Go on: buy a tomato plant, not a frock

My fiancé is engrossed in a book called Happiness by the economist Richard Layard, from which he reads aloud pertinent statistics. ‘People are happiest in the year they get married,’ he will lugubriously announce, ‘and after that it’s downhill all the way.’ Or: ‘Having children does make you happy, but only for two years.’ Or, plangently, as the evening light begins to fade: ‘Most people are happiest at the end of the day.’

His normal bedtime reading is The Lawn Expert by D.G. Hessayon which, it seems to me, has a rather more uplifting effect on his mood. But the study of happiness is very au courant, having recently been upgraded to a political science. New quangos such as the Whitehall Wellbeing Working Group have sprung up to advise the government on how to build a more cheerful nation. Defra is compiling an ‘index of wellbeing’ by which to measure Britain’s state of mind.