The secret of happiness? Embrace the boring, lay claim to the mundane and rejoice in repetition.

I am not someone who loves winter. The clothes are great but the weather that dictates the clothes and the short days wear me down. Mid January and February are the dullest. Simple things like left-over Christmas cake and some family birthdays pull me to mid- January but then I have a mental lethargy that requires buffing with little treats and activities to keep me twinkling until Spring reliably kicks in.

Writing this daily blog for a few years has taught me that within the mundane and the repetitive, there is nearly always a pearl of something that can be weaved into a story and once the story is created the day has a gem. Yesterday was a day of repetition but within the repetition there were pearls.

The day may also have had actual Pearls too. After very high tides, large Oysters were washed up onto the dogs favourite beach. It is a flight of imagination that pearls would ever be found in Tamar Valley Oysters. The secret to not being disappointed is to leave the Oyster alive and intact returning it and its potential, but unlikely, pearl to the sea. Treasure imagined but not realised.

Our morning was spent breakfasting with friends. We have done many breakfasts with these friends over many years. There is much that is repetitive, the usual suspect is always late and we do talk some mundane shit. We pretty much know each others views on things but there is no pressure to be anything other than ourselves and within that relaxed framework the subject of conversation could be anything.

Our great act of the day can be described as mundane, boring and repetitive. Watching the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. A two horse (boat) race on the same course every year.

As a child I watched it in the bosom of my family, some of them genetically from the city of Cambridge. We watched it on the television about 5 miles west of Cambridge, everybody supporting the light blues of Cambridge. As soon as I could think I decided to support Oxford, it gave the family gathering a little grit, some pushback and singled me out as different.

As soon as I left home I reverted to Cambridge and have never wavered. T.V is my preferred method of watching. During the London years it was entirely possible to jump on a bus and watch the event live on the banks of the Thames but I realised then that my pattern was set in my formative years. For me this is an indoor event with cups of tea and chocolate digestive biscuits.

Just like daffodils this event is a proper marker of Spring. So significant in my mind as a marker of time passing, that when Covid restrictions cancelled the event I didn’t really feel that Spring had happened at all.

Boring, repetitive and mundane, the building blocks of normal life.