spreading joy

at 2.30am

Firstly, I hope you are all having a nice time in your lives and joy to the world and thank god the Wallace and Gromit film was good. Slightly baggy? Sure. Slightly trying to follow the formula of The Wrong Trousers? Yeah. Massively charming and made me cry when Gromit got a pat at the end? YEAH MAN.

Secondly, this button comes up saying ‘Spread the gift of the S is a 5 this Christmas’ and I want you to know I didn’t put that there, and I think you should give a better gift. Like a subscription to one of those substacks speaking truth to power. Or a candle or a nice pan.

Thirdly, we were in a pub today having the best onion rings I’ve ever had - light batter, pleasingly robust onion - and everyone cheersed each other because it’s Christmas and cheersing is what you do every four minutes. Then my sister started cheersing for small things. We’d just gone ‘To being together!’ and cheersed, like luddites, but then she said ‘To when there’s enough water in the kettle already for a cup of tea so you don’t need to fill it!’ and I thought that’s a great idea. I want to think of loads of those.

I couldn’t in the moment because I’m having one of those insomnia bouts that render me lifeless in the day and manic at night so it makes sense that at 2.30am I’ve thought of fifteen different cheerses. I feel ‘cheerses’ is something Gollum would say but I’m not posh enough to pull off ‘toasts’ so here we are.

Maybe the cheersing will spread joy in this meandering time between Christmas and New Year! Maybe it won’t! Maybe writing this will be nicer than lying in bed thinking every single thought in the known universe! Oh god it’s expanding isn’t it? What happens when it stops expanding????? Why did it start expanding???? Should I buy heatless curlers.

Here’s what I cheers to:

1. Using your Clubcard (or other points-focused loyalty scheme) and it actually knocks off a significant amount of money, like over a fiver. Although now I’m thinking about it, it’s never over a fiver is it? My conspiracy theory is that it’s never over a fiver because we’re all in the pocket of Big Points Card but I’m happy to be proven wrong. Please post screenshots below.

2. Needing the loo in a bad stomach way and the toilets have those fully enclosed floor-to-ceiling walls as well as music at the exact right volume. I don’t need to discuss this further.

3. Changing the bed, and the duvet just popping right in the cover with merely a few flourishes. Nine times out of ten I feel like those people flopping heavy ropes at the gym. Every time I have to shake a duvet into the duvet cover (I practise the ‘inside out corner to corner’ method) I think of those people. With all the bounteous possibilities for movement in the gym, they choose to flop ropes.

4. Blowing your nose successfully. God when you get a proper good batch out and can breath through the nostril again? Cheers to that my friend, cheers to that. In other news, I’ve had that horrible cold for a week.

5. Making a group of people you are quite impressed by, laugh.

6. Finding The Brush, as in, the one that will make you emit antisocial sounds every time you groom. My personal Brush is from Cole’s supermarket in Australia, costs about £2 and it’s frankly obscene what comes out of my mouth every time I do a ponytail.

7. Knowing with great clarity the exact snack you desire, and that the snack is easy to buy or retrieve.

8. Realising with great clarity the exact meal you desire, and that you are able to eat the meal without going to the shop.

9. Cafe, empty table, plug socket. Cheersing so hard at this point there’s just glass everywhere.

10. Saying ‘God I need to buy x’ and someone saying ‘I have one I’m not using’ AND THEN GIVING IT TO YOU. This has happened to me twice. Once, a nice man on Twitter sent me airpods after I vented about being scammed when trying to buy some (I’ll do a post about this at some point but the same scammer managed to get me twice, and the only way it could have been more obvious is if they’d have said ‘I’m about to scam you’ and ‘I’m about to scam you again’, respectively) and another time my sister realised she’d bought the wrong colour foundation, just as I realised I’d bought the wrong colour of the same foundation, and that we’d inadvertently bought each others’ colours. Am hyperventilating just typing it out.

11. Opening the dishwasher and it’s got one dirty plate in it, so you can add your own dirty plates without needing to empty anything.

12. Opening Netflix with that grim realisation you have no idea what to watch and are therefore ripe to be caught in an infinite scroll, before quite fancying the very first thing on the homepage. Unparalleled.

13. Leaving the restaurant and finding out someone has booked a booth in a bar nearby so you don’t have to wander round trying to figure out where else to go like little ghosts.

14. When someone puts into words something you didn’t even realise you were struggling to put into words because it’s so deep within you, it’s still in the ‘ooh haha i feel a feeling’ stage. Last night I read a sentence in a book that was so unexpectedly insightful I almost heard two neural pathways in my brain connect in surprise. They thought they were minding their own business, never to come into contact, and then WHAM. Everyone’s neural pathways have different connection noises, by the way, and mine sound like the band Wham.

15. Getting to the Airbnb and the key situation is totally apparent, easy and functions correctly. You don’t have to call Wilma because the lockbox needs jimmying or anything.

It feels like I should have ended on something more climactic than Wilma’s jimmying lockbox but on the plus side, I’ve found a good band name. Also please add your own joy in the comments - I’d like to read it.

Thanks for reading this, and for everyone who subscribes: you’ve made my 2024. I’m so happy people read stuff I’ve written and that there’s some way of distracting myself in the middle of the night while sat in my childhood bedroom thinking I shouldn’t in all good faith buy heatless curlers when I don’t want my hair to curl? Also, what’s wrong with heat? Why is a cold curl superior? Anyway, I obviously bought them halfway through writing this (around point 6) so I guess I’ll let you know.