Getting all hot under the rubber ...

ALBERT REYNOLDS said they tripped you up, while One Direction reckoned “it’s you they add up to”. I’m talking about the little things.

We are told to look at the big picture, to take a mile-high view, to keep our eyes on the prize or to be goal-oriented. It’s the small victories that get us through the day, though. We need them especially if fate or other people are obscuring the big picture, delaying the departure of the mile-high flight, stealing our prize, performing heroics in goal and generally being ****s.

Some of these mini-triumphs occur when we are alone. It’s too trite to say “dance like no one’s watching” especially if you glimpse your reflection. Nevertheless, there are actions you can perform when you are alone that can give a good feeling (no sniggering down the back); such as Throwing A Thing Into Another Thing. Try it. Bounce a scrunched-up piece of paper off two walls and into a bin and you will wheel away, arms aloft, taking in the approbation of the cat — well, not the cat — and the dog.

Relatively cheap electrical devices can also bring pleasure. (Are you still sniggering? Seriously what age are you?) These include the rice-cooker, the George Foreman grill and a recent entry in our house, the halogen heater. Halogen heaters are the light breezy descendants of a marriage between the two-bar electric fire and the Superser. But whereas the Superser looked like the kind of heater the Daleks would have, the halogen is more friendly. “It says Hey! I’m 20 quid, I’m like a large inefficient lightbulb. Let’s party.”

Even simpler is that favourite rubber pleasure-giver, (okay, that’s it, OUT) the hot water bottle — especially the one you don’t deserve. The one your mother placed in your bed while you were out ‘on a mad one’. After a number of hours unsuccessfully talking shite to yer wan — a pilot, what possessed you to say you were a pilot? — you return home discouraged, pull back the duvet and there it is: the non-judgmental hot water bottle. You hug it to sleep like one of those Japanese boyfriend pillows.

Other interactions with strangers can be more successful. When you let someone out onto the road in front of you, first you get the little serotonin buzz at being able to do a good deed and then you wait, tense until the blissful release when they put on the hazard lights as a gesture of thanks. (Naturally if they don’t put on the hazards, all the serotonin is consumed in a smelter of indignant rage).

A more risky method of reaching out to strangers is the quip. For example, a well-timed bon mot in a queue or at a match can set you up for the day. But again there is a risk that it falls on deaf ears, or worse, you have to explain the quip. “I was making reference to the referee’s eyesight and … never mind.”

So the next time there’s a Public Accounts Committee hearing about the lack of transparency in water — boil the kettle for the hot water bottle, toast a sandwich, turn on the heater, throw the newspaper in the bin and quip to yourself “things could be worse”.