Ben Aitken was grumpy, increasingly boring, mostly joyless. So, he joined a lawn bowls club. A week later, he learned to dance like they do in Bollywood. Then, he started swimming in cold water and was back to square one. It was becoming clear that the very pursuit of fun was a great way of not feeling naff. Taking a liberal approach, he sought out things that he used to find fun a long time ago (i.e. food fights and wrestling); things that he'd never done before but reckoned could be fun (boozy French cooking classes, tantric sex); things whose fun-factor was less obvious and more down to earth (nostalgia, volunteering, edible gardening); and things that he wasn't at all sure about but were fun according to other people (gym classes, caving, TikTok). Unsurprisingly, the results were mixed, but he was undoubtedly left feeling ... better. Which left him asking, if fun is the finest medicine, why do we stop doing it?