Richard Happer - 365 Reasons to Be Cheerful: Magical Moments to Cheer Up Miserable Sods... One Day at a Time

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While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.

H. G. Wells

INTRODUCTION

Every day of the year newspapers publish stories of misery, suffering, depression and general all-round grumpiness. Not because they enjoy it, but because there seems to be a lot of it going around at the moment.

But that doesnt mean we should have to wallow in it.

I am a cheerful man. I like to hear cheerful things. Not just stuff about dogs barking sausages or squirrels learning to waterski, you understand. I mean the big stories that lift the heart, engage the brain and maybe even make the spirit soar a little more than it was doing when I crawled out of bed this morning.

In short, I cant stand miserable buggers.

So I started collecting a few of my favourite pick-me-up stories. Things that made me chuckle; tales that made me smile. The more I found, the more I realised how joyful this world of ours can be and how much there is to celebrate on a day-today basis. There are thousands of joyful stories to be told every single day .

From flying cows to wrestling camels, from wellies to bikinis and womens rights to martinis, from pearls to penis festivals and Las Vegas to Bacchanalia, from cheese rolling to corn circles, and dishwashers to disco dancing via diamonds the size of planets, there is a lot to be happy about. You just dont know it yet.

Of course, we all have to pay attention to the less fun stuff too, like paying the bills and getting out of bed. As I tell my cat, Life isnt all jelly, puss. Sometimes life is chunks, too. Theres a time and a place for being grumpy and serious.

But its not here and its not now. This book is about taking a happy moment to smile to yourself, about enjoying life for its own sake (and yours) and travelling to an oasis of amusement in the arid desert of the everyday. I thought it would be fun to have such a place to visit on those dull, grey and bleak Monday mornings.

Perhaps you feel the same?

If you do, join me. Take my hand and let me guide you on a year-long voyage of looking on the bright side of life every day of the year, one day at a time.

I guarantee itll cheer you up.

Richard Happer

29th June 2010

JANUARY

THE INTERNET IS BORN

Click here to start the fun. Today in 1983, the Internet in all its anarchic and indecent splendour was born.

But it wasnt like someone just pressed a button and whoosh! up went the muck. Computer networks had been around for years governments, universities and the military all had machines that could talk to each other. The big problem was that those separate networks couldn't understand one another properly. To one computer, some data might represent operational codes for twin Russian missile silos, while another was decoding it as a picture of Pamela Anderson with her top off. Clearly something had to be done.

So it was on this day that the controllers of these networks started using the Internet Protocol Suite. This is a standardised format much like how different trains run on the same line of track that meant the networks now had a universal structure for data to travel along. This set the scene for the creation of the World Wide Web (see 12 November) a super-snazzy train that runs on those tracks, and makes sharing information via billions of pages of websites even more easy and enjoyable.

NEW YEARS DAY (FOR PROCRASTINATORS)

Another New Year, another new leaf not turned over? Cheer up history is full of famous artists and inventors who achieved amazing things despite being bloody lazy.

Leonardo da Vinci started painting a friends wife, but didnt get around to finishing it for sixteen years it turned out to be the Mona Lisa . Albert Einstein dithered for so long deciding it was mc2 that E equalled, that he practically went back in time. While Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy , once said, I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

So its okay, you dont have to get absolutely everything done today. The New Years resolutions can wait, particularly when theres always the greatest labour-saving device of today at your disposal tomorrow.

RAISE YOUR GLASS... TO THE DRINKING STRAW!

Though kids in 1888 had Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper and Schweppes fizzy drinks to slurp on, no one had yet made a proper drinking straw until Marvin Stone saved the day on this very day.

People had tried making drinking straws out of hollow grass, but they went soggy and made your pop taste like hay. Rubbish. Then Marvin had his brainwave. He wrapped a piece of paper around a pencil and coated it in wax, thus stiffening the paper and waterproofing it too. Soon kids all over America were bubbling sarsaparilla. The drinking straw was a hit.

More importantly, desperate people the world over finally had something to clutch at.

EX-WRESTLER SWORN IN...

Life would be a lot brighter, and more cheerful, if more politicians were like Jesse Ventura. Most people running for office keep their wilder opinions to themselves and try to paper over their speckled pasts, but Ventura is refreshingly different.

He admitted that in the early 1970s he was a full-patch member of an outlaw motorcycle gang and organised crime syndicate, The Mongols. Ventura supports the legalisation of prostitution, to protect the health of the workers in an industry that he believes will always exist. He also acted in the 1987 movie Predator with the future Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he was elected Governor of Minnesota, his supporters adopted the slogan My governor can beat up your governor.

Only in America...

TWELFTH NIGHT

Todays cheer comes from the very ancient festival of mischief, merrymaking and general mucking about Twelfth Night. For one day, lifes natural order was reversed, so masters attended servants, and servants ordered masters around (although presumably not too harshly if they still wanted to have jobs the next day!). A peasant was pro claimed The Lord of Misrule, and it was his job to keep the chaos alive the whole day. This was acheived by pumping everyone full of wassail a medieval type of alcopop.