What makes you happy? A sunny morning? A beautiful woman? A sculpture? Your children? The feel of your lover? The sound of the birds? News that Donald Trump has been assassinated?

It can be anything. We’re all different. But with so much shit happening in the world, some balance is always required. For every piece of shit neo-nazi in Virginia there’s a lovely child. For every jihadi motherfucker there’s someone getting three A* a-levels. For every Chelsea fan there’s a good person somewhere. For every punctured car tyre there’s a backhand down-the-line winner on the run. Every cloud has a silver lining. Apparently. It just doesn’t always feel like that when your in mid-cloud. So I’ve included today a photo of a cloud and a silver lining to show you.

Because after tennis this morning we stopped at our cafe and I was chatting to some people when I looked up and saw… Lila. Just sitting there on her dad’s lap. And I felt pure, simple, unadulterated happiness. A Lila surprise. Simply wonderful. Quite an amazing effect.

Last night I had a similar moment of pure joy. Read on, its clean, I promise. After our dinner guests left I sat down, turned on the tv and, quite by chance, Match of the Day was on. Oh, that’s nice. Not quite the Lila surprise that would follow later, but nice. And the screen told me it was Stoke 1, Arsenal 0, with 72 minutes played. I had no idea of the score of the match played hours before. So I could enjoy the remaining hilights. When the Arsenal player was ruled offside when appearing to score. The un-goal. Though later it was shown that the player was about 7mm offside. So how that is ‘not’ offside in Arsene Wenger’s mind I don’t know, I’m no psychologist. But I know a bad loser when I see one. That made me happy. Really happy. Ok, in a more ‘schadenfreudey’ way than perhaps a Lila moment would be, but happiness is such a seemingly rare commodity (when sober) that you take what you can. Even if it might appear to make me rather shallow and pathetic. I can live with that.

Spurs play Chelsea this afternoon. Lila’s coming to watch it. Our talisman. Oh please let her be our talisman. I’m way more concerned that its our first league match at Wembley than that its Chelsea coming.

(Let’s pray for a-) Happy Sunday

A xxxx