This is now impossible. There simply isn’t enough sand for all the heads that want to be hidden in it.

A week ago, I’d already pretty much stopped looking at the news because everything was so terrible. It was my best advice, advice I’d given to friends who were reporting non-specific unhappiness and anxiety: just switch the world off for a bit. No newspapers, no TV or radio news programmes, no social media; internet to be used only for cheering, escapist things, if at all. Friends had reported back that they were finding this very therapeutic. They were crying less. They felt less nervous.

And that was a week ago. Now, it’s unbearable. Current affairs are torture to contemplate. There are images that I never want to see, don’t want to have seen. You do something to help if you can, do nothing to help if there is nothing, and then – when you think you’d be best off tuning out for a bit – you can’t. Can’t shake it. You’re haunted.

This week, I have nothing topical to write about. The serious feels too awful, the non-serious too pointless and wittery.

Instead, I’ve decided to compile a list of good things in the world. Things to think about when you don’t want to think about what you’re thinking about. A sort of meditation tool. These are some things I’m going to try to clear my head and focus on – to the exclusion of all else.

A sea view. Ideally from the Roseland peninsula or West Wales on a sunny day.

Christmas specials.

Picnic baskets. Okapis. Ella Fitzgerald singing Anything Goes.

The word “goblin”.

The fact that the Queen pretended to parachute into the Olympic Stadium in 2012.

Brown paper packages tied up with strings. (That’s the real keeper from the famous song. Raindrops on roses are all very well, but nobody’s life is better for schnitzel and scratchy gloves).

Del Boy falling through the bar. Les Dawson, in drag, shifting one giant breast under his pinafore. George Galloway and Rula Lenska playing the cat game on Big Brother. Realising that there’s only one contestant left to dance on this week’s Strictly so it must be Ed Balls.

Bill Murray tumbling over in the snow while shouting French poetry. The egg cracking into the pan on Caractacus Potts’s breakfast machine. Jack Lemmon’s face at the end of Some Like It Hot. Roger Moore doing anything.

Calling one more bet than you should with a pair of eights against obvious kings and flopping a set. (Niche, but not as niche as it used to be.)

People hitting golf balls at David Blaine’s suspended Perspex box above the Thames.

Monkeys getting drunk on fermented fruit.

The fact that the Austin Allegro is more aerodynamic in reverse.

A sip of tea when you’ve got chocolate in your mouth. Getting a clean break on an Easter egg. A chocolate coin eaten straight from the Christmas tree. What it used to feel like to slide a fingernail through the silver foil of a Kit Kat.

Glitter. Heinz tomato soup. Free pens.

People who buy what they think are miniature pot-bellied piglets as pets, only to have them grow into massive pigs.

A cancelled meeting. A pay rise. Messing around on a swivel chair.

A photo-finish confirming that your 66/1 shot has scraped fourth place in the Grand National, when you bet each way. The brisk stroll round to William Hill. The rustle of the notes in your hand.

Opening a PG Wodehouse novel on a rainy afternoon and starting to read. (“Jeeves placed the sizzling eggs and b. on the breakfast table, and Reginald “Kipper” Herring and I, licking the lips, squared our elbows and got down to it…”)

Watching the opening scene of an Inspector Morse and realising it isn’t entirely familiar. It’s not the one with John Gielgud, it’s not the one about the Greek trireme, and you’ve forgotten who the murderer is…

Successfully getting shoes repaired.

God. (I know that thought doesn’t comfort everybody. I find it does me.)