And then, just like that, it was spring, the long, dark winter sent scurrying back into its tunnel to be forgotten. Blossom on the trees, sunlight in your eyes and a nagging sensation that you may have spent the last four months letting your life quietly fall apart. If, like me, you are looking to embrace this time of new beginnings, then here is my misanthrope’s guide to spring-cleaning your life:

1 Learn to use positive words
Obviously, being British, it is quite hard to wake up in the morning and utter things such as, “How wonderful to be alive at this time of miracles”, because you’ll get accused of having lost it. If, on the other hand, you just say, “Everything’s completely shit and you lot are all tossers”, people tend to be totally fine with it, in my experience. That said, I did once read an interesting study for which people were given a list of gloomy words to say and were then secretly filmed as they walked away down a corridor, and they looked slunken and hunched. Conversely, those who were given a list of uplifting vocabulary to read aloud began to walk with a spring in their step, even when they didn’t know anyone could see them.

If that’s still a little too Polyanna-ish for you, just embrace the joy of vices, as the poet Frank O’Hara did when he wrote of his lover: “Oh god it’s wonderful/to get out of bed/and drink too much coffee/and smoke too many cigarettes/and love you so much.”

2 Kill your friends
At least, your Facebook friends, as I did a few weeks ago: I deleted my account to get my real life back. Admittedly, this means you no longer get invited to any events with which to fill your real life, you’ll forget all your friends’ birthdays and you’ll miss the birthday greetings from colleagues’ ex-husbands whom you wouldn’t recognise in the street.

On the plus side, you won’t find yourself, at 2am, judging the bridesmaid dresses of a complete stranger’s wedding that have inexplicably ended up in your timeline. You no longer have to mute that bloke from school spaffing on about how the only man in England talking any sense is Nigel Farage. And you also don’t run the risk of having spent so long on the internet that you start agreeing with him.

Even so, I have come to realise that my Facebook was actually quite interesting. How, from this digital remove, am I going to work out which of my colleagues might be having extra-marital affairs with each other? Sod it. I might have to log back in.

3 Nurture hope
I spent two years in the sunshine of Los Angeles, where even the kale salad tasted of honey, and I was so full of optimism on a daily basis that I said yes to everything, and everything said yes to me, which, now I come to think of it, is probably how I came home pregnant. I also forgot how to hold a grudge and kept forgiving people, even total liars. Back I would go, like a yoyo crossed with a lemming, because here was a whole new world of limitless, shining possibilities in which I could be the exact same knobhead all over again. I started smoking, years after giving up, because everything felt like an opportunity.

Perhaps this is why Hollywood actors often become a little strange, living in LA. You do need hope, but you also need a bit of memory mixed into it. A little bitterness in your greens. A small thought of death when you start slowly killing yourself with Marlboro Lights.

4 Calculate how long you’ve got left
When I was a schoolgirl, I worked in a healthfood shop that had a photo on the wall of the owners when they were proper 1970s hippies. I asked my boss if he wasn’t a bit embarrassed to have to look at his hairy old former self every day. “We don’t all have more future than past to look forward to,” he replied, and it has taken me until now to understand what he meant. I trust I still have more future than past, but the lanes are starting to merge, so it’s good to reflect on my time left.

The other day, I interviewed an award-winning author and asked what advice she’d give to someone (all right, me) who couldn’t decide what they really wanted to write a book about. “Imagine you’ve got a brain tumour,” she said cheerfully. “Eighteen months to live.”

5 If you haven’t got a brain tumour, it is wonderful to be alive at this time of miracles.
No, really, it is.

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