When are you most happy?
I tend to overthink things and I tend to be oblivious to my own fortune. That’s not to say that I am never happy in the moment, but after that moment I tend not to dwell on the feelings of happiness as much as the other noises around at the time.
I am happiest when I am with my family and often after I have prepared a really good meal for them. However, again I really don’t always recognise the good fortune I have. I have my health, I have the huge good fortune to have been able to slow down and not have to continue working full time at a relatively early age. I have been to concerts and had experiences that many people have been unable to have. I need to get better at reflecting on the good times and my good fortune and not dwelling on the bad. That can be one of my resolutions for 2026.
To balance out this negativity I will reflect on the times recently when I have been happy both at the time and afterwards.
Going to Salzburg was an amazing experience. The Christmas Market was something I had wanted to go to for ages and it definitely didn’t disappoint. It was probably my best holiday for years.
This month (December 2025) I have had a number of really good Christmas events. I went to the Sir John Rutter Carol Concert at the Royal Albert Hall and it was fantastic. We went as a family to the Dickens Christmas Festival in Rochester and had a lovely time. I went to see The Last Dinner Party in concert and they were outstanding. My daughter and I took a trip to the Coliseum in London to watch the fantastic new staging of The Nutcracker, which is the best I have ever seen. From there we met up with my wife and my daughter’s partner and went to the Chelsea Village Illuminations. The day after that we went to a lovely carol service at Rochester Cathedral.
Yesterday, my wife and I went to Southwark Cathedral to see Jethro Tull’s Christmas Tour but the highlight of the night was Marc Almond of Soft Cell singing Tainted Love and Say Hello Wave Goodbye, two of my favourite songs ever! They were songs I never ever expected to hear live and that experience was full of awe and joy.
I have a very good life and I promise to get better at recognising that.
What was the last thing you did for play or fun?
I think it’s perhaps impossible to have fun as an adult in the same way you did as a child. The trouble is that you look at that time in your life and you see that as the way fun should be. Once you have any type of responsibility, be that family or employment, for many of us that becomes the focus. Other people’s needs take precedence, as indeed they should. Fun is something I see as frivolous and lacking any real purpose , and even the fun I do have tends to be analysed through that prism.
Fun can be seen as selfish, because it’s not obviously productive. Looking back over the last few years I have seldom thrown myself into anything that could be described as fun before deciding whether it was worth it or whether I had done enough to deserve it. More and more, I have looked for purpose in what I do and fun on the surface tends to look as though it doesn’t have any purpose. On a practical level, it doesn’t, but on a personal level it does. Fun, however it comes, releases endorphins and has physical and psychological benefits beyond the activity itself. I know this because I read widely, but I can’t apply it to myself.
When I do something ‘fun’ I am not comfortable to really let go because I worry about how it will look to others. At concerts I won’t often sing as I don’t want to bother those around me. I won’t dance because I know that can be irritating for me if someone in front of me does so. That said, I stopped dancing years ago because I felt like I wasn’t very good at it and I had no place to do it.
I had a karaoke session with my colleagues on my last day of work. I wish I could have sung better and I got irritated with some of the notes I could no longer hit, but for someone who hadn’t sung in public for nearly 30 years I did quite well. I definitely had fun on the night, but when I saw the videos of my singing I turned them off very quickly because they sounded so off key to me!
I do want to have fun, but I am not a spontaneous person. My tendency to look at something from all possible angles often sees me talk myself out of things. My tendency to look at how much things cost often sees me talk myself out of things. Even when these two barriers aren’t there, my tendency to analyse what I have done often leads me to downplay the fun I have had.
I always seem to have the brakes on nowadays. When I was in my teens and twenties I was quite hedonistic because I was surrounded by hedonistic friends. The fun we had then was invariably fuelled by alcohol, something I very rarely have now. I do look back and think that it was fine for younger people, but for people of the age I am now it just isn’t appropriate.
When I look ahead I always promise myself that I will just have fun, but it’s actually very difficult to do. Another target for 2026? Perhaps, but it will probably be one I miss completely or hit the outer ring if I am lucky!
List your top 5 grocery store items.
Allinson’s Strong Bread Flour – I know that at this point I should say other strong bread flour is available, but for us there isn’t. It’s the basis for our home made bread and pizzas, which we have been making for just over three years. In that time, we have never bought a loaf of bread from the supermarket apart from being on holiday. The bread is healthier because we know what ingredients are in there and we will not go back. Our bread maker is the best appliance in the kitchen.
Jam Sugar – Along with bread and pizzas we make our own jam in the bread maker nowadays. It’s absolutely lovely and way better than anything shop bought.
Turmeric – This represents our herbs and spices. We never buy ready made curries or chilli mixes. Everything is home produced especially since Janet experimented with the curry mix and got it just right.
Weetabix – The basis of my breakfast in my childhood is still the basis of my breakfast as an adult. Along with Golden Nuggets it makes the perfect start to the culinary day.
Rice – The first time we really ate rice with our main meals was in Japan. Since then it’s been the basis of at least one meal a week and often two. It’s better for us than potatoes, especially at our age and goes brilliantly with our curries and chillis.
Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.
This prompt gave me some immediate thoughts. First of all, the person who has most positively impacted my life is my wife. Second, I much prefer the company of women to that of men and always have. Third, for every person who might be positively impacted there will be another who is either negatively impacted or not impacted at all.
For most children, your main impact will be from your parents and so you would look at the your Father. Now, I know how difficult the job of doing your best to influence your children is. When you have more than one child, you realise that you do not have a uniform impact on those young people you help to raise. I have the full range of effect on mine from negligible to significant. That is down to the fact that every child has their own nature and that is so much more important than nurture. A different mindset will lead to a different result and your impact will be positive at some points in your child’s life and negative at others.
All of those factors come into play for me as a teacher. As I got older I had to make much more effort to relate to my students and to influence them positively. My impact on them started to diminish significantly in my last few years of teaching, and I felt like I was losing my touch. I know that my influence on most of my students in that time was neutral or negative, but the occasional positive impacts kept me going. Then, last summer I had an almost uniformly positive effect on my entire class. What did that teach me? Well, first of all, it taught me that with the ‘right’ students I could still do it, but second it taught me that with the ‘right’ teacher a number of the students I couldn’t reach would have been positively impacted. The same goes for being a role model in any situation.
My advice? Quite simply to do your best and hopefully that will be enough. If it isn’t, well at least you tried.
Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?
I was thinking about this prompt and looking back on December 17 in years past. Let’s start with last year.
I was on a boat sailing towards the Great Barrier Reef in Australia on December 17 2024. I definitely didn’t have that on my radar the previous year! It was a possibility that we would go to Australia for my cousin’s 80th birthday on Christmas Day, but I didn’t have a trip to the reef on the plans.
Going back 22 years, we were in Australia once again. The previous year I had been in the first year of an expected two year stay in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, I was in a school with a very unpleasant line manager who didn’t want anything to do with an English teacher who needed support so she decided to go completely the opposite way. Leaving there, however, was actually a great catalyst to my career. 21 years ago I had just finished my Masters degree in Australia, a degree I didn’t even know I was going to do a year earlier! I got a Distinction and that gave me the opportunity to end up teaching at university in the UK.
31 years ago I was in Kidderminster in Worcestershire working at the Town Hall dealing with everything to do with that venue. It was one of my favourite jobs ever, but I was only working there because no one would give me a job as an Economics and Business Studies. I had just applied for a job in Japan on the JET Programme, but that was a ridiculous roll of the dice. No way was I going to get a job there was I? A year later I was looking forward to my first Christmas abroad!
Finally, 38 years ago today, I was preparing to see a former colleague of mine at my local pub. A year earlier I was unemployed and struggling to find another job. I went to the job centre just after Christmas and found a job with the Unemployment Benefit Office! Anyway, I was happy to be meeting up with Janet again and it turned out to be a good decision. In September we celebrated our 35th anniversary!
So there you have it. Life will always throw you unexpected situations. It’s up to you to deal with them.
