Happy

I have spent the afternoon at an Underground Farmers Market. Sample conversation before setting off:

"You aren't a farmer"

"Indeed, well spotted".

"What, actually underground? In the tube station?"

"No. Underground as in subversive"

"And why are you selling biscuits? You are a lawyer".

"Can we not go into that now? I don't have a satisfactory answer. Or even an answer".

"Is there cannabis in your biscuits?"

"No. But I am beginning to wish there was".

It was fun. I have never seen so much cake in a confined space and now I feel quite, quite sick. I sort of wanted to eat it all and my stomach sort of wanted me to lie in a darkened room with a small glass of Badoit.

This is only a tiny post, since I have to get up in about 4 hours and get the first, cruellest train back to Belgiana. A train so early that only the most hardened and fanatical Euromentals take it. I am a little afraid. They will probably thrust Directives under my nose like Jehova's Witnesses brandishing copies of The Watchtower, and ask me intensely if I have heard the good news about Customs harmonisation and whether I truly believe that Herman Von Rompuy is our saviour. I will be cultivating a hatchet-faced expression of euroscepticism. I probably won't wash either, just to be really safe.

But before I go and sleep just long enough to be properly disorientated when I am wrenched awake shortly, I wanted to show you a picture. It is a terrible, fuzzy picture. But when I saw it, I felt strangely reassured.

That's me on Thursday night. And I look very very happy.

(I am laughing hopelessly at this:

The very very funny man on the left reading bits of Kiss & Ride. In a dour, deadpan Belgian accent. He was so brilliant that on several occasions I just couldn't read my bits for laughing. There were lots of other bits of Tall Tales that also made me make this face. They were all very very brilliant).

That's all. I look happy. I was happy. I am happy, a great deal of the time. Maybe I don't mention that enough. Lots of people write to me, very thoughtfully, very touchingly. They tell me they worry about me from far away, that they want things to be ok for me, often that they too have been through hard things and survived, or that they are going through hard things and get something positive out of reading about my hard things. Those kinds of messages are one of the best things about writing this blog. They are an unsolicited gift, a kindness of strangers and a really cherish them. So look, kind, wonderful strangers. I can do happy. And actually, that's partly down to you. So thank you.