Daisy Waugh - Ten Steps to Happiness

Extracts from the Health and Safety First Principles Workbook and Food Safety Principles Workbook reproduced with the kind permission of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.

Extracts from Health and Safety Executive Catering Information Sheets and Workplace Health, Safety and Welfare, a short guide for managers reproduced with the kind permission of the Health and Safety Executive.

Extracts from the UK Department of Trade and Industry’s website on home safety, the insert to the Department of Education and Employment’s leaflet DL170. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995. What Employers Need to Know , and Health and Safety: Towards a Safer Workplace are Crown copyright material and reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.

For Peter de Sales La Terrière with love

Cover Page

Title Page Ten Steps to Happiness (in a Safe and Healthy World) Daisy Waugh

Excerpt Extracts from the Health and Safety First Principles Workbook and Food Safety Principles Workbook reproduced with the kind permission of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Extracts from Health and Safety Executive Catering Information Sheets and Workplace Health, Safety and Welfare, a short guide for managers reproduced with the kind permission of the Health and Safety Executive. Extracts from the UK Department of Trade and Industry’s website on home safety, the insert to the Department of Education and Employment’s leaflet DL170. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995. What Employers Need to Know , and Health and Safety: Towards a Safer Workplace are Crown copyright material and reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.

MISSION STATEMENT MISSION STATEMENT (i) To acquire, facilitate and maintain: an anxiety-and stress-free, healthful being-state in no less than 10 (ten) self-existent increments, the causal effect of which shall enable and release feelings of increased personal confidence, thereby leading to dynamic rebranding and repackaging of integrated learned responses to all living experiences.

Author’s note YES!! because HAPPINESS is achievable!

(Step Minus One) (Step Minus One) •…CONJECTURISE AN OPTIMAL CONTEXT

(i) UTILISE A SAFETY-FIRST ENVIRONMENT

(ii) SECURE TIME-BOUND PROGRAMME OF IMPLEMENTATION

(iii) PRIORITISE END-PRODUCT-RELATED GOALS

(iv) SUPPORT AND DEVELOP APPROPRIATE PROCEDURES

(v) OUTSOURCE NON-HIERARCHICAL INTERPERSONAL NEEDS

(vi) TARGET IDENTIFIABLE HAZARDS

(vii) TACKLE AND DEMOLISH NEGATIVE-OUTCOME VENTURES AND SITUATIONS

(viii) INITIATE ZERO-TOLERANCE STRATEGY TO CONFRONT ADVERSE BEHAVIOURS

(ix) ACTION A FULL AND FRANK ASSESSMENT OF CORE VALUES

(x) CO-OPT REALISABLE RESOURCES TO OPTIMISE TASK EFFECTIVENESS

Acknowledgements

Ten Steps to Happiness

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

(i) To acquire, facilitate and maintain:

an anxiety-and stress-free, healthful being-state in no less than 10 (ten) self-existent increments, the causal effect of which shall enable and release feelings of increased personal confidence, thereby leading to dynamic rebranding and repackaging of integrated learned responses to all living experiences.

because HAPPINESS is achievable!

TO MAXIMISE EFFECTIVENESS AND ENJOYMENT OF THIS SIMPLE, STEP-BY-STEP PROGRAMME PARTICIPANTS ARE FIRST INVITED TO…

•…CONJECTURISE AN OPTIMAL CONTEXT

Imagine a moment of perfect happiness with no past and no future and no thoughts of time ebbing away. With no thoughts of anything. No conscious thought at all. An instant of perfect happiness. Soft breeze. Soft sea. True love. True laughter. Giant turtles. And so on. These moments come once in a while to the very, very lucky. Of course they don’t usually last for long.

Jo Smiley and Charlie Maxwell McDonald, on the fourth day of their honeymoon, were lying in the moonlight on a small, empty, private beach in Mexico, only recently disturbed from their canoodling by the sound of a giant turtle dragging its hefty weight across the sand towards them. Its progress was slow and they watched it for ages before Charlie said – whispered, quite seriously, as if it were some new discovery:

‘It’s definitely coming towards us.’

Jo started giggling because they’d been watching intently all this time. There had never been any question where it was headed.

‘Why? What’s so funny?’ he murmured, turning to look at her, and then because he loved her, and he loved her laughter, starting to laugh himself.

The turtle stopped still. Silence.

‘Oh. Now we’ve frightened it,’ said Jo.

‘Or it thinks it’s frightened us. Either way we should set its mind at rest.’

Slowly they stood up and tiptoed back to their hut. It was a magnificent hut. Booking into this simple-looking corner of Paradise had been the most extravagant thing Charlie had ever done. He had imagined that his elegant, metropolitan wife, who until recently had been thriving in the luxurious world of Public Relations, would have been disappointed with anything less.

But he underestimated how much she loved him. Jo Smiley knew all about creature comforts, as fine-looking, highly effective, well-connected thirty-one-year-old London PR women are prone to. Jo had spent a lot of time and clients’ money in some of the smartest restaurants and hotels in the world. But that was all in the past now. And anyway it wasn’t the point. She would have been happy with Charlie anywhere. Anywhere . To have found a companion like Charlie; unworldly, unpretentious, tall, dark, funny, wise, kind and handsome (of course) was without doubt the greatest luxury of all.

In fact when Jo looked at Charlie and imagined the bucolic life which lay ahead of them she felt light-headed with hope for the future. The house they would be living in was beautiful; crumbling and uncomfortable and an insatiable swallower of cash, but it was lovely, and destined shortly to be lovelier still. When they returned to England she and Charlie were going to set to work restoring it. She and Charlie were going to build a dream-place together. Not only that, they were going to make it pay.

So when they weren’t watching tortoises or doing all the other things which enhanced their perfect happiness, they were talking about the future of Fiddleford Manor. It had been home to Charlie’s family for over two hundred years and now it was theirs and to keep the roof from caving in and everything else from falling apart, they were turning the house into a business. They were going to open the place up as a refuge for anyone in hiding from an angry public, or a baying and bullying press.

Jo envisaged a stream of tearful popstars, politicians and football managers knocking at the Manor door. She envisaged comforting them in a newly refurbished kitchen. With green tea, and Cristal champagne (if they wanted). And home-made flapjacks, perhaps. She envisaged Fiddleford Manor becoming a part of modern mythology, a perfect haven where no media was admitted and where suffering celebrities had to plead to be allowed in.