Chitra Ramaswamy.

However, the trick is to not wait too long

HAPPINESS is found in all sorts of unlikely places when you become a parent. Like the other day, when my son and I were visiting family in London. They live on the Heathrow flight path and it is outrageously noisy. Edinburgh Hogmanay noisy. From 4am most mornings, a procession of planes screech directly over the flat with the persistence and decibel level of Russell Brand talking politics. Every two minutes. It could drive you mad if you didn’t already have a one-year-old keeping you up all night driving you mad.

Yet here’s the thing. My son loves planes. His face lights up whenever a jumbo jet thunders past, giant wheels skimming the tops of our matching bedheads, engines writing a sad story of pollution across the sky. Every single time he sees another one carrying ever more people to and from places they probably don’t need to go, he shrieks “WOWDER!” (his word for wow) as though it’s his first. The same goes for helicopters. We saw a Chinook recently and it was like that time Elvis came to Prestwick airport. Except more wowdery.

So now I love planes. Being on the flight path rocks. The very thing that used to drive me mad about visiting my parents in my twenties and living with them prior to that has become my main reason for going (apart from seeing them, obviously). This is what entering the state known as parenthood has done to me. I find joy in small, mundane, otherwise irritating things. I am a happier person.

Last week, new research was published suggesting I may not be the only one having this peculiar response to a life of hard (and unpaid, and undervalued) labour, poo management and back-toback viewings of In T he Night Garden. The study, carried out