Ten Steps to Happiness

Ten Steps to Happiness
Daisy Waugh

She's left the rat race behind – but taken her contacts book with her.Jo Smiley abandons her glamorous London lifestyle to decamp to a draughty manor house with her new husband, the divine Charlie. Happiness awaits: all they need is a plan to make it pay.Deep in the English countryside, Fiddleford makes an ideal refuge from the media. And as the first few paparazzi-battered guests arrive, Jo allows herself to hope. The house might be crumbling, the chef temperamental, but the Fiddleford magic never fails…apparently.But while for the guests, happiness might be a warm cow's nose and a ramble in the wild and beautiful gardens, the local council has other ideas. Suddenly Jo and Charlie's rural retreat looks shaky. Can they fend off the officials, save their dream and stay on their own path to happiness?

Ten Steps to Happiness

(in a Safe and Healthy World)

Daisy Waugh

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

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u620a6037-4a43-59c1-b23f-b1eecf76ede8)

Title Page (#u52dded95-fa0c-5482-a152-e74668a848ad)

Excerpt (#u98f8f5bb-7166-589d-ac1c-7360a943ce8d)

MISSION STATEMENT (#u94b3c973-c624-5e81-a4c8-f0ac190d247e)

Author’s note (#u13222736-c7b6-5097-a273-f9977dc6e52c)

(Step Minus One) (#u9dd1da78-59b3-5786-b2f4-f909bd73ca97)

(i) UTILISE A SAFETY-FIRST ENVIRONMENT (#u15acbfc3-b5b2-5abc-a611-898c5597cc14)

(ii) SECURE TIME-BOUND PROGRAMME OF IMPLEMENTATION (#uab4c78ac-5d9e-5609-8d49-c5b105fc7db6)

(iii) PRIORITISE END-PRODUCT-RELATED GOALS (#u0a6f2884-48d1-569c-82a8-fac187667e14)

(iv) SUPPORT AND DEVELOP APPROPRIATE PROCEDURES (#litres_trial_promo)

(v) OUTSOURCE NON-HIERARCHICAL INTERPERSONAL NEEDS (#litres_trial_promo)

(vi) TARGET IDENTIFIABLE HAZARDS (#litres_trial_promo)

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

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

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

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

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten Steps to Happiness (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

MISSION STATEMENT (#ulink_37f50b28-cec4-5e32-9fcd-d3ddecf42ed1)

(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.

YES!!

because HAPPINESS is achievable!

Author’s note: (#ulink_df91d7b4-88c7-5107-8aa6-4b7e4ccbbcf1)

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

(Step Minus One) (#ulink_24a2c9cd-2a75-5ce4-972d-3feb4e894a07)

•…CONJECTURISE AN OPTIMAL CONTEXT

February 2001

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.