A hat trick of food and drink-related magic moments

50. Friday 20 March 2026

I’m on page 70 of 207, so pretty much a third of the way through. It’s sort of going okay but this version is not going to be as polished as I envisaged. But I should give myself some slack, because I am at least making progress.

                Before starting this edit, I was adamant that I would remedy every single highlighted section in order, leaving no highlighted sections to return to. That has not happened, though I have tried to do them all and all highlighted sections have at least been addressed. I’m hoping that when I’ve finished this stage, I’ll go through fewer highlighted sections on the next read-through and I’ll suddenly have a brainwave and make the problem areas brilliant. Hahaha.

Although I did do quite a lot of editing, I feel my day was more about the other stuff. When I first went downstairs shortly before 7am, I went out to feed the birds, taking a flask of coffee and a mug with me. I fed the birds, checked on my water tank overflow pipe fix from yesterday (yay, it worked and order is restored!), walked around the land above the house and sat on my favourite bench with a mug of coffee while the sun rose above the hills behind me. I have done that quite often at this time of year and, without fail (though I should say this is only on nice sunny mornings), I’ve always felt more awake and more ready for work … hmm, it has just occurred to me that it could also be the coffee as my first drink of the day is usually hot water and lemon, but coffee is my outdoor-morning drink of choice. Anyway, it was a bit of a magic moment.

                I reheated my dal bhat and rice and transferred it to an insulated bowl and had a walk and sat by the river to eat lunch. Another magic moment. When I got home, I made tea, took out three Ferrero Rocher and sat in the sun. Another magic moment. It’s all about the food and drink. And the chaffinches, because my fourth magic moment was when I went outside to scatter some more birdseed and the chaffinches flew to the seeds while I was still standing there. I love hearing their excited chirrups and the fluttering of wings.

                It was sunny all day and that felt really good. I also did quite a few cleaning and tidying chores and even got my next sourdough starter ready for transforming into dough tomorrow.