This is post 101, and I am an Orwell fan. Time, then, to walk inside the room.

There’s a  thing in music called an ostinato. It is a pattern which drums along underneath the music as it plays. You can never forget it: it is insistent.

The best one I can think of is Ravel’s Bolero. There is nothing subtle, or intellectual about his ostinato, that dum-diddly-dum-diddly-diddly-diddly which drums on and on:  but there is something attention-seeking about it. Dramatic. Eye catching.

I have had an ostinato tugging at my sleeve all week, as I walked with my friends through some of the grimmest days I can remember. It is a piece of music in a style atypical of its composer, who happens to be one of my favourite poets.

Ian Dury, of Blockheads fame, was an extraordinary man. I can say that, because he is not here any more. He once told the New Musical Express that if someone ever looked at him with rapture on their face the first thing he wanted to do was to throw a bucket of water over them. I am keen to avoid this fate.

But I do like his music, and I like his lyrics even more.

Throughout the week, in the back of my mind, Dury’s words and his rhythm, his wild-eyed ostinato, taken from from one of his greatest hits, persisted: Reasons to be cheerful. One, Two, Three.

He has written a set of reasons to be cheerful, endearing and maddening and various, and as perceptive as John Betjeman all those years before him.

But nothing with Dury remains without barbs. His song has its own ostinato; a set of voices which argue the other side like a Greek chorus from Essex.

“Why don’t you get back into bed?” the voices urge.

And there it is. Recognise it? The eternal internal battle. Give up, and pass on the day; or take up your battle armour: your Reasons To Be Cheerful.

The best head teacher I ever worked for trained me well. She sent me to study at a nearby university for  diploma in educational management, and made sure I was on the very first wave of government vocational training for prospective head teachers.

But there was one course which I have never forgotten, and which I could probably say changed the way I thought forever.

It was a course of lectures, tapes, reflection and training by a small, rotund gentleman named Lou Tice.

It doesn’t sound good, does it? Some mad American evangelist out to get your soul.

But this man had a talent: he could make all the raft of  psychology, pop and otherwise, management theory and leadership literature, simple enough for a child.

Somehow, Lou Tice managed to teach one how to think effectively. And, indeed, positively. He taught reasons to be cheerful.

Time passed and I went to Cornwall as a teaching Head. I was working from seven in the morning until ten at night, managing children, teachers, governors and indeed sometimes it felt like I was managing a whole village.

I would wake myself up at 5:30am just to have a little thinking time, but no-one can manage on that amount of sleep.

It was a long, dark night of the soul.

Sometimes, in those early hours, I wondered where that positive mindset had flown off to.

On one of the worst days, when it seemed I would never do anything right again, I came outside to my car, to find that a large seagull had let fly the most enormous splat, and it had fallen, and dried, obscuring my windscreen.

It seemed to sum everything up so well.

Now I look back, though, there must have been a Dury ostinato playing beneath all the action. I did find reasons to be cheerful.

Every day I scraped myself off the floor, got in the car, and came back for more. Every day I evaluated what had been happening, and made the most positive choices in my power.

In the end, although I sweated the educational stuff, it was the little things that made a difference.

I arranged a five-a-side tournament which got our football team, and our home ground, recognised. And one Winter’s night, in the teeth of a gale, the whole village, it seemed, trooped up to the school and away from the fierce Atlantic swell on the cliffs down below, for a Trivia Quiz.

I began an application for a nursery to be attached to the school. Whatever one’s feelings about nurseries, the school would soon have a guaranteed set of kiddies to plump up our falling school rolls.

I continued to batter myself physically and mentally, until one day, I took myself to the doctor feeling fluey, and was informed I would be having a child.

Reasons to be cheerful: one.

The next week I began to be very poorly. I was never very good at carrying my unborn, and I was ordered to stop working immediately or risk Maddie’s life.

I was mortified. Leave the school in the lurch? Tell the Governors their freshly appointed Head Teacher was popping off to have a child? Guilt and exhaustion set in, and I couldn’t make any more decisions.

My husband stepped in, and in his own inimitable style, negotiated with local authority a plan where everyone could be happy, and I could settle down to be a full-time mother.

Reasons to be cheerful: two.

I vowed I would never set foot in a classroom again. My next job was my beloved theatre manager post, which let me be a mother, but nursed me back to the happy-go-lucky brand of egotistical confidence which is my trademark.

When I finally wanted to teach again, no-one wanted an ex-head on their staff. The only place which would take me was a resource for children with Autism. I liked the Resource Director on the spot and have never changed my mind: and slowly a set of friends began to evolve there who have become very dear.

Reasons to be cheerful: one, two, three.

Finding reasons to be cheerful: it’s a choice. More than that; it’s mortal combat. Sometimes it is as difficult as manoevring the Titanic, finally, into its New York berth. In the dark night of the soul we wonder if we even have a choice.

When that ostinati urges a retreat from the world, though, we have a mantra to help.

Reasons to be cheerful.

Thanks Ian.