My Nan always says ‘A little bit of what you fancy does you good’. Mind you, she also says that you should put salt on slugs and sit back and watch them fizzle, but let’s not get into that. Her mantra extolling the benefits of self-indulgence from time to time is one upon which I have been musing ever more frequently. I know I do tend to bang on about the importance of working hard and making an effort but, well, a girl is only human, after all.
I can tell you right now what I don’t fancy. I don’t fancy sitting for endless hours at my laptop, surrounded by notes and paperwork and emails, wrestling with prose that becomes drier by the minute and politely arguing for weeks on end about what three words will grace the cover of my collected works, while outside the sun shines and Pimms is poured within punts that glide down the River Cam. No. I don’t much fancy that at all.
So bugger it, I’m not going to do it.
Books and work can wait a while as I seek out Pimms and punts and adventure. I shall visit my friends, who have surely forgotten what I look like by now, and descend upon family and eat all their food while wearing my best clothes and fanciest shoes. I shall hold my special ones in my arms and tell them I love them. I shall play cricket – quite a lot of cricket, actually. By Sunday I will have managed three matches in a week.
Because life is too short.
And a little bit of what you fancy does you good.
Please note – if you are my publisher or an esteemed colleague from Middlesex University – Haha only joking! I’m working really hard on everything, honest.
Lucy Brazier 
In line with your excellent advice, I shall take a deckchair into the office on Monday, along with a plentiful supply of Pimms, refuse to do any work and sit there in my shorts and bare feet. If challenged by my boss as to what the … I am doing, I shall refer them to your good self and say, along with you, “that a little of what you fancy does you good!”.
I hope that you are having a lovely weekend. I’m off later this evening to meet a friend and enjoy a pint, perhaps more than one but, obviously no more than two!
You send your boss to me, I will tell them how it is! Have a marvellous time this evening, dear chap. Well deserved!
Thank you Lucy! All the best – Kevin
Glad to see you got in some fun before all that editing. I wish I could understand cricket. Once watched a game on a lovely green in England on a bright summer day for an hour plus, and came away totally confused.
I actually play the damn game and half the time I haven’t got a clue what’s going on! And I’m British!!