V brought over an article in the Sunday Times supplement about how children don't make you happy. That in fact people without children are happier than those without. Which I would have simply put down to a huge lack of sleep and too much washing. But not so, children don't make you happy even after they have flown the nest, according to the research. Which seems surprising. Because if you took tiny individual activies they could make you heaps happier. Just the lettuces, for example. At Gamme Vert Chloë chose them. Then she and Saskia split up all the tiny little invidual plants (30 of them) and then they planted them, somewhat haphazardly with Oscar. Everyone was happy about that, digging holes and stuffing them in and then watering them. So should not I be feeling the combined happiness of all of us? Because instead of just my happiness there were four of us feeling terribly happy, them more because of the planting, me because I know how wonderfully bountiful they will look, and indeed taste. When you think that all that planting time they could have been yelling at each other, it makes the whole experience even more delightful. A bit like people feel at church, one supposes.
The other side of the coin, the combined misery of the children hurling abuse at each other about who is to sit where at the table, for example, is simply too appalling to dwell on.