Life this week - All the little things edition

Published on April 2, 2025

This text was written as I learn to live with Long Covid and attempt to regain my creativity. All the posts and some more info can be found here.

A vertical colour photograph of a small pile of books and notebooks on a wooden garden table. On top of it all is a pen pouch. Next to the pile is a mug seemingly empty. Behind is a fence and trees and bushes with young green leaves on.

A pile of books in the garden. Later a pile of books on the living room table. One another day a pile of books on the study desk. Books and notebooks follow me along these days, carried with a pen case full of fountain pens and on the odd day an assortment of ballpoint pens.

It has been a long time since I lived with my head bent over words, my YouTube 'Watch Later' playlist crammed with conference talks and book analysis.

I am not always well enough to study, to read old medieval texts that demand a shift in my focus, but it doesn't matter. The books, the notebooks, the videos, the pens... they wait and I come when I can.

A vertical colour photograph of a wooden table with a cake on a wooden tray. The cake is light in colour and covered with yellow primroses. Behind is a tea tray with two tea cups. There is a lit candle at the side, a blueish plate. In the background it a green thin leaves plant.

Sugar, flour, lemon zest, baking powder, butter, and eggs fall into the one bowl. I mix them up with the whisk, pour the batter into the lined tray, and place it in the pre-heated oven. I think of the primroses I will later collect to decorate the cake. I know exactly which ones to pick. I will not touch the purple and yellow ones, they are too few in the garden. I'll focus on the pale yellow flowers only, clumps of them thickening around the tree lined boundaries of the garden.

Spring has arrived and it is easier to sit out for hours. I chat with the robins who eye me up, surprised to find me here when they want to go to the bird feeder. I chat with the magpie who screeches at me to go away because they too want to get to the bird feeder. I chat with the great tit that hops between the whitebeam and the fence endlessly as they gather the courage to get back to their home hammered to a fence post. I listen to the buzz of bumblebees as they circle the forsythia only to settle on the other flowers dotted about for them. I watch leaves grow and spread, my eyes gradually attuned to which plant will flower into something cherished and which plant needs to be stopped before they choke everything else.

Later, when night has risen, I open my stationery drawer and select a notebook. I choose a pencil and trace in graphite lines of observed life. I write of the blackbirds that bring me endless joy every spring.

A horizontal colour photograph of a white cup of light coloured tea next to light coloured primroses in the grass. the scene is bathed in sun with shadows in the background.

I gather the cup, the strainer, the lid, the thermos, the wooden spoon. My hand hovers above the glass jars filled with tea. The sun is shining bright and I do not want a dark tea. I settle for the green tea my brother gifted me a few months back, a light herbal floral green tea I grow to appreciate more with every brew.

The kettle warms the water and I prepare the bamboo tray. It has become a ritual, gesture slowly made, pieces arranged delicately and always in the same place.

I wonder if I should start a tea journal, write tasting notes, scent notes, all sort of things folks do and I'm not aware about. This is not why I drink all these teas, teas I have fallen back in love with so deeply months ago when I was told to cut down my consumption. Tea is a luxury now, a one brew a day affair at best, every sip cherished. The flavours on my tongue unfold and I hold onto them, let my body be soothed by ritual and flavour.