DOES HAPPINESS WRITE WHITE?

Listen to BBC Radio 4 at 11.30am today to learn more about the fiendishly elusive art of writing happiness, with insights from the excellent authors Ann Patchett and Helen Simpson, poet Don Patterson, and happiness hunter Gretchen Rubin

SPOILING YOURSELF IS A LUXURY

Never read Salman Rushdie? Then you can’t like cream cakes. Long before the mullahs issued their fatwah against him, Rushdie became the bard of lardy sins when he coined the 1970s Dairy Council slogan, ‘Naughty but nice’. The ad lasted well into the 1980s, not just due to its nice alliteration, but because it encapsulated Thatcherite beliefs that self-seeking is good.

 

Will this austere age make it harder to spoil ourselves? As a cake lover, I hope not, and I’m not alone. The argument for self-indulgence crystallised in the so-called ‘caring 1990s’, when Jennifer Aniston spoke for L’Oreal and womankind in the line ‘Because You’re Worth It’. Cheryl Cole still peddles this philosophy because in our aspirational world, self-indulgence is less a treat than a duty.

 

How so? Admittedly the definition of luxury is it’s something we want not need, its purpose being to attain that idle boon, pleasure. From latin’s ‘luxuria’ (‘sumptuous enjoyment’), the word originally meant lust. Hence a fourteenth-century father cautioned his daughters against ‘leude touchinge and handelyng’ and the ‘orrible synne of luxurie’. Today a luxury is a commodity, bought with surplus wealth. Yet increasingly, serving our wants is regarded not as a sin but a necessity that our morale, our very mental health, cannot do without.

 

Don’t believe me, believe the figures.  Sales of Jaguar cars and LVMH brands, like Louis Vuitton and Moët et Chandon, are soaring. This irrational exuberance isn’t just down to Chinese big spenders. Economists reckon its symptomatic of emotional vulnerability, our need to cheer ourselves up. Likewise they rationalise the boom in littler luxuries, like lipstick and foundation.

 

You could lament this trend, say we’re in denial of our humbled financial state, or under unhealthy pressure to keep up a front. But I welcome it. Latest psychological research confirms it’s not reason but emotion that drives us. And if we made pleasure our top emotional motive – rather than guilt or envy – couldn’t the world be a better place? Better still, we would redefine self-indulgence as giving to others. Wellbeing studies find the most enduring bliss comes from being kind, and Bill Gates certainly seems happier now he’s the world’s second richest man, but number one giver. So whatever your pleasure, go on, spoil yourself. If nothing else, it will do the dratted economy good.

HOW TO REFORM A MESSY CHARACTER

There are three kinds of person: the happy-messy, the organisers, and the conscience-stricken slatterns who periodically reform, only to resume the slow slide into chaos. Unsure which you are? Then consider Quentin Crisp’s defence of not cleaning: ‘After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.’ Do you cringe? Envy his laissez-faire? Or does this sound like home?

‘Westerners have different standards, we have different standards,’ said an organiser of Delhi’s Commonwealth Games, defending the stray dogs and piles of rubbish in the athletes’ accommodation. He was right, mess and hygiene are relative values, shaped by culture and upbringing.

Many doze oblivious to mugs sprouting cataracts of mould beside their bed. Meanwhile their loved-ones fume at being forced, as they see it, to tidy after them. It feels a power game, and what makes it so upsetting is that mess is more than a question of health, safety or respect. It both  embodies and creates chaos. It not only echoes but shapes our ability to cope with life.

I know because I spent my teens in a stew. My bedroom, worse than anything Tracy Emin’s spewed, symbolised my misery and provided evidence I shouldn’t bother getting better. Today I’m better at being messy in moderation (my husband might disagree), and at life. When I see friends knee-high in debris, it seems all too eloquent of their inability to make choices, to let go of the past.

Okay, I’m smug. You may reject equations of tidiness with goodness, like committed idler Tom Hodgkinson, an author who expends vast energy on informing us he’s happy. But his partner looks tired. And ask yourself why we have metaphors like ‘messing up’ or ‘don’t mess with my mind’. Indeed, social research proves that mess, mental and moral behaviour are intertwined. Ingenious tests found that in squalid environments, people are likelier to act dishonestly.

You may never be as lucky, lucky, lucky as Kylie Minogue, for whom tidying is a choice not a necessity: “I like to clean my cupboards. Hours go by. I get my Marigolds on and have a fantastic frenzy,” she trills. But believe, like her, that cleaning cupboards is therapy, and I guarantee you’ll feel better.

THE PERILS OF BEING HELPFUL

My cousin is auditioning for a sainthood. She’s both a bravura host and all-weather Samaritan. For this she’s duly punished by two women who imagine they’re her best mates. I call them Poor Me and Me Too. Poor Me visits weekly, bearing vats of oily soup as a form of payment, then parks on the sofa and moans. Me Too lives further afield but monitors my cousin on Facebook, doling out unsolicited advice, looming large at every party, staying for days to ‘help clear up’.

Does your halo hang heavy? Well whose fault is that? Forgive my cynicism but I find compulsively helpful people suspect. ‘Why do you want me in your debt?’ I wonder. This attitude is mean spirited. More worryingly, it could be bad for my health. 

Happiness studies suggest the most rewarding activities, for pleasure and wellbeing, involve kindness and gratitude. Help others and you help yourself. This circular logic perfectly fits the explanation of altruism as ‘enlightened self-interest’ proposed by that least rose-tinted philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Ornithologists agree, seeing help as a weapon among teenage Arabian babbler birds, which compete ferociously to feed their younger siblings. Why? To gain valued social commodities like prestige – just as billionaires pay fortunes for junk at charity auctions. In exchange, recipients can feel overloaded with obligation, deprived of choice, or prey to donors’ whims. Hence insistent helpers, like Me Too, can resemble bullies – because they know best…

This is an etiquette problem, but doesn’t prove we’re ruled by ‘selfish genes’. (As Mary Midgley recently teased Richard Dawkins, the word ‘selfish’ wouldn’t exist if it was a universal condition.) I’m with Epicurus, ancient connoisseur of delight, who held, ‘It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.’ Goodwill doesn’t just boost egos. Much of civilisation’s history makes sense only in light of the mingled benefits and mixed motives of co-operation and patronage.

Being helpful may lose its virtue if you tingle with superiority, or resentment. That doesn’t make it bad so much as human, although probably it also means this is less a friendship of equals than power game. To avoid such pitfalls and aid a friend, let her know you’re there and leave gifts you see a clear need for. But knock on the door. Don’t force it.

OUT NOW IN AUSTRALIA

THE ART OF MARRIAGE is out now Down Under.  Or up above.  I guess it depends on your centre of gravity.  In Australia, anyway.

I had great fun talking about it on Sunrise Breakfast TV, although I think I looked down throughout the interview — and with my fluffy top and a seven and a half month bump, I also looked like big pink pom. (Or pom-pom.)

Any thoughts about marriage in the Antipodes, gratefully received…

THE LIMITS OF PERSONAL SPACE

The bigger you are, the greater personal space you need. Sadly, this rule doesn’t apply on budget airlines, or if you’re pregnant. These days I keep bumping into things, like a cat that needs longer whiskers, because my inner compass is out of step with my expanding curves. And while my kicking baby invades my privacy, strange hands assail my belly.  Worse, if I back off, the gropers look hurt, rejected. And annoyingly, they’re right.  How I feel about their unsolicited pats tells me – with unprecedented clarity – exactly how much I like them.  Or not.  

Am I standoffish? Hormonal? Typical Brit? Perhaps. Perhaps other women adore admiring bump hugs.  But my sensitivity to the boundary between intimacy and intrusion isn’t entirely personal.  For a start comfort zones are culturally determined, influenced by habitat.  In populous India, strangers stand closer than on the vast Mongolian steppe. 

Yet social boundaries are as changeable as national borders. An Italian travelling in Tudor England noted in horror that if a visitor doesn’t ‘kiss the mistress [of the house] on the mouth, they think him badly brought up’. And it wasn’t the puritan Oliver Cromwell, but lusty Charles II who deemed kissing an unacceptable English greeting – because he was raised in France, which then considered face-on-face action vulgar! 

It’s impossible to read the words ‘personal space’ without hearing an American accent, but the notion’s no more foreign than our cliché about not stepping on people’s toes. How you measure personal space is the problem. To solve it, 1960s anthropologist Edward T. Hall invented ‘proxemics’, a quasi-science, with diagrams of concentric rings, to divide social from personal space (4 feet and 1.5 feet from the body, respectively).  But his yardstick’s too long for Japan, and totally impractical for the Tube. 

There’s but one universal law of personal space: we perceive it via the psychological nervous system popularly called the emotions.  It’s policed by the amygdala, part of the brain that hosts emotional memories. Hence you’ll experience a Pavlovian flinch when your smelly brother-in-law lunges for his annual New Year’s kiss. Luckily, you needn’t be a dog to retrain your amygdala. Move to Rome, you’ll soon learn to embrace acquaintances.  And if social signposts are unclear, try my preferred marker of personal space: can you smell his breath?  Then smile, step back. I guarantee he won’t be offended.

As seen in ES magazine

A GOOD ARGUMENT?

As summer sinks into silly season, I miss the World Cup. So the soccer stank. There were still delicious spectacles. Yes, Ronaldo’s torso. Better yet was watching spoilt youths rage at referees (presumably ‘No’ is rarely heard if you’re on £100,000 a week). Likewise, wasn’t Alastair Campbell baiting Sky’s Adam Boulton your General Election highlight? Their barney is a YouTube classic not just because Boulton turns a beguiling puce. When public figures expose their unscripted inner Eltons, it satisfies more than Schadenfreude. 

Connoisseurship of conflict is a national sport. TV is usually blamed for this. Especially the shouty ‘talk’ shows that serve as televisual espresso on daytime, and soaps where little chats routinely end ‘outside – NOW!’ But such stunted debates differ little (barring vocabulary) from  jousts on Newsnight. Broadcasters rig conversations as bouts because disagreement grips audiences as no analysis can – not to mention wakes them for ad breaks. 

Everyone loves a ruckus because conflict’s the DNA of drama. Spats have the entertaining qualities of momentum, passion, and clearly differentiated positions. For participants, however, ‘telling it like it is’ can be the worst way to get across views, unless your aim is simply to use each other as scratching posts. (Anyone with sisters knows fights are fun, a perfectly valid end in itself. Why? Because I said so.) The traditional definition of ‘argument’ is ‘proof’, although in everyday speech ‘argument’ usually refers to the activity of debate, not the logical steps to a good point, well made.  But let’s suppose you want a good argument, one serving a higher purpose, like reaching a decision. What steps to take? 

First, bear in mind that dialogue tends to polarise us so don’t rush; repetition and summaries minimise misunderstanding. Second, note you’re biased to believe arguments confirming your prejudices. As George Bernard Shaw observed: ‘The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.’ Third, remember your tactics may depend on what’s between your legs.

In lovers’ argy-bargy, usually she nags, he stonewalls – largely because men under attack ‘flood’ with stress hormones, taking longer than women cool off. So don’t rely on rows to up your tally of kisses. There are many argument techniques, from breastbeating to changing subject, but two spell relationship death: ignoring and contempt. My advice is listen. You may learn.

WENDY HOLDEN’S REVIEW

Here is what Wendy Holden had to say about my book in the Daily Mail:

Catherine Blyth doesn’t mind tempting fate. Her first book was called The Art Of Conversation and this one is called The Art Of Marriage. May she never be caught lost for words after her other half has stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

Of course, no one knows what goes on inside another person’s marriage, any more than they know what goes on inside another person’s head.

Wisely, Blyth has held back on psychobabble and specious insight to present what is, at heart, an intellectual entertainment about wedlock. It’s a quirky kaleidoscope of quotes, anecdotes, survey results and the author’s own musings.

There are chapters on everything from adultery to in-laws to the ‘time warp’ food beloved of wedding caterers.

Blyth has a theory that wedding food is up to 15 years behind contemporary gastronomic fashion, but has to be ‘dull in order to appease the palates of toddlers and toothless Great Aunt Enid alike’.

At her own wedding, to a cheese-loving spouse, Blyth ingeniously solved the problem by having truckles of cheddar carved up ceremonially, cake-style, and distributed among guests. I learnt a great many things reading this book. That the marriage guidance service Relate reports increased business every September after couples have endured the long summer breaks.

That when ‘friends’ go on villa holidays, most of the resulting spats are between the women. That Georges Simenon’s wife used to go with him to brothels and advise him on his pick of the girls.

That Marx was anxious for his daughter to marry money. That, in the 13th-century Chinese province of Tangut, husbands customarily vacated the house when guests came to stay so the visitor could avail himself more fully of the hospitality, which included sleeping with his host’s wife, should he wish to.

The tribesmen of 1806 Missouri apparently had the same approach to guests, ‘the whole situation being enlivened by the fact that in such ramshackle huts as theirs everything was open to view’. Imagine – and 200 years before the Big Brother house.

Some of The Art Of Marriage is amusingly provocateur; in defence of infidelity, for example, Blyth points out that without it we would not have films like Casablanca or novels like Madame Bovary.

She cites a publisher moaning to an author: ‘My mistress doesn’t understand me.’ There is also advice on how to have a good affair, quoting the Kama Sutra’s advice on an easy lay (apparently jewellers’ wives, actors’ wives, old women and women always looking out on the street were usually on for it). Keep it discreet and never fall in love would seem to be the rule. So now you know.

Blyth is a former TV scriptwriter, which may explain her intensely aphoristic style. ‘All marriages are sitcoms,’ she tells us, ‘so all of us need catchphrases.’ Likewise, ‘housework makes Hercule Poirots of all couples … in that grubby trail of footprints across our freshly-mopped kitchen floor we read clues about the state of our marriage’.

She is by turns solicitous and satirical. She’s sensible and sensitive on stepchildren, say, but altogether more skittish in her concluding A-to-Z of marriage.

M is for Music, for example, and she chooses to bypass the many great musical marrieds from the Schumanns to opera singers Alagna and Gheorghiu in order to focus on Andrew Flintoff throwing his wife’s CDs out of the car window.

At the centre of Blyth’s work is the idea that marriage is ‘a hallowed dream’, essentially a spiritual and philosophical construct.

Her avowed aim is to explore whether or not it still matters to people; the answer would seem to be yes, although, as the people Blyth explores among are the past great and good and the contemporary middle classes, the social focus is narrow.

Not that the book’s any the worse for that.

On the contrary, it’s fun to read something which leaps about in lively fashion from Darwin’s list of pros and cons about marrying to the ‘things I hate about you’ lists that Anthony Armstrong-Jones left about the house for Princess Margaret.

‘One day she opened a glove drawer to read “You look like a Jewish manicurist”. They divorced.’

What struck me above all is how good a writer Blyth is with her wry, wise and lyrical style. This led me to wonder when that novel so obviously trying to get out of her will see the light of day.

THE PUZZLE OF SWIMWEAR

In kindergarten, I craved a bikini almost as much as to be blonde.  Had Primark sold one with foam ‘breasts’, I’d have been thrilled.  Blame Barbie.

If you don’t believe bikini confidence is the apex of female achievement, read a gossip mag.  See a starlet condemned for that modern sin, cellulite (punishable by pricy unguent).  The message is clear: in swimwear, you enter a beauty contest.  Some love it.  Not me.  It’s small comfort this disquiet isn’t exclusive to me, nor even to women.  Remember David Cameron blaming Sam for his floral trunks?  Thus cleverly presenting them as evidence he was a ‘real man’ – too busy to fuss about clothes, his squaw fussing for him.

Like shares, trends in selective nudity go up as well as down, because swimwear reflects both fashion and attitudes to the body.  Fashion buffs claim bikinis were invented in war-torn 1940s, in a general moral loosening (and to save cloth).  But in fourth-century Sicilian villa, Piazza Armerina, mosaics depict maidens frolicking in bandeaus and undies as if auditioning for Baywatch.  Body-worshipping Romans adored beach babes as much as any Copacabana lech.  

As clothes evolved from togas, swimming togs receded until the Victorian  seaside boom.  Then, costumes mimicked ideal male and female forms, with men in longjohns, women clad neck to ankle, big skirts on top.  As women grew more active, all clothes shrank.  Witness the ever-skinnier 1960s’ ever-stringier bikinis.

Any Indian beach, where you’ll see women in everything from thongs to saris, illustrates that there is no single line on modesty today.  And Western swimwear offers distinctly confusing instructions about what shape to aspire to.  Busty women welcome the resurgent cutaway one-piece.  But 10,000 sit-ups couldn’t defeat this evil, peepshow garment, from which hip and back fat bulge like fleshy bubble wrap.  They suit only plump, bony women, i.e. Barbie.  But maybe these mixed body messages express muddled recession thinking – as we debate whether to fall on creature comforts, or get leaner, meaner.  Maybe next year swimwear will be more forgiving, necklines rising as shares plummet.  

In the meantime, to look sexy in swimwear, don’t stroll the prom in high heels.  You will fall.  Foam cups and built-in girdles can armour against indignity.   If you must wear a thong, wear it like a Brazilian i.e. with perfect peaches, or a German, i.e. with indifference to everyone else.  But until dimples are as coveted as in the nineteenth century, I’ll applaud you from my kaftan.

As seen in ES magazine

MARRIAGE VERSUS BABIES?

It’s bad hearing you can’t have a baby.  Worse if, until that moment, you were far from certain that you wanted one.  And especially shocking if these discoveries hit after two long years’ striving to get pregnant.

As I learnt four months ago.  

An IVF specialist announced that, contrary to past advice, ‘it would be a miracle’ if my husband and I conceived naturally.  And I felt as if someone had stolen my innards, then dropped me through a trap door.  

Sebastian’s response was more cerebral.  ‘It’s like we’ve been given A-star in an exam, only to be told, sorry, you’re gamma minus.’  But he was no less upset.  Unsurprisingly, since this  baby lark was his idea.  Apparently, in this we’re an unusual couple.  Yet ambivalence about parenthood always seemed natural to me.

 For years he urged, ‘We’ve got to get on with it.’

‘Says who?’ said I, hoping he would reply, ‘Me.’  He didn’t, enabling me to discount the possibility that he truly wanted this.  

So the question – to breed or not to breed – lay between us, often mentioned, examined seldom.  I vaguely expected to wake one morning, ravenous with ‘baby hunger’, or suddenly go gooey, passing Baby Gap.  

But while I adore friends’ kids, that they go home is always a selling point.  As a tot, I detested baby dolls.  At 6, I vowed to enter a nunnery after channel-hopping into an Open University film, ‘the miracle of birth’.  Today, greeting neighbourhood mums with their prams of precious blossom, I’m not blind.  After initial exhaustion, most emit a rosy glow, as if possessed of an intoxicating secret, known only to a select group of two: a parent’s delirious love for its child.

Yet my primary feeling for these mothers isn’t envy but pity.  Primarily, for the awesome responsibility: to learn how much to give, how little to expect, and – hardest – how to let go. 

I didn’t take parenthood lightly, you see, but all too seriously.  It scared me.

What changed my mind?  Realising the ‘urge’ was as likely to strike me as lightning.  That my scepticism was logical, as part of the post-Princess Di generation, reared on the two Cs: contraception, and career.  But although my self-pleasing life would never grow less appealing, I might regret the lack of a son or daughter.  Ideally, I’d skip parenthood to be a grandmother of the grandest variety, available for tea at Claridge’s, trips to Venice, never nappies or knitting.  Sadly, this technology had yet to reach Harley Street.

And yes, the mournful eyes of my husband, as we spoke of our lovely nephews, nieces and godchildren, they got to me.  Having researched marriage for my latest book, I was aware that family studies all conclude a marriage withchildren is less happy than one without.  On the other hand, how could I deprive him?  More to the point: what if he stopped loving me and looked elsewhere?  Would that be so unreasonable? When we married I took a vow to honour him.  The deal was to put ‘us’ before ‘me’.  

And marriage experts all concur: a couple can recover from any breach of trust, if both want to.  But one form of incompatibility kills.  When couples aren’t signed up to the same life dream.

So maybe ‘us’ had room to expand into a bigger number, like three.

I flushed the pill, waited for my periods to return, only to wish they hadn’t.  And then feel relief.  Phew.  I could finish this book, start another, and oh, that play idea…  I made plans, lots.  None featured moses baskets.

18 months passed.  Sebastian suggested visiting the GP.  Referrals followed.  Humiliating investigations became second-nature (though never will I see a Star Wars light-sabre without shuddering).  Finally we learnt that we couldn’t breed after all.

Were we surprised?  Not really.  At thirty-five, an age women dread as the start of a sharp drop to menopause, I was amazed other doctors said I was hunky-dory, despite polycystic ovaries and decades of slack personal care.  As Sebastian is older than I, and a journalist, for him to emerge unscathed from his roué years seemed far-fetched.  No, the shock was how much I cared.

After a sleepless night’s sobbing, I started planning.  We’d hold our noses and yes, do the damned IVF.  Sebastian looked increasingly distressed.  And even as I spewed positive patter, I found myself contemplating the options that medicine offers.  Donors.  Wombs for hire.  Adoption.  

How far might our baby-quest take us?  Would we lose sight of the thing that always seemed more important to me than parenthood’s spurious immortality – the love that bore us for 14 happy years?

I learnt two things.  If I was to have a child, it could only be our child – his.  And I did want one, because I’d love it as I loved him.

A week later, we went to a private clinic for more tests.  

Guess what?  I was pregnant.  Naturally.

A week later, I returned to the NHS for a scan.  The embryo was at an awkward angle, but hard as she tried, the consultant found no heartbeat.  She “couldn’t say it was okay”, she said,  turning away, hunching her shoulders and adding, “I’m sorry”. 

I knew her well enough to know I was justified to cry.

I rang Sebastian.  He told me not to be pessimistic then we ate a ceremonial lunch and agreed the emotion was overwhelming.  Just a taste of parenthood’s highs and lows.  Did we want it?  Then I went to bed, started bleeding, and he kept saying don’t write the baby off.  At the week’s end we went together to the consultant.

“I’ve booked the emergency room,” she said.

“For the abortion?” I asked.  Watching hope fall from Sebastian’s face hurt more than the words.  

Out came the light sabre.  I couldn’t look at the monitor, or him.  

“Oh,” said the consultant.

“What?”

“Things have changed.”

“Can’t you see it?” said Sebastian.

“What?”

“The baby’s heartbeat.”

“I’m amazed.  And delighted,” said the consultant.

As are we.  

And scared.  And delighted, as our unborn daughter grows.  I pray the emotional see-saw keeps tilting until I die.  Preferably before him.  Definitely before her.