Thankfulness pie

Auntie A is one of my longest-serving friends. She is an exemplar of human kindness, which goes a long way to explain why she's remained my friend all these years.

But the greatest of these is pie. 

Auntie A gave me a wonderful book last summer called 14,000 Things to be Happy About. The writer, Barbara Ann Kipfer, as you may have guessed, is American.

It's a lovely book. I recommend it to anyone suffering from chronic grumpiness syndrome.

It being Thanksgiving and all, I'm going to invoke a time-honoured yankee tradition that causes at least three Britons at American tables to spontaneously combust every year. I mean that part before dinner where everyone around the table is forced to say - earnestly - what they are thankful for.

As a warning, anyone who employs irony or understatement at this juncture will be DEPRIVED OF PIE.

Barbara Ann Cheerfulness Kipfer, being an expert in such matters, may go first. Over to you Barbara:

• Sunlight streaming through trees 
• Dilbert
• The whack of a bat against a baseball
• A baby's yawn
• Fiber optics  

Well done Barbara. You may have pie.

Me? I am thankful for love. Family. Friendship. Health.

I am thankful to have this brief moment of wakefulness, like a butterfly in wintertime. I reckon time has transfigured the words of Philip Larkin into truth: "what will survive of us is love."

Now there's your pie, and here's your bucket of water.

Stop cringing and be thankful.