Reasons to be cheerful

If you're not too careful, you could end up being perturbed, disturbed, depressed, even, by things that are happening in the world today.

Everywhere you look, there are things that could bring you down, if you were to let them. Serious and scary things, both at a global and personal level.

Apparently, so the climate change people say, we're going to be living in conditions that mean our grandchildren may well be evolving gills and swim bladders. That's if they're not glowing in the dark from random levels of radiation being thrown out by anything with a plug. But that's OK, as we soon won't be able to generate enough energy anyway to operate all the air-conditioning units we need due to the climate change heating everything up.

Money isn't worth what it was 20 minutes ago. There's a global credit crunch, the stock market is acting like a four-year-old on the blue smarties, and we're not certain whether or not our multi-national corporations are trying to kill us or not. Which might be a blessing, as there are a significant number of other people floating around who'd quite like to have a pop, too.

The Spice Girls have re-formed.

And on a personal level, there's always too much month left at the end of the money, whilst my concerns about my pension are only mitigated by those about my limited lifespan. In other news, they haven't yet invented a 25-hour day. And I've got this nasty nagging pain between my shoulders.

So what can you do?

Call it counting your blessings, call it what you will. But sometimes, sitting down for a moment and listing the positives, or going out to find good news, can help. Apparently this all-new interweb thingy can help. Whilst not enough to dispatch the black dog, it might be enough to shoo away his less-effective friend, the dusky puppy. Let's have a go, shall we?

This time next month, I'm going to be limbering up for the drive to Solva, where we'll be spending a week at Christmas. One month and counting. And I am counting, trust me.

"I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue" is back on Radio 4 in the evenings. Excellent, I needed to brush up on my Mornington Crescent skills.

In an attempt to stem male suicides and depression, groups in Australia have come up with the Men's Shed Movement, where chaps of a certain age, perhaps post-retirement and with nothing else to look forwards to, can meet up, engage in carpentry, banter and whittling. I couldn't help smiling at this one.

According to recent research, there may in fact be up to twice the number of Giant Pandas in the wild than we previously thought.

On Friday I get to see Bill Bailey at the NIA. Anyone who can do a Kraftwerk version of the Hokey-Cokey with a straight face is alright by me.

Someone has finally brought out an invention for which we should all be thankful, a system that enables you to avoid the dreaded "bar invisibility syndrome".

The Proclaimers. Not by any stretch my favourite band, but I keep an emergency CD in the car for the occasional journey home when I've needed uplifting. Try it. You will agree.

The lyrics to the Ian Dury & The Blockheads song "Reasons to be cheerful" have pretty much the same effect, too. (You see, these titles don't make themselves up.)

All of the above were based on a quick web search and a bit of random thinking. Easy when you know how.

Now it's your turn.