Saturday discussion post: small pleasures (51/365)

[white_hart]

I really like pain au raisin, but T doesn't like raisins, and supermarket pain au raisin only come in packs of two and I don't necessarily want two at once, so although we often have pastries for breakfasts at weekends I hadn't had a pain au raisin since before lockdown started*. I mentioned this in a chat with my swimming friends and it turned out that L had exactly the same issue, so she brought pain au raisin for a post-swim snack today.



It may have been only a supermarket pastry, eaten out of the packet while sitting on the muddy bank of a lake in a public park** but it was so lovely to have something I haven't been able to have for nearly a year.

What small things have been making your life a bit better lately?

*I can't remember exactly when I had my last one. I do remember trying to buy one in Gail's on the Friday morning after my last swim in the pool, when I'd picked up some shopping and was heading to the office to collect my chair before going home to work, but they didn't have any and I had to have a cinnamon bun which was nice, but not the same.

**And it was probably a bit closer to an illegal picnic than my normal Tunnocks caramel wafer

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

My new bedroom has a reading light and when I moved in a month ago I noticed the bulb had burnt out on it. I only last night got around to getting the help I needed to order a new one, and it'll arrive with the rest of the shopping any minute now. I'm lookin forward to being more easily able to read in bed.

[cmcmck]

Although as we know after the Derbyshire police episode, the 'illegal picnic' stuff is a load of hooey!

Fwiw,the pain au raisin will freeze so you could get two and keep one for later. :o).

[strange_complex]

Aw, that is such a happy pic! I am really pleased you got your pain au raisin, and that you have such a thoughtful friend who made sure it happened.

My recent happy thing is a new laundry rack. I had never really thought of them as things you could 'upgrade', but after c. 20 years my old one was shedding large chunks of paint. It also turned out the painted coating was necessary to make two of the side-bars large enough to support its arms, so they kept collapsing. I now have a new one which is both lighter and sturdier, and does not shed paint or collapse, all of which is very pleasing.

[(Anonymous)]

Lidl sell them individually, if you have one of those near you.

[callmemadam]

A nice, happy pic! I admire what I assume are your hand-knitted hat and long mitts.
Birthday flowers are still cheering me up.

[mountainkiss]

Slightly stretching the definition of "small thing" in both the literal and metaphorical senses, but today due to a fiendishly complicated plan I can have a legal walk with WEEZIE.

[jinty]

That’s a good size pain au raisin, looks lovely! I am fond of them too but we have been buying frozen packs of mini-pastries from Waitrose and so we can satisfy the different tastes of the household when we get a W order. (We’ve been alternating between a Tesco order one week and a Waitrose one the next.)

[girlyswot]

I chopped my hair off yesterday and that has made me very happy.

[ankaret]

My discovery this year that Tunnocks now do dark chocolate caramel bars has been doing a lot to lift my mood.

As far as clothes airers go I have two large three-level Brabantias but one is getting close to needing to be replaced, due to its position between a chest of drawers and a large cupboard which means it regularly gets leapt on by fast moving cats playing The Floor Is Lava.

[sartorias]

I made chocolate chip cookies the other day, and ate them hot. Yum!

[sfred]

Oh, hurray for pain au raisin! My domestic partner doesn't like them either so I haven't had one for a long time.

[el_staplador]

chocolateboxcomm! I have been feeling fannish again and it's so nice.

ETA: pains aux raisins are great, but I haven't had one for yonks - probably not since the last time I went into the office, and maybe not then.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm struggling to think of anything - so what I'm going to do (because I'm months over due a post) is think of ten small things that have made my life better in the last year and ten things that I can do to make a small improvement.

[crinolinerobot]

I think for me it was a latte. I don't like coffee much, so only drink it a few times of year, but I had to go into Bath to go to the dentist and the little cafe nearby was doing takeaways. It was a cold day so I got a latte with hazelnut syrup to walk back to the train station with, and it was BLISS.

I think we're all going to notice small things a lot more when all this is over.