Page 20 of The Happiness Project

‘So, if you want to make us lots of money, you could focus on the Seville trip — it wouldn’t hurt to have it sold out early,’ he says. ‘Find us some people who want to learn Flamenco — or at least watch it.’

‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ I say. ‘And as my mother wants to learn to waltz, I was wondering whether a dance holiday programme might have legs.’

Josie crashes an imaginary cymbal at my pun.

‘Jiving, jitterbugging, jumping legs,’ adds Charlie and I smile in response.

Focus, that’s what I need today and that’s what Mercury Travel gives me. There are always events which impact on the travel industry — events that are completely out of our control and in many cases can destroy businesses — but it’s also true that you get out what you put in and I’m about to give this all I have.

The Seville trip is set up and we’ve taken a number of bookings, so I need to find some groups that might want to take up the rest of the spots. Vienna is the natural place to go to learn to waltz and although both places are very grand and elegant, they’re different in character so there’s a chance that people might want to book both. I’d like to arrange the Vienna trip for the spring — as much to help Mum’s bucket list as see the city when it’s just waking up. I wonder to myself whether a round-the-year programme of dance holidays would work? Our customers could learn beautiful dances in beautiful cities. I don’t know much about the origins of dances so need to do some research. The obvious place to start is watching reruns of Strictly on YouTube, so I plug my earphones in and pull up some of the dances that have the highest viewing figures.

I should have known this would be a rabbit hole that I’d fall down and not emerge from for a very long time. It was simply magical watching the dances and costumes while listening to that wonderful music; I could have been distracted for the whole day if it weren’t for Charlie pulling out one of my earplugs to tell me I was humming ‘The Blue Danube’. I look up and see the customers he and Josie are serving smiling at me; I give them a little wave and say that I’m organising a very beautiful trip so they’d better keep an eye on our website.

Then I get back to work. I think I’ve got it; I don’t want these to be long-haul trips, just short breaks, so that excludes North and South America, which is a real shame because so many of the popular dances were created there: samba, tango, cha-cha, swing and jive. All in the most viewed videos but all invented too far away. However, I’ve thought laterally about this and have come up with a way of including one of them without the long journey. When Charlie’s customer leaves I print off some notes and ask him to join me in the break room.

‘We plan a trip per quarter and we already have Seville planned. It’s advertised as a Flamenco trip but we could see if we can find a tango instructor too as it’s huge there,’ I tell him. ‘Vienna in spring for the waltz, Italy in summer for jive . . .’

‘Italy?’

‘Yes, there’s a huge jive and lindy hop festival there every year,’ I tell him, showing him the details. ‘There are workshops and beginner lessons bringing together dance teachers from the UK, Amsterdam and Italy. It looks fabulous and all we have to do is get people there.’

‘The lesson will be in English, won’t it?’ Charlie asks the question all of our customers will.

I nod and tell him they will, but the food, company and culture will be truly international.

‘Then,’ I continue, ‘come Christmas, we take our guests to the one place everyone who watches Strictly Come Dancing really wants to go.’

‘Blackpool Tower Ballroom,’ he says with a big smile on his face.

‘Precisely.’

We both like the sound of it but I have to check it out with a few people to see if it’s likely to be commercially successful. I get back to my desk and look up some local ballroom dancing schools. They’re likely to know if a schedule like this already exists and they may have ideas on marketing it. Filling the Tower Ballroom would be a huge undertaking so I’ll need some partners for that, but pulling it off would be incredible.

I call the dancing schools and schedule some meetings after explaining why I need their expert opinion. Everyone agrees to meet up and some sound quite enthusiastic about the initial idea. I’ll have to meet them all in the evenings either after or prior to the classes starting and I’m even invited to join in a taster class. Having something to do after work is certainly a better option than hanging around waiting for Michael to call, so I take them up on their kind offer.

Satisfied that I’ve done as much as I can on the trip, I get up, stretch and head to the break room, where I make us all a coffee. When I get back into the shop, Patty is standing there with her hands in front of her holding what looks like a box of cupcakes. I put the coffees down on Charlie and Josie’s desks then turn to my friend, who hasn’t moved.

‘Are they for us?’ asks Charlie. ‘I could do with some afternoon sustenance.’

‘They’re for no one but my bestie Bo-Peep and no one else can ever use them,’ she replies, holding the box towards me.

‘Use them?’ repeats Josie. ‘How the heck do you use a cupcake?’

I walk towards Patty and peer more closely at the box, wary that there may be some trick involved here.

‘Ha-ha, very funny,’ I say as I realise what they are. They’re not cakes but face cloths folded up into the shape of cakes. They’re done really well and look delicious. I have to say as gifts go, I’d be devastated thinking I was about to tuck into one of these only to find it’s terry towelling and am actually pretty disappointed right now.

Patty picks one up and presents it to me.

‘Thought you’d like this one in particular,’ she says through a snort of laughter. ‘It has a cherry on top just to remind you of me.’

Obviously I throw it straight back at her, hitting her on the nose. She launches one at me and a towelling cupcake barrage starts. We’re breathless in minutes and collapse into chairs laughing and gasping for air. When I was doing my affirmations this morning, never did I think that the day would end as it began — with the most ludicrous facecloth showdowns imaginable.

Chapter Eleven: Our Survey Says . . .

Zoe has invited Mum, Dad and me to go out with James’s parents tonight. It’s an extremely brave move on her part because although my mum has met them and says she gets along famously with them, that is only her opinion. As James is older than Zoe by nearly twenty years, his parents are closer in age to my parents than they are to me. This excites Mum, who is determined to have a new best friend after tonight.

‘Just think, we can go shopping together and have afternoon tea,’ she tells me when I pick her and Dad up. ‘Your father will have someone to talk with about cars and men stuff so he needn’t bore the pants off me.’

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