WHEN it comes to being cheerful, Dennis is a non-starter. He has turned misery into an art form.

His glass is neither half empty nor half full; it lies in pieces, shattered by the heavy gloom carried by this 62-year-old former clerical officer.

Nevertheless, on Tuesday I tried to recruit him to the ranks of the Action for Happiness movement, which had been launched in London that morning.

“It’s just a stunt dreamed up by that chap from Witney” [he meant the Prime Minister] “to paper over the misery he’s inflicted since winning the election,” he declared, while reluctantly enjoying a coffee in our favourite Covered Market café. “It's another con – like his Big Society stunt.”

I told him it had nothing to do with Cameron D; it was non-political, non-commercial and non-sectarian, and based on the simple truth that if we wanted a happier society we must make the effort by ‘spreading a little happiness’ – as the late composer Vivian Ellis advised.

“Let me know if it works,” he replied sarcastically, before launching into the shortcomings of the police.

Within minutes he had enlisted two strangers to his gloom squad. It was then, as the old reporters’ saying goes, I made my excuses and left.

I WAS determined to find someone to match my mood of optimism. I hadn’t far to go. In Bonn Square, while a monocyclist entertained a large crowd, a singing city street operative (aka cleaner) was clearing a mountain of cigarette ends dropped by those who couldn’t be bothered to walk to the bin provided. As he swept, more dog ends were discarded.

Was it annoying? “Yes and no,” he said with a broad smile. “After all, it keeps me in a job.”

Later, three elderly woman – one so lame that she found it difficult to move at all – crossed St Aldate’s to Tom Tower. The duty custodian, smiling, blocked their path.

Was this the entrance to Christ Church, they asked?

I had expected him to point officiously in the direction of the Broad Walk. But he didn’t. He welcomed them in.

The gesture prompted me to thank him.

“Sometimes you’ve to use common sense,” he replied.

I won’t reveal the custodian’s name. His superiors might not share his philosophical approach.

FOR the next couple of hours, I smiled at those who failed to thank me for holding doors open, for their queue-jumping and for consigning me to the gutter as they marched line abreast. I felt at peace.

But it wore thin when a duck refused to move from the centre of the riverside path on Osney Island. She glared menacingly with her starboard eye, while two Canada geese hissed their feathered support, forcing a wide detour.