rugby could be one of those things...

mk5000

Go on, enjoy yourself! Forget the gloom-mongers, the author of a book on
pleasure says there's plenty of happiness around...
By PAUL MARTIN
Last updated at 1:05 AM on 03rd January 2009

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What is your idea of perfect pleasure? We all harbour different ideas of
what constitutes ultimate bliss - or heaven, as some call it.


Poet John Keats claimed that for him, it meant books, fruit, French wine,
fine weather and a little music out of doors.

For the novelist Auberon Waugh it was playing bridge on a summer's
afternoon with agreeable companions while drinking creme de menthe frappe
through a straw.

Beyond universal pleasures, such as a good meal or shared laughter,
pleasure can be found in the most idiosyncratic ways.


Dostoevsky experienced raptures of delight before one of his recurrent
epileptic attacks, describing it as, 'a feeling of happiness such as it is
quite impossible to imagine in a normal state and which others have no
idea of'.

When asked to nominate his most joyful experience, the legendary Soho
drinker Jeffrey Bernard recalled catching a ball in a cricket match after
running in 20 yards from deep mid-off to extra cover.