Alice Thomas Ellis on knowing when you’re happy

As she was at her old home in the country

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A dark and funny novelist and a dryly observant columnist, and under her married name Anna Haycraft a creator of cookbooks, Alice Thomas Ellis is a sadly too little known writer. She died in 2005 but her novels remain in print, though the collections of her “Home Life” columns for The Spectator have not. “The Summer House Trilogy” was made into a movie starring Jeanne Moreau, Joan Plowright, and Julie Walters. This, which describes her time living in a home in the remote Welsh countryside, called Stacros, comes from her autobiography A Welsh Childhood.

An old woman once called at Stacros and said that she used to go there as a child to help her auntie, the shepherd’s wife. She remembered washing lettuce in the stream for tea for the men who had come to help with the sheep shearing. Apart from the conifers, she said, little had changed.

It has now. I’ve heard. I can’t go back and see. My heart would break. She was a staunch old lady to go back through the courses of her past.

I can’t even look at old photographs. I only remember that the days at Stacros were magical. I’ve forgotten the sleepless nights, the work, the lack of money and comfort. All I remember is that they were the happiest days of my life and they’ve gone.

If I’d been asked then if I was happy I’d have said I hadn’t got the time to think about it. I was too busy washing nappies, making dinner, and advising the current baby not to put his fingers in the sheepdog’s eyes.

Anyway, I’d have said loftily that happiness is a by-product and not to be sought after. I often said that and I still believe it, but I wish we knew enough to appreciate happiness when we’ve got it.

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