Kirsty Bosley: Is misery really about your postcode – or state of mind?

The mood you return home in every night can be largely dictated by the news you've read, broken or heard about on that day. It's the same as a reader of the news – headlines can make you despair or sigh, smile or delight depending on the agenda.

I was miserable this week to read Wolverhampton has been named the most miserable place in the UK. It made for miserable reading, that the city where I spend the lion's share of my time would be labelled so miserable, after years of similarly miserable stories focusing on its misery.

The very notion of being referred to as miserable made me miserable, and I felt frustrated with the 'think tank' behind the study.

I don't remember anyone asking me how I was feeling as part of this study. I was feeling chuffed, for the record – a streak of happiness that's been running from the last time we were labelled unhappy right up until the moment I read this new study.

What the heck is a think tank anyway?

The news about Wolverhampton being unhappy was broken just as my boyfriend and I were preparing to fly to Austria for a long weekend at an Alpine spa.

All pent-up misery should have been rubbed out of me, quite violently, by a small Austrian girl with deceptively delicate-looking hands. But it didn't really turn out that way.

While waiting for our turn in the check-in queue, I (while mind-numbingly bored) discovered I could make an interesting popping noise with my mouth. So like a child that's just learned to whistle, I popped away a couple of times. It was then a miserable man turned around and gave me the worst look I've had since childhood. A 'pop your trap one more time and I'll smack your legs' kind of look.

I stopped popping immediately and his misery became mine. Feeling quite glum, I didn't beam with happiness at the woman who checked my boarding pass, and I tutted at the man in front of me on the plane who (UNNECESSARILY) reclined his seat back too far during our one-hour flight to Frankfurt. I passed the misery on, like a common cold.

It didn't end there, either. At our hotel, our lack of fluent German was clearly an annoyance to staff, who stopped attending to us with the charm and kindness they afforded their German-speaking guests. We were making them miserable with our stupid English ignorance, and in turn, that was making us sad. We escaped to walk around the mountainous landscape, to hang out away from people. We happened upon a herd of goats, jangling with bells around their necks. I shouted across to them to convince myself that not everyone hated me, and they ran away more quickly than I've ever seen an English goat move. Miserable flaming goats.

The sun was shining brightly in a clear, crisp Alpine sky and the mountains were snow-capped and wonderful. But being there made me feel homesick. Granted, the scenery is unparalleled by anything in the West Midlands, but I longed for the time-passing friendliness of the woman in the jacket potato van on Dudley Street (cleverly named Spudley Street), rather than the cold, hard face of the Austrian begrudgingly serving me apfelstrudel.

The weather isn't ace in Wolverhampton but I managed to buy a cool scarf for £1 from Spudley, I mean, Dudley Street before I went away and there's no shortage of talented buskers happy to sing me along as I go about my bargain-hunting lunch hour.

In the Salzburg spa, despite the full-body massage and facial (during which I fell asleep and woke myself up snoring), I still wasn't carelessly happy.

Happiness to me is not wearing small paper pants while a woman I've never met rubs my legs and bum cheeks violently with salt scrub. It doesn't even come from access to half a dozen types of Alpine cheese. It comes from others, like sharing a joke in a Wolverhampton street with the guy that sells the paper.

The fact of the matter is, misery is transmitted. It's not just something you are – it's always a symptom of something or someone else. It's a reaction to a miserable act, like a dirty look at an airport or the results of a think tank study.

It wasn't until we were back in England, on the Wolverhampton train, we were finally shown pure, kind sweetness for the first time in days. A toddler in a pushchair smiled up at us as we boarded, and we grinned back. She pointed over when we sat down and waved, and we waved back. As we got up to alight, she waved again. And finally, as we stepped from the train, she blew my boyfriend a very pronounced kiss goodbye. His face split into a grin of delight as the power of the simple, lovely act of a child lit him up like a candle.

Our happiness continued for hours after, with us 'aww'ing and cooing over the sweet little person who had so pleasantly acknowledged us on a train.

When I got to work, I told my colleagues about the little darling and they cooed and 'aww'ed too. The smile she shared passed on. Maybe even now, you're smiling reading this as you picture a girl with limited conversation skills waving happily to a pair of travel-worn misery guts, and blowing them a kiss after hours of transfers.

Wolverhampton is not a miserable place. Given, it is not the place with the most jobs, the most money or the most cool sights and attractions. But to call it miserable is a downright insult to those that live and work there. Sure, there are things that could make it cheerier – bustling independent restaurants, a cinema, shops regenerated rather than being left to fall into disrepair. But are those things really the key to happiness anyway?

Sometimes all it takes to beat misery is to not be miserable, it can be as simple as that. So think on that, think tank!