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That’s a track on Brother Hazzard’s new album, Songs From the Lynher, and given that it’s been five years in the making and appears 35 years after his last release, I hope he’ll forgive me purloining the title for the heading to this week’s epistle.

It’s top of the agenda because in a world gone mad, anything that adds to the sum of human happiness – or indeed human reflection – is to be celebrated: go on, you try listening to Happy Being Me or Michael’s Cookies without a smile on your face. Or, if you’re a parent, listen to the moving Lullaby (“rest your head and dream your dreams”) without a tear in your eye.

Back in the 60s Tony was the man with a Midas touch, and songs like Ha Ha Said the Clown or Fox on the Run remain golden greats. Others, like Fade Away Maureen, have become regarded as psych-pop classics and appear on more compilations than the good Brother can name.

Songs From the Lynher is music for grown-ups, beautifully crafted, lovingly put together, reflective and romantic, wistful and wise, literate, melodic and a great achievement for a songwriter and musician who, in often testing circumstances, built this lovely thing virtually single-handed.

I urge you all to travel to www.tonyhazzard.com and visit the ‘buy online’ page. There, for a niggardly sum, you can make a very sensible purchase, secure in the knowledge that your money will rapidly circulate within the local economy.

The sort of mean-spirited people who populate other, less well-bred websites can also listen to the album for free by following the link to Bandcamp, where you can also buy downloads.

And I know there are those among you who will prefer to buy in person. This can be achieved very simply by going down the pub.

There may be a chance to hear some of this beguiling music live – watch this and other spaces.

Make sure you tell your friends, and if enough of us do the decent thing we may even persuade Brother Hazzard not to leave it another 35 years.

A Bishop Brennan moment

In a classic episode of Father Ted, Ted decided the only way to get away with kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse was to do so and then act as if nothing had happened. The deed was so totally unlikely that even when kicked, the Bishop would not believe such a thing had happened.

Father Ted duly applied boot to Episcopal behind.

Bishop Brennan spent the rest of the episode with a look on his face that has stayed with me ever since: nothing else could get through to him while his mind processed the fact that what he suspected had happened had indeed happened. Sometimes the only answer is the obvious answer. His face told the story: I know it is true but I cannot yet believe it.

I share this with you as the look – did that really happen? – was on my face when reading in the papers of people’s surprise that directors of FTSE 100 companies have been awarding themselves pay rises of more than 40%.

Surprise?

I suppose the people who were surprised were the same people who were impressed when these directors urged us all to vote for the Conservatives at the last General Election. Remember how Mr Cameron paraded their approval? I had a Bishop Brennan look then, too: why wouldn’t a company director vote for the party which licenses their reckless profiteering, their personal greed and their callous job-slashing via enthusiastic approval for the uncontrolled free market that’s got us all into this mess?

Can buy a thrill

It’s Hallowe’en. Whoooooooooo.

I like a scare: I love the ghost stories of MR James, for example, and actually I quite like it when the boys sit down to watch Scooby Doo because I can watch it with them. I love a mystery, preferably with a lot of history thrown in.

But Hallowe’en as it is today? No.

The romance of gathering round the flickering fire to share a spooky tale, the fascination with the dark side of deeds, the shiver of winter’s tales: all are subordinate to glow-in-the-dark plastic fangs, cheap witches’ hats, sawn-off limbs and luminous bats flogged in the aisles. How I hate the way everything is turned into a product. You can even buy buckets in which children can collect the treats they extort on their Hollywood-inspired door-knocking travels.

Well, my boys won’t be trick or treating. They made some spiders with Uncle Sam and Auntie Sal, and carved pumpkin lanterns with Granny. Proper Hallowe’en things. We may even watch Scooby Doo together. But we won’t be part of the event industry that turns everything into something to be bought and sold.

Hallowe’en is part of the turning of the year, the rhythm of the seasons – a milestone on the path to the dark of winter. We should mark it with light and warmth and maybe a cheap thrill or two, but remember its roots – this passing from light into darkness was a serious business for people in less electrified times, and you can understand why. It’s more than a vampire mask.