In summer its 2,500 inhabitants and 2,500 cows are joined by 2,500 tourists, mostly British visitors of a certain age happy to wander in quiet appreciation of the village's traditional Tyrolean houses, geranium-lined window boxes and flowers.
Voltaire was arguing against a certain illusory, happy resignation, which he believed one must overcome, for why else would we need to cultivate our gardens?Existentialism offers a genuineness that might easily be mistaken for ennui by the uninitiated, but in reality goes deeper than that.
Certain happy memories, like the one involving Ulrich's courtship, in Berlin, of Clara Blum, the only woman he truly loved, are presented in a series of beautiful paragraph-long fragments.
Perhaps, after all, we can regard the life of Victor Serge, perennial critic and dissenter, as, in a certain sense, a happy one.
Those of a certain age have happy memories of Dudley Moore chasing a chicken around France, and Prunella Scales playing everyone's favourite daft mother.
The show would tell the story of Factory Records, its founder, Tony Wilson, and the rise and fall of bands including Joy Division, Buzzcocks, A Certain Ratio and Happy Mondays.
Releasing music by Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio and Happy Mondays, it helped define the minimal aesthetic of postpunk and followed the music's transition into the hedonistic rave style known as Madchester.
Just as card-carrying Libertarian Party members have been known to give strangers unprovoked 90-minute lectures on the gold standard, leftists of a certain temperament are happy to share at length their theories about what exactly went wrong in 1919, or 1936, or 1970.
And I now realize that there's a certain sane and happy equilibrium to be found somewhere between control and chaos, which errs mostly on the side of nonalcoholic beverages, and drugs if they feature bought from friends, not family.
