SOME Danish folk dropped by the Mahogany Ridge this week and the regulars wasted no time in quizzing them as to why their country is routinely considered to be the world's happiest.
Granted, this is old hat as news goes. The World Happiness Report 2013 was released back in September, and most of us would prefer not to be reminded that, of the 156 nations surveyed, South Africa was ranked 96th. But, apart from their extraordinary TV dramas, what else are you going to talk about when you bump into Danes?
Our guests were surprisingly diffident about the findings. "Oh, that," said one of them, a filmmaker I'll call Prågmåtic. "It is nothing. There are other countries which are just as happy. And, of course, we are just as unhappy as other countries, too."
Prågmåtic had a point, sort of. There are other happy countries. The top five this year were all in northern Europe and, points-wise, there wasn't much difference between them. But someone had to be first, and for two years now, it was Denmark. So, in that sense, it was as unhappy as Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden.
But it was nowhere near as unhappy as Rwanda, Burundi, Central African Republic, Benin and Togo - which were the world's most miserable in terms of the criteria used by the report's researchers.
The happiest countries have in common a large GDP per capita, a healthy life expectancy at birth, and - listen up here, people - a lack of corruption in government. But - listen up again - they also get it right in areas related to the individual choices of their citizens: a sense of social support, the freedom to make life choices, and a culture of generosity.