Because it’s only later that night, when I’m lying in bed, that it strikes me that the best times in life are never those special dates you circle in your calendar. It’s a random, nameless day spent stripping woodchip with my seventy-nine-year-old neighbour, when I learned to jive and he learned to let go – just for a little while – and, more and more, the future seemed to hold something for us both to look forward to.

Regret

Everyone knows that regretting things is a complete waste of time. The legendary Edith Piaf famously sang ‘Je ne regrette rien’ and, as a woman who suffered many personal tragedies, she certainly knew what she was talking about.

Alas, I am not Edith Piaf, and I regret a lot.

No one ever mentions it when they talk about the stages you go through after a great loss, but it seems to me that regret is always to be found lurking at the end of any relationship, piping up with its ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’, taking you on a journey down a road of reflection, playing the blame game.

Regret is heartbreak’s unhelpful friend. They go hand-in-hand, like a comedy duo, only no one is laughing. Least of all me.

When my marriage fell apart, my regrets would keep me awake at night. I’d lie in the darkness, forensically running over old conversations, looking for clues and signs that I must have missed. Examining all the decisions taken and mistakes made. Second-guessing and doubting myself. Playing the blame game, and losing every time. It was a nightly ritual. As soon as I closed my eyes, the grim autopsy would begin.

Now I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I don’t know if it’s all the fresh air and exercise, because when I’m not walking Harry, I’m pushing a wheelbarrow between my freshly dug raised beds, discovering muscles and a joy in gardening that I never knew I had. Or whether it’s because deep in the Dales there are no street lamps or car alarms or planes flying overhead, to keep me awake. On a clear night here there’s just the planets and the constellations twinkling above me in the vast, dark skies and the hoot of the owl that lives in the graveyard.

That, or Harry snoring.

Unlike me, Harry has no regrets to keep him awake at night. Harry is a walking, limping, barking affirmation. Live in the moment! Today is a new day! Don’t look back! Harry never looks back (unless it’s for a squirrel). He’s carpe diem in canine form, and I love him all the more for it. He’s not brooding about the time he threw up in the back of my rental car, or worrying I’m still upset about him chewing my Gucci handbag. He’s out there digging a hole in the garden and having the best time of his life.

Sometimes, when I’m having a bad day, I look at him and can’t help but feel inspired. And amazed that I’m the age that I am and it’s taken a scruffy old dog to teach me lessons I should have learned years ago. To teach me how to be human. Because while I don’t believe the scars of his mistreatment and abandonment will ever completely disappear, he’s not dwelling on the past; he’s all about living in the present. I don’t know who came up with the phrase ‘dumb animals’ because, from where I’m standing, they’re the smart ones. They’ve been practising mindfulness long before it became a buzzword.