I have just seen a recording of a recent television programme where Joanna Lumley talks about cats. She explores their origins and how different societies view them, from gods to dressing up dolls. Half an hour into the programme I had to freeze it and leave the room. I retired to my study to read a few lines of my diary and a book called 'Scorn with added vitriol' by Matthew Parris. It was only after having topped up my bile with buckets full of ridicule, derision and disdain that I felt strong enough to face Miss Lumley again. You see, she exudes charm and loveliness. She is relentlessly, overwhelmingly positive. Three nights in a sodden jungle uselessly hunting for a tiger when even Joanna looks her age, which is considerable, still sees her maintaining her robust cheerfulness. And you can't imagine that she is ever different. She doesn't go home and swear at her own cat (she doesn't actually have a cat such was the grief at the loss of her undoubtedly jolly feline but we saw the tasteful and brave little grave) or throw temper tantrums or lock herself in the bathroom and scream and scream (which is what I did when we had our house-warming party in Portugal and the garden was swept away in a flash flood in August – August! - and Mr Brain kept saying 'think of the Blitz' which made me scream even more as I am not old enough to think of the Blitz)..I recently saw an impressive list purporting to be of her ex-lovers. They were varied and enviable but probably had in common that when the relationship came to an end they moved on to some frightful bitch who swore at them and revelled in his and their misery and ate pork scratchings.

But it occurred to me watching the interminable programme and Miss Lumley's unfeigned delight in all she saw, however ludicrous or bizarre or dull, that I might well be suffering from ennui. I decided to put aside the growing thought that I should like to boil someone's head – sorry, Joanna, I know you are wonderful – and try to take a leaf out of her book. No, I shall not gallivant to an island and make a pair of shoes out of my bra, or become a goddess in Nepal or even take up chain-smoking like Patsy. These things are easy compared with the monumental task of spending a day being jolly and positive.

So here is my Joanna Lumley day.

I wake slowly. My eyelids half-opened as I watch the fine white linen curtains moving in the breeze from the sea. I am a short half-hour flight from Bangkok at Hua Hin, a seaside resort beloved of the Thai royal family. The AKA resort is just a cluster of traditional villas set apart from each other and a million miles from the rest of the world. No-one can beat the Thai people for hospitality and the service is all it should be, attentive but discreet. I slip on a blue silk dress made for me by a seamstress at a shop near my favourite hotel in Bangkok, The Oriental. Years ago at my request they organised a companion to show me the infamous Bangkok night life and I saw ping pong balls and matches and even a small dove emerge from the most unlikely places...a table has been set for me, it's legs in the sea and I eat mangoes and fried fish and huge red prawns and spider crab.

I have a meeting with a man who collects Dickens' first editions. I show him my modest collection of which, given I am not a 'things' person, I am inordinately proud. I have a nearly mint 'Our Mutual Friend', one of the finest books ever written and Dickens at his very best, and a two-part edition of 'Dombey and Son'. The interesting thing about this is that Part One is ragged and read over and over again but Part Two is still uncut...I wonder what happened? Others, too. These are all hard-backs, rare enough and valuable in all senses, but what my friend has are the original magazines when the books were first published in weekly instalments. I envy little in life but these....they are delicious to my eyes and white-gloved touch.

He and I stand at the National Portrait Gallery before the Maclise painting of the young Dickens when he was 28, with long brown curling hair and a proud and pretty face. We hold hands for a moment, both in fear lest we should reach out and grab the painting and run like the wind down Regent Street.

I walk from Southwold, from the newly renovated pier, to Walberswick. No-one else in sight just me and a black and white terrier who magically appears and becomes my faithful friend for the journey. I wear a bright red pashmina and, if I could paint, I fancy I would paint the lone lady walker in her red scarf and her loyal and somewhat stylish companion by the charcoal sea with the lighthouse as a back-drop. Instead I play the triangle and the sound drifts away in the wind that blows from Siberia.

I have bought some Victoria plums from Kent. They are so over-ripe they are almost fermenting and the smell reminds me of childhood when they stood in the corner of the shop in huge wooden barrels surrounded by scrounging wasps. I eat them with new-baked bread and delice de Bourgogne, a cheese so sweet you could serve it on scones with jam...all washed down with ice-cold beer at Charlie's Bar, at Manley, Sydney while I think about lunch and decide against Doyles Restaurant across the bay where I had the best lobster ever. Instead I pick up my golf clubs and stride the course at Cruden bay in Aberdeenshire, braving the fierce winds and rewarded with a near hole in one and some cunning shots around the green, my speciality.

I have gathered some friends for a pre-lunch drink at Le Meurice in Paris. Mine is the suite at the top with its own sun terrace and the whole of Paris spread before. We drink bellinis made by the bartender from Harry's bar in Venice where years ago I saw Tara Palmer-Tompkinson wearing what looked like two narrow bandages and nothing else, and chomp on chips from Mrs Fudge's fish and chip shop at Burnham on Sea. We troop, like noisy naughty schoolgirls, me, Sandi Toksvig, The Duchess of Cornwall, Clare Balding, Lily Allen, Maggie Smith, Tracey Emin, and my friend Leonie who died earlier this year, to Terence Conran's restaurant in Paris, Alcazar. Because, you see, I buck the trend and he can do little wrong by me. We talk about Sandi's new book, 'Girls are Best' and agree with her that if anyone is to find the cure for cancer it is as likely that it is a girl but then spend the rest of lunch talking about men.

Later I need fresh air. It is surprising how far up Mont Blanc one can get on a motorbike and I am clinging to the back of a boyfriend – the one I rode round Europe with some years ago (I can assure you that you can only begin to appreciate the horrors of the 1st World War trenches if you see them during February from the back of a motorbike) – as we climb higher and higher and I am reminded of my trip to the Himalayas and being dressed by laughing girls as a Ladakh princess.

After a matinee performance of Lear at Stratford with the now-dead Robert Stephens, once Maggie Smith's husband and the best Lear ever, I stop for tea at The Ritz, alone in the Trafalgar Suite which features in the film 'Notting Hill' but more significantly was where Mr Brain and I were married. There are huge vases of peonies and, as I look out over Green Park, not a moment of regret.

Before dinner I re-visit Portugal. This time the islands of the Azores far out in the Atlantic to watch the dolphins leaping while I read Virginia Wolfe and Heat magazine, my feet dangling in the warm sulphurous water before a massage and a reckless flirtation at the Al Mourida, a stunning desert hotel near Luxor.

Just time to grab my new pony skin handbag in black and cream, and the green silk taffeta blouse from Seville which isn't new but has a happy history. A private room in a restaurant in the hills overlooking Florence, just him and me. (I am attracted to tall, good-looking men who have a brooding look, of disappointment, or sadness...Daniel Craig..Basil Rathbone..Michael Kitchen..but have settled for Mr Brain who has all these qualities but with a generous dash of arrogance and is available at short notice). And a little package, nestling on the immaculate sea of white table linen, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string and a red wax seal....it's a new notebook with a Florentine marbled cover and each page untouched and fresh....

Yes, I think that if every day were like that day then I too, like Joanna, might well be relentlessly cheerful.

Then I remember that this, plus a generous dash of the mundane, is in essence my life...

Copyright of website, photographs and text Lesley Brain