The joy of 56

I was in my fifties before I got my head around happiness. What took me so long?

Me, aged 56 and six hours

This is going to sound ludicrous, but I don’t think I fully got what happiness was until I watched the Pixar film Inside Out in 2015. Yep, embarrassingly I was 49-years-old before I really understood the concept. And I had to have it explained to me by a kids' film. Albeit a sophisticated one. And happiness wasn't the only emotion that applied to… Stay with me, this is actually all about my birthday last week, my 56th to be precise.

If you haven’t seen Inside Out, let me fill you in. Like all Pixar films it's not a complicated premise, just a simple and utterly identifiable story about a tweenage girl, Riley, and the five emotions that govern her – Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust – and how they learn to coexist. Joy is the boss, she can’t bear Sadness being all sad and mucking things up (if you're the family fi…