14 simple pleasures that don't cost a penny
We, like most of our people, are almost pathetically easy to please while also being tremendously easy to upset. Tiny things make us happy. Tiny things make us desolate. Isn’t that exciting? Sometimes we can laugh things off, other times we are floored by the smallest gesture. No one knows what mood will strike us next, least of all us. But simple pleasures (isn’t ‘pleasure’ a faintly disturbing, pervy word?) can take us from disheartened to hopeful in a nanosecond. Simple pleasures like:
1. When the computer freezes...
and the spinning wheel of death appears in all its insanely cheerful colours, and it spins for a little while and then the computer just unfreezes as though nothing ever happened.
2. When you go out...
and have a genuinely amusing, bonding, relatively cheap dinner… and are still home by 10pm.
3. When you know you have a fresh and perfect piece of cashmere...
that you haven’t worn yet in the drawer. Fully mothballed and ready to go. Like a Madeleine Thompson poncho (oh, the bliss). And when you put it on you will feel, momentarily, so rich.
4. When someone says, ‘Oh, I thought that was your natural colour.’
So what if they’re lying? Joke-asking for your ID when you’re buying booze or joke-calling you ‘mademoiselle’ is, however, not so gratifying.
5. When you’re sent flowers
Always. Never not lovely. They say, ‘I see you.’ Which is a gift.
6. When you find that, somehow, you are weather-appropriate
As in, a jumper when the air turns sharp, but not a vast coat that will leave you sweaty from either wearing it or lugging it around like a horribly unresponsive, squishy pet. Or a clean shirt (as opposed to a greying vest) when you find yourself sitting in that part of the meeting room that is directly under the heating vent. Or a hood when it’s raining.
7. When you’re watching a film...
and realise it’s only 90 minutes long. That’s one hour and 30 minutes, people. Or half an hour less than two hours. Or 5,400 seconds. Totally doable.
8. When you go shopping and find that you have dropped a dress size
Even though you know that this anomaly is just a weird high-street-manufacturing blip. You may not really like the frock/trousers/top, but you are compelled to buy. You wish you could wear the size label on the outside.
9. When you ask, ‘Can anyone else hear the ringing?’
...And somebody says, ‘Yes, I can hear it. It is the telly.' And the relief is enormous because you don’t appear to have late-onset tinnitus from all that long-ago clubbing. Or psychosis.
10. When you pluck up the courage to check your bank balance...
And you are £1,000 less overdrawn than you suspected you were. *Googles winter sun*
11. When you drop your phone...
and the world goes into slo-mo while you watch, with growing horror, as it bounces down the stairs. And your brain makes a million terrible calculations. And then it lands and everything is fine. No shattered screen. Just the open road.
12. When you bump into someone you’ve slept with...
and even you know you look ace.
13. When you slide into an absurdly hot bath...
and know that a space-time continuum has somehow opened up and you can stay in there for an hour. Obviously after five minutes you are half-boiled and barely conscious and have to use the towel rail to steady you as you crawl out like Gollum. But that is not the point.
14. When you enquire about where someone got their dress...
and they don’t say, ‘A flea market in Saint-Tropez/Topshop 10 years ago/Givenchy/I don’t remember [which you always suspect is a lie].’ Instead they say, ‘& Other Stories… yesterday.'
The Midults: Guides to midlife
