Reasons to be cheerful

I’M settling down to gather my thoughts when my husband sticks his head around the door. ‘Try and write something cheerful. Nobody needs reminding of all that is wrong with the world.’ He may as well ask me to have a go at glossolalia. I know he’s right. Times are hard and it’s unnecessary to spread the gloom, but I’m unlikely to speak in tongues. I’m an Episcopalian from a slender sliver of the Bible belt whose communicants are incapable of undulation however profound our religious fervour.

All the same, as soon as I wrote ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’, I hit