Have you ever really thought about what makes us happy? Maybe I don't really mean happy, like the jumping up and down sort of happy I used to experience much more when I was younger. I've learned over many years that the jumping up and down sort of happy is tough on the knees and usually involved major life shocks, which are tough on the blood pressure. These days I tend to go for pleasure and contentment.
When I give myself ten minutes, as I did today to watch and experience my breathing I feel pleased. When I take time and effort to drag my iPod out and plug it into the speakers so I can listen to and sing along with Krishna Das et al, then I feel really good. When I clear a corner of years of clutter and find real places for the things stuffed into that corner, I feel a sense of accomplishment. When I come across really funny old photos of me, first fat, then thin, then very thin, then fat, then ok, then skinny, I have to laugh and enjoy my ever-changing appearance. Today was full of these things - all of them made me feel better than when I started doing them.
I went out to enjoy the heat and sunshine and went to the new 99p shop that's opened nearby. What a sign of the times that is. The neighbourhood I live in would never have countenanced such a shop three years ago, but now, as we are all tightening our belts (I wish!) everyone shops there. My, my, what a revelation. Everything was 99p! How easy it is to shop, never having to check prices, how delightful to be able to afford every single thing in the place. How interesting that there were hardly any things in this emporium of cheap that I actually wanted, but I did have fun looking at shampoos with labels in Greek, biscuits just past their sell-by dates and tea towels that looked and felt as if they would withstand one encounter with a wet plate and then give up.
What was clear though was how much fun I get from finding bargains. I am certainly my mother's daughter. As a child I remember never having quite the clothes I wanted, or the shoes, or bed sheets or anything, for that matter. I always had what was on sale, on special offer or reduced to clear. What this meant was that I never had the saddle shoes I wanted, but sort of similar, but to my teenage eyes, absolutely awful, copies. I never had nice cashmere sweaters, like some of my friends, but only something called 'acrilan' - a polyester type woven stuff that never looked or felt quite right.
And yet now, I understand my mother's thinking about shopping. If you could get shoes for $5, why would you need to pay $10? If you could get bed sheets for half of the normal price, what difference would it make if they had an ugly flower pattern on them. My parents had very little money as I was growing up. We lived in a tiny apartment and I suppose my mother's job was to make the money go as far as possible. I can honestly say I never went without anything. it's just that most of what I had was second-best.
So now, as an adult, I love a bargain, but I don't buy flowered bed sheets, I buy wonderful, soft white ones. I buy the shoes I want when I want them, but it is a genetic inheritance that I only ever want shoes that are reduced in sales! And I am lucky enough to feel like a tourist in the 99p shop.
It gave me great pleasure to buy the cream cheese for my birthday cheesecake on special offer. I would,of course, have bought the cream cheese, cream, sour cream and eggs anyway, but nice to get a little discount. I see that buying food is one of my great delights. My mother always told me to scrimp on everything but not food. This, I'm sure, is the sad legacy of having gone hungry too often during the war and seeing her sister die of malnutrition. Food was a source of joy in my house. My uncle and my mother would go food shopping at any time of the day or night and to watch them buying fruit and vegetables was a remarkable experience. They would smell the fruit, touch it, pick it up and weigh it in their hands and generally, look ecstatic as they did all this. I don't think they ever got over the wonder they felt at such abundance.
All in all, a very satisfactory day and tomorrow, an early start at baking before the sun warms the house. I can't wait.
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