My happy place . . .

It’s winter and muddy and wet and cold and it’s dark and dull and I’m tired. The counsellor suggested a lavender-filled hugging cushion and a vanilla-scented candle. My look said these wouldn’t do. The counsellor said ‘go to your happy place’.

My happy place is a small town. Small is good sometimes – not when it’s lemon meringue pie or a glass of red wine but it’s OK when it’s a place. I’m thinking of a small town that’s sitting on the beach dipping its feet in the sea. The waves are small and gentle and soothing and that’s just right for now, today, at this time in the term.

I can feel real warmth, the kind that comes from a big fat sun and not the kind that comes from a skanky two-bar electric heater that oozes heat – and guilt for global warming and fear for the power bill.

I can taste the red wine. It’s black not red, it tastes of earth; it’s robust and honest and it’s a fighter, fighting for not against. And I can taste gorgonzola on very fresh, very crusty bread. I can taste green grapes and dried figs and walnuts. And I think I can smell fish frying in butter. And lemon juice. And the smell of grilled potatoes with rosemary. This happy place where the counsellor has sent me – it’s delicious.

I can hear seagulls laughing. They get paid even less than teachers and they can still laugh. I can hear the sea – heaving and sighing and I know that fatigue. I can hear a breeze wheezing through some pine trees. And I can hear ice cream melting. No really, if you listen carefully you can hear it too. Boysenberry ice cream melts the best but you have to get very close to hear it – so close that sometimes it melts right onto your face. And what a gentle slow delicious sound it makes. There’s more love in that sound than that of our Deputy Head going painfully on about duty rosters and class registers and stationery orders and shirts not tucked in and…

My happy place sounds of children – they laugh with adults not at them; they whisper ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me’ and occasionally they even say ‘sorry’. And the rest of the time the children in my happy place are quiet. Seen and not heard.

I can read uninterrupted in my happy place; there’s no marking and I don’t need a watch because there’s no timetables or buzzers or beaky assistant principals and…

Oh no, here I am in my happy place with no map. I don’t know how to get back. I can’t go back. I won’t.

— Peter Giddens