How do you measure your happiness? A serious question. The great philosopher Ken ‘Doddy’ Dodd certainly had an explanation. Knotty Ash’s favourite son explained:
“Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I possessI thank the Lord that I’ve been blessedWith more than my share of happiness.”
He then went on to explain:
“To me this old world is a wonderful placeI’m just about the luckiest human in the whole human raceI’ve got no silver and I’ve got no goldBut I’ve got happiness in my soul.”
Essentially, in the song, Ken barely had a pot to piss in but his soul was sorted. That is surely a lesson for all of us, right?
Actually, later in life Ken Dodd has plenty of pots to piss in. When he was nicked by HMRC for tax dodging back in 1989 (he got off), he had almost nothing in his bank account, but he did have something like £336,000 in cash in the loft of his house, the equivalent of over a million quid today. When he died in 2018, he had £28 million, hopefully in a bank account and not in the loft. But did it make him happy? If you’ve already got “happiness in your soul”, how could it?
I often think about what it would be like to have loads of money instead of just enough. I could achieve my lifetime’s ambition of holidaying in the Maldives and a big house in the Tuscan hills. I could get a bigger car. I could get a bigger telly. I wouldn’t have to think twice before buying a train ticket. And then I come to my senses. In my life, these are not the things that keep me awake at night.
I admit that I did used to spend far too much time fretting about the climate and the weather. There was good weather (dry, warm sunshine) and bad weather (everything else). My mood was, and to some extent still is, determined by the weather. Winter, for me, begins at the beginning of September and ends on 28th or 29th February. But having been on quite a few journeys around the sun in my life, I do understand that if I did not like the British climate I could have left Britain many years ago. These days, I try to accept it for what it is. Changeable.
It was the brilliant writer Alfred Wainwright who said: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” Definitely true. I have enjoyed many of my happier times in cold, wet weather, thanks not least to the suitable clothing I chose to wear. The Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset out of season. A walk in the fresh air, taking in the sites that weren’t hidden by mist, concluding with a comforting pint of foaming ale and a hot pie in an olde worlde boozer in the middle of nowhere.
We are two weeks away from spring now, a delicious prospect following the rigours of a long, in my case, six month winter. But I cannot and must not whinge endlessly about the climate or pay attention to those senior folk who still whinge that we no longer have seasons “like when I were a lad”. All this proves is that they don’t do any gardening. (Neither do I, but my partner lovingly tends her garden and has convinced me by the use of evidence that the seasons do most definitely still exist.)
More than this, there is something else that has convinced me that whingeing about the climate and the weather is quite pathetic: it’s that for a variety of reasons many people it’s rather lower in their list of priorities. Those with debilitating health conditions and serious illness. People who are carers for loved ones. Those who simply don’t have the resources to eat and to pay their bills. For some people, just being alive is the best they can hope for. Me fretting about the endless winter, as I am prone to do, is small beer. I have made an effort to get over myself.
The great bard Ken ‘Doddy’ Dodd summed it up in a later verse from Happiness:
“Happiness is a field of grainTurning its face to the falling rainI see it in the sunshine, breathe it in the rainHappiness, happiness everywhere.”
A drop of rain didn’t bother our Ken. Indeed, he breathed it in, which is not something I would recommend, particularly if you are asthmatic like me, but I take the point. One of my favourite ever walks was from the Ribblehead Viaduct to Blea Moor Tunnel on the Settle and Carlisle railway line, in heavy drizzle and a blisteringly cold easterly wind. In fact, I’d have been disappointed if the sun had shone. Seriously. That’s how it supposed to be oop north.
If you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), then this blog is not about you and you have my every sympathy. God knows I have been critical enough of those who belittle mental illness for reasons best known to themselves. SAD is a thing, a ghastly overpowering, destructive condition. Moaning about the weather and the climate is stupid, unless you are trying to protect it from Donald Trump.
In Happiness, Ken doesn’t actually explain what it is that makes him happy, but that doesn’t really matter. Given the finite time we have on this Earth, it’s probably not good if we only get our joy and fun from the seasons in the sun. It’s more like seasons in the changeable weather and climate in our world. And it’s a waste of time and life if all you live for is the sun. Happiness goes much deeper than that.
PS Happiness was actually written by a guy called Bill Anderson, a country and western singer.
