Happiness or Joy ?

Happiness appears to be a very popular theme at the moment. Do people feel that they are happy? What is happiness? I’ve always preferred the word Joy. For a start it is the middle name of my little sister. Let’s see….

Happiness:
(Wikipedia says)
“Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.

The science of happiness endeavors to apply the scientific method to answer questions about what "happiness" is, and how we might attain it.”

A science??!

Joy:
(Wikipedia says)
"Joy may refer to:
• Happiness an emotion
• Joy (Given name) people with the given name or surname Joy"

(Cambridge Dictionaries online says that)
"Joy is great happiness."

Dictionary.com says:
"–noun
1.
the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation: She felt the joy of seeing her son's success.
2.
a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated: Her prose style is a pure joy.
3.
the expression or display of glad feeling; festive gaiety.
4.
a state of happiness or felicity.

–verb (used without object)
5.
to feel joy; be glad; rejoice."

Number 5 is the definition for me. If you had to use another word instead of happiness, which word would you choose?

I hope that your Easter is a joyous one.

Starwalker

I've always loved Buffy Sainte-Marie and this song especially.

Aim straight, stand tall

The Globetrotting Beefeater: Part I

This one is a 'true' story....

Once upon a time there was a Beefeater. He was very smart indeed in his royal red uniform and on his back was a magnet. He lived on a shelf in a shop in London with lots of other Beefeaters waiting to be bought by tourists from all over the world.

One morning the Beefeater was sitting on the shelf watching the tourists looking around the shop, when all of a sudden he was picked up by a very nice lady from South Africa. The beefeater didn’t mind too much because he had several other Beefeaters for company when he was put into a paper bag. The Beefeater and his companions waited patiently in the dark wondering what would happen next.

They knew that they were being moved around because they had quite a bumpy ride and other things were put on top of their bag so they felt quite squashed. Then they were left in the quiet for a couple of days. They could hear the nice lady from South Africa from time to time coming and going but she didn’t seem to pay them much attention…

All of a sudden the Beefeaters felt their bag being moved around and they were placed in quite a soft place which smelt very pleasant. And then they felt the bumping of being carried around yet again. A few hours later the Beefeater felt a very strange sensation in his tummy and heard a very loud noise. Again, he didn’t mind too much because he had the other Beefeaters for company and they were very comfortable despite being squashed. After what seemed a long time the Beefeater felt the strange sensation in his tummy again and all went quiet.

The bumpy ride started again and then stopped. The Beefeaters whispered amongst themselves, they wondered what would happen next.

The beefeater didn’t know it, but it was after a couple of days that the nice lady from South Africa unpacked that particular suitcase. She wanted to send the presents she had bought in London to her friends that lived all over the world. When she came at last to our beefeater she picked him up and said:
“Parlez-vous francais?”

What could she mean? She popped him into a padded envelope which was very comfortable indeed. The Beefeater set off on his second journey in an airplane, but this time he was on his own. He felt cozy and safe, so he didn’t mind too much....

Punch February 9th, 1884

Miss Cribbleton (questioning Old Sailor with a view to « copy » for her thrilling Novel in the Mayfair Magazine); “ Dear me ! What a dreadful shipwreck! And how did you feel when the billows were breaking over you?”
Old Salt. “Wet, Marm – very wet!”

Punch January 5, 1884

I still see the people I know in the village who gave me a pile of books a few years ago. This week there was a knock at the door and I was presented with Punch’s Almanac for 1884. A collection of the Punches published in that year. It’s in very good condition, even though the cover and spine have been repaired. I thought I’d share it with you from time to time. I’ve always loved Punch. When I was at school I was in a class where the teacher supplied us with copies if Punch to read during the registration period. In those days Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were frequent victims of the satirists pen.

Today we have two ladies discussing church:

“My Husband is Vicar of St. Boniface – but I don’t attend his Church”
“Indeed! How is that?”
“The fact is, I – I don’t approve of Married Clergymen!”

Gerry Rafferty 1947 - 2011

I was dozing off in bed last night and Rob was listening to the news on the radio. All of a sudden the familiar saxophone from Baker Street was playing. It could only mean one thing. I knew that he had health problems due to heavy drinking, but his death was still a shock. I expect a lot of us in the blogging world will be writing about him today. His songs were so romantic and beautiful.

In the early 80s I was driving through London with a boyfriend and as we turned into Baker Street, the song of the same name started playing on the radio – what a conincedence! Having said that I thought I’d post my very favourite; Home and Dry

Books, books and more books

I found this on Dru’s blog. I have read more than 6 (pokes out tongue at BBC). There are even more on this list that I’d like to read…

”The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions:
• Copy this list.
• Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
• Italicise the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
• Tag other book nerds.”


Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The King James Bible
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma -Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouak
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton?
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo