stuff change that.
Joy. It’s there. It’s hanging around waiting for you to notice it. Misery is a fat man in a god-awful Xmas jumper waving his arms around. Joy is quieter and prettier and if you shove Misery out of the way, there it (she?) is. Give it a go. Choose Joy.
It doesn’t always work, lots of times Misery just won’t move, he’s a git like that. But keep at it. Mine it. Little glints of joyful gold in the ice-cold misery stream.
Here was me writing 18 months ago: “I now live in Hove. I have spent all my savings and run up a credit card bill of some thousands. My life is full of sad goodbyes to the kids and to my sweetheart. I feel desperately alone and cut off. When the kids come over I feel dread inside, worried about how to keep them happy. I have days (like today as I write this) when I am very sad and cannot possibly see how this could get any better.” Misery see? Can’t miss it.
But then just a week later “…had a chat with a friend that was a real eye-opener. Spoke about how I’ve been up and down. Then a weird thing happened. I talked about commuting from Belfast and it was as if there was a bubble of joy inside me. I couldn’t stop grinning. My friend said my whole body language changed when I spoke about it. That made me decide – this is what I want to do.” …and there’s joy.
And that trend has continued, which is nice; little slices of joy! I made a choice to up sticks and follow my heart to Belfast. I choose to be happy. So y’know, choose, make your own choices, do your choosing. Perhaps choose not to listen to Lana del Ray as she’s not qualified to tell you about misery. Merry Christmas!