Hands off my happiness

Is happiness becoming a political issue, someone asks on the radio?

Leo's room is a pigsty. No Playstation until he tidies it, is what I've said. And I mean it, too. As I pass his door, I listen. There's silence from within, but none of the muffled clicking sounds that would indicate surreptitious keyboard use, either. "Are you tidying your room, Leo?" I ask. There's a pause. "Maybe," he says, cautiously.

"Well done, darling," I say.

"Leo's tidying his room," I say, brightly, to Francis, as we gather the ties, socks, gym shoes and blazers that have sprouted all round the house like an unruly crop. Francis gives me one of his Monday morning grunts.

When they've left for school, I check Leo's room. There are pick-up-by-the-label-only pants, sweet wrappers, old copies of The Beano, cups, bowls, and the sort of aroma that you'd add to a Hammer House of Horror movie if they ever released them with Smellorama.

Happiness, in my case, is a fleeting, non-political thing, spun from the finest threads of self-delusion and based entirely on what I want, or need, to believe, at any one time. But if Gordon Brown or David Cameron want to nip round with a vacuum cleaner and parenting manual (not Ming - I think all that bending down would do the old codger's knees in) and see if they could up my happiness quotient, they'd be more than welcome.