Then - with an almost entirely reformed selfhood winking appealingly on the horizon- he went cold-water swimming and was back to square one. Despite the setbacks (and hyperventilation), it was becoming clear to him that the very pursuit of fun was a great way of not feeling naff.

Then - with an almost entirely reformed selfhood winking appealingly just around the corner - he started swimming in cold water and was back to square one. Although the results were mixed, the author’s year of making merry left him feeling undoubtedly … better. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Taking a liberal approach to the subject, he sought out things that he used to find fun a long time ago (i.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Despite the inevitable setbacks and missteps, it was becoming clear to Aitken that the very pursuit of fun was a great route to feeling less naff. e. food fights and wrestling); things that he'd never done before but reckoned could be fun (boozy French cooking classes, tantric sex); things whose fun-factor was less obvious and more down to earth (nostalgia, volunteering, edible gardening, watching chickens); and things that he wasn't at all sure about but were fun according to other people (gym classes, caving, TikTok). Then – with an almost entirely reformed selfhood winking appealingly on the horizon- he went cold-water swimming and was back to square one. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.Which invites the question: if fun is such a reliable mood-swinger, shouldn't we be having more of it? He followed Bill Bryson around the UK for Dear Bill Bryson: Footnotes from a Small Island (2015) then moved to Poland. Which invites the question: if fun is such a reliable mood-swinger, shouldn’t we be having more of it? He followed Bill Bryson around the UK for Dear Bill Bryson: Footnotes from a Small Island (2015) then moved to Poland to understand why everyone was leaving. The Marmalade Diaries (2022) is the story of an unlikely friendship during an unlikely time, and stems from the author’s decision to move in with an 85 year old widow ten days before a national lockdown.