Year: 2019

Every little helps.

It’s a reasonable maxim to live your life by; save a little money when you can, eat a little less of the bad things and exercise a little more than you do to stay fit and healthy, make a little gesture to brighten the day of a stranger, and so on and so on. A little at a time. It all helps.

It’s also a phrase to hold on to in the growing clamour around the state of the world we live in, the damage we all do to the environment every day, not to mention the lies and misinformation that are spread, for some reason, by people who seem to be happy to let the world burn.

As has been said elsewhere, why are we even arguing about this, the WORST that can happen if we all do something is that the world is a better place for all of us?

At home we recycle as much as we possibly can and when we are shopping and living life we try and avoid single use plastics or anything that isn’t easily recycled. It’s not easy, compromises need to be made, but these too are little things that aren’t, and shouldn’t, be a blocker for what is a wider goal. We get our milk and fresh orange delivered from a local farm to us in glass bottles. We buy glass jars and bottles of condiments where we can, we use our own bags when we go shopping, picking loose fruit and veg over pre-packed bags.

Every morning I use my reusable mug for a takeaway coffee, for my lunches I tend to only eat in places that use paper bags, or have a recycling scheme in place, and the more I look the more I see opportunities to buy smarter which means I’m recycling less and less.

It can be done, it takes effort.

It’s good to see the big supermarket chains slowly getting on board with this too, offering better alternatives, even in little ways. Replacing the free plastic bags available when you are picking your vegetables with paper based alternatives, is one recent example I’ve seen.

Every little helps.

And yes, I believe all of this, the small changes made in stores, and the effort we go to to recycle at home all make a difference. I know a lot of people don’t bother because “what’s the point?” and cite things like how it’s industry and government that needs to lead the way, and I agree they should be. But they aren’t, not yet at least.

So, until then, if we all do something, anything, to help, no matter how small then surely that has to be a good thing. It’s better than nothing.

Start small, read up on what you can and cannot put in your local recycle bins, or be more mindful when you shop, that’s all it will take. Like me you’ll find that one small thing will lead to others.

And, after all, every little helps, right?

I’m on my way to work. I step off the bus and head for the same location as I have these past four years. As I enter, if she’s working, Alice says hi and takes my precious travel mug from me, and starts to prepare my … wait for it, large skinny, sugar-free vanilla, latte.

I wouldn’t say I’m addicted, more that I like routine, and as this coffee house is on my way to the office, it’s a convenient place to stop.

Isn’t that what an addict would say?

I’ve tried going cold turkey, both by choice and by happen-stance, neither times were particularly fun and both resulted in a splitting headache by the early afternoon.

At a previous job I drove to work, parked in the car park and walked into the office, usually one of the first people there, my first port of call was the filter coffee machine. Again, it was routine; take off my coat and hanging it up, retrieve laptop from bag and start it up, open drawer and remove mug and head for the kitchen.

Once in the kitchen I’d set up the coffee machine and wait for it to filter through to the pot. Just me, in silence, almost like a meditation, listening to the quiet gurgling of the machine, and the first tell-tale drip drip drips.

Rumour has it that, as people started to appear in the office, they’d check to see if I’d had my coffee before approaching me. I am very OK with this. It’s not like I was grumpy until I’d had a coffee, more that I like to have my moment with my favourite beverage.

Growing up, coffee was a constant, the only hot drink I recall my Dad ever drinking. My Mum was all tea, and the occasional hot chocolate which, given my Father’s sweet tooth I have to presume he also indulged in, is still something I have now and then.

I take my coffee with a dash of milk and a sweetener, the same as my Dad. For a while I switched to black coffee for no other reason than securing a source of milk in an office environment was always a bit tricky. These days, with someone else making my first coffee of my working day for me, it’s a little more exotic.

Is it an addiction? Perhaps. I know my limits though, and tend not to drink coffee after about 5pm, lest I be awake at 2am and ready to take on the day!! I also try not to have more than four or five cups throughout the day, most days I have three which I think is a reasonable balance., right?

Science says otherwise but that was yesterday, and no doubt tomorrow we will be told that no caffeine should be consumed. Wait a week and we will be told that, actually, a few cups a day is perfectly fine but no more than eight.

I’ve tried tea a couple of times, builder’s tea I guess you’d call it. The first time I was on holiday with a friend and his parents in a holiday resort in Anglesey. Few memories remain of that week; cassettes of Soul II Soul and Bomb The Bass on rotation on my walkman, snogging a goth girl who smelled like peaches, and drinking a cup of tea as I was too polite/shy to say no. It was an odd week.

More recently I tried it again, having spent many years treating the drinking of hot water and leaves with disdain. I retain that view still, tea and I do not get along.

Aside from coffee, I drink about three to four litres of water a day as well – the joys of being on a diuretic – and occasionally will have a can of something fizzy. We get fresh orange juice delivered from a local farm, as well as milk, each week, and that’s about it. I’m partial to the odd glass of wine with a nice meal, and will happily spend an evening in the company of friends drinking beer, or perhaps a gin (and after that, who knows, cocktails?!), but my beverage of choice is, and always has been, coffee.

I wish it was better for me, I wish I could drink it after 5pm – and no, decaff doesn’t work, my brain seems to work on the fact I’ve had coffee, not the amount of caffeine I’ve ingested – but part of me doesn’t care about any of that.

The only thing better than the smell of freshly ground coffee, is the smell of freshly made coffee. Whilst I’ll occasionally indulge in a seasonal special, as offered by the large coffee chains around the world, I’m just as happy to make a mug of fresh coffee at home, sit on the sofa with a dog at my side and take 10 minutes out of my day to just enjoy.

Addiction? Routine? Whatever.

All I know right now, is that it’s time for another coffee.

“In the greenhouse, my grandfather and me. Smells of summer.” – Martin Stephenson.

Is it the gentle aroma you get after a warm summer shower on dry soil? (Also known as Petrichor).

Is it the subtle waft of a perfume from a passerby that transports you to forgotten time and place?

Is it the smell of fried onions, or grilled bacon, that dances on your tongue?

My sense of smell isn’t the greatest, I don’t think, I mean I’ve never had it tested so it might well be as good or as bad as anyone else, but as I don’t tend to remember smells, and don’t tend to use them the way I use imagery and words as a way to remember things, it’s fair to say that my olfactory system is one of the lesser appreciated.

Or perhaps it’s because I take it for granted.

But then isn’t that the same for all of the wondrous things our bodies can do, things we barely notice from day to day, until they start to fail (I write this with a suspected hernia, so perhaps my awareness of failing bodies is a little heightened).

Yet it is my sense of smell that I pay the least attention to, my eyesight and hearing seem so much more important in the grand scheme of things. With those two, you have a sense of their slow erosion, the quiet failure of hearing, the blurred vision that older age brings. But those shortcomings are only made real by the knowledge of how you were before.

Is there a way to train your sense of smell? Do sommeliers and aromatherapists go on training courses for this? Are the senses even something you can train, or is an inherent part of their existence down to the fact that they are natural abilities, the effectiveness of which ranges from person to person?

And what would happen if you lost your sense of smell? I know it is linked to how we taste so that would be the most obvious sensation, one which is most frequently given life when you have a bad cold, but what else would we lose?

I think the associated memories would be the biggest loss, the knowledge that a certain flower, or the sea air in a particular part of the world, would no longer trigger emotions and bring those we miss back to us for a fleeting moment, I think that would be the biggest loss of all. Standing on the shore of the Mediterranean after my mother-in-law passed, walking the corridor of the nursing home when my Gran left us.

Of course it is fitting that our senses carry such power, and the more you pay attention to this the more you see it throughout every day. Tomorrow, try and notice how many times people comment on the way something smells, it’ll surprise you.

And the more I think on this, the more I realise how many memories are only heightened by our sense of smell, how the best moments in life are made all the more vivid in recollection; the warming comfort of the first time I held my niece as a baby, the sanctuary and care of the nape of the neck of the one I love. These things are made all the more important and vital the more senses we can attach to them, and it only takes the tiniest scent of them to bring them flooding back into view once more.

Such a powerful sense. I hope it never leaves me.