A glossy married couple of a certain age, sitting side by side on a sofa in a TV studio, were recommending the installation of “good news bells” in the nation’s kitchens. Every time someone has some good news — lemon meringue marshmallows turning out immaculately, full marks in the biology test on the secret life of the broad bean — you ring the bell and declare your success in the fashion of a town crier. Those in the vicinity, if they can, drop what they are doing and mount some kind of micro-celebration. Backs should be patted, if there is a kazoo or a harmonica to hand a tune might be played, chocolate coins left over from your Christmas stocking might be distributed. Congratulations doled, smiles smiled, it’s as you were until the next time, thus ensuring a little quiz-show lustre is sprinkled over the lino and the Formica at regular intervals throughout the week.

I practised this on my own, from my chair. “Ding-a-ling,” I said, “guess what everybody? I have just been sent some gin-and-tonic perfume through the post. Fancy that!” (It was true.) I imagined nobody stirring, not even an arching brow.

I remembered a snatch of hymn from a church I used to attend on my own when I was seven or eight, which was round the corner from where we lived. “Good news, good news, I’m saved eternally, that’s wonderful, extra good news.” Hmmm. I do have a little white china bell printed with violets somewhere. I might try it.

In your bedroom, this couple continued with pneumatic cheer, how about putting up a “wow board” on which you attach pictures of things, bits of writing, drawings, mementos pertaining to the things in your life that really make you exclaim, “Wow!” Gazing at this collage of wonder, when you wake up, before you go to sleep, would, they claimed, help you count your blessings, alleviate anxiety and replace discontent with joy and gratitude. You’ll focus on what you have, not what you lack.

You might include photos of your children. You might have a picture of yourself at the top of a mountain looking down on the tiny stick people. You might have a drawing of a rose or a thank-you letter that made you feel the opposite of I-don’t-know-why-I-bothered. If you are rich, and happy about it, you could — I don’t know — hang a bank statement.

The idea is to bombard yourself with good messages before the bad ones have a chance to take hold. The idea is to think, “Look at three generations of my family, all in tartan pyjamas,” rather than, “I wish Melanie would telephone. We haven’t spoken for so long. Is she cross? Am I?”

Risky business

I am all for cheering yourself up, of course I am, but the preparation, the rituals, the rules... Things that evolve in life naturally, or surprise us, have so much more power to raise the spirits than things rigged up expressly for the purpose. Besides, we are none of us stupid. What if one glance at the wow board sent you straight to the thoughts it was designed to stave off? What if it conjured the “woe board” from which dangle nameless regrets: some turbot steaks you criminally overcooked seven years ago, a sharp remark to someone who didn’t deserve it, and, that old harbinger of unwow, the nit comb?

Plotting cheer into your routine is a risky business.

I sometimes think of the famous actress whose husband presented her with a single red rose each Friday for their entire married life and wonder if it became, after a spell, a bit of a strain. Did she long, now and then for some daffodils or a Toblerone? I am not a big believer in ringing the changes, as you know. I say that as someone who has a wholemeal hot cross bun for breakfast every single day of her life, but even still.

I picked up a copy of Kinfolk, a sort of Martha Stewart-style living-life magazine as if reimagined by Vermeer. There was an article about curating your bedside table. Why not create a little museum of yourself to greet you every morning and aid your rest at lights out? I thought of my bedside table piled so high with books that precarious towers often feature in my dreams. Did it need some art direction?

Perhaps I ought to clear the decks and install a few of this week’s favourite things: a ballet slipper that might have belonged to Pavlova; the late, great John Bayley’s best essay on Keats, which is as pleasurable to read as Keats himself; an eggcup full of snowdrops; the autograph of Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda in my favourite 1970s sitcom; a sliver of peppermint Aero to watch over me as I sleep. Perhaps not.

— Financial Times