The Curmudgeon

The very fact that he gets his name from chasing horses up and down the bridleway, bucket in hand, in the hope of free horticultural nutrients, suggests that he is a pretty down-to-earth sought of fellow.

However, I was observing him at work in his allotment the other day and it brought to mind some of the latest scientific research by shrinks at (of course) a famous university in America.

They have been studying happiness in the States now for some years, possibly because the right to the pursuit of it is enshrined in the American constitution.

But so far, they have come up with results that we could have told them about in the bar of the Beggars' Arms. Like, for instance, people grow up happier if, as children, they had parents who took an interest in what they did but laid down rules of decent behaviour - and disciplined them if they broke those rules.

Now this surprised me not a jot because, like most non-social workers, I am a firm believer that kids who are allowed to do as they please grow up to be monsters.

However, one piece of research following on from the above did take my attention. It showed that children whose parents encouraged them to become immersed in certain activities - reading, painting, chess or sport, it doesn't matter which - not only grow up to be happier but exhibit it in later life by being able to "flow."

Now that is a simple word for what is in fact quite a complex procedure but, if you are lucky, you may have caught yourself at it - and that means you are likely to be a happy type.

To "flow" in this context means that you are able to immerse yourself in some activity so deeply that you forget about anything else. The mortgage, the bills, the boss, the government all cease to exist because you are concentrating totally on the matter in hand and deriving great pleasure from it.

And this is what brings us, admittedly somewhat circuitously, to Ben the Bucket as I watched him putting out some young broad bean plants on an almost spring-like sunny day last weekend.

Now Ben has not had an easy life. A shot firer at the quarry, he was made redundant 20 years ago when the place closed down and was never able to get proper work until now. His girlfriend of the time left him for a clerk with a steady job and he still lives with his sister in the Quarry Row cottage he bought with his redundancy pay.

Now, he is working again at the new fish farm being set up by Maggots-Moneygrubber but that has its drawbacks too: for instance, he can no longer spend those long hours on his allotment which allowed him to carry off virtually every top prize at the Beggarsdale Show.

He is still, however, a penny-pinching gardener and in setting out his row of broad beans, already four inches high after being over-wintered in his cold frame, he was covering each one with a plastic bottle, its top and bottom cut off with great care.

These mini-cloches give him the earliest beans in the Dale (and bring in a few bob, too, for the Innkeeper's lady at the Beggars' Arms buys every pound he can produce).

I was taking a coffee break and I called over the fence to invite Ben to join me. He didn't respond. In fact, I don't think he even heard me, although he was barely 20 yards away and there was no other sound but the babble of the beck.

Then I remembered that American research. Ben was "flowing," totally focussed with his hands in the good earth, treating his beans like a mother with a baby.

So Ben is a happy man again. And I am happy for him too - he deserves it.

o The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.