I’ve read a lot of pieces over the years about how you mustn’t keep special clothing or crockery for ‘best’. If you love that glassware, use it every day. If you really adore that jacket, just wear it and keep wearing it. Let these things get used up, because your days are short upon the earth and you don’t want to end up in your final illness thinking “hmm I never did wear that jacket except for about six times”.
The thing is, I’ve never had that problem about physical objects at all. I have always had the strong feeling that physical objects I buy exist to serve me, not me to serve them. I even have the feeling that a physical object that gets stained or scratched serving me is sort of (look I know how this sounds)… happier? That they give a little sigh of pleasure when they are used and they wear their marks and scuffs with pride to show how much they’re loved and how well they’re used according in their correct role.
Oh I just realised that this is because of the book The Velveteen Rabbit which can still make me sob and sob as an adult. It’s a book about how toys only become ‘real’ when they are loved so much that their stuffing comes out and their button eyes are loose, when they have been properly loved over many years that’s when the velveteen rabbit has a chance to become real. (Sob, sob, sniff.) And apparently I feel that my dining table/jacket/glassware will also be gambolling off across a field with other free dining tables if I use it and love it enough. Anyway. Read books and re-read books and let them enter your soul because of course good books make everything better.
Anyway, that’s not the point of the post. The point is that I recently realised that I do keep intellectual enjoyment for best. What I will do is… I find a book that I’m really really looking forward to, or a game that I really want to play, or a movie or TV show that sounds really up my alley and instead of going “I will watch this at once!” I think “ooh I should save that for the perfect time”.
So I have a set of stuff sitting next to my bed that is really special and I just… let it sit there. Maybe slightly in the feeling of anticipating a holiday, so very understandable, there is a delicious enjoyment in anticipation. But then the time never really comes, or often doesn’t.
It was during the pandemic that I finally cracked open the Michel Thomas Arabic course1 I had bought… eight years earlier? I didn’t need to learn Arabic for work, it was just for joy - and it really is a tremendous joy, an absolute highlight of the horrible years 2020 and 2021. I was just… keeping it for some kind of entertainment/enjoyment emergency. Which obviously did come, but still it’s not the best way to live.
I came to a realisation about this when I noticed that I have been keeping the FT Magazine’s yearly games issue since the start of August because I loved last year’s one so much that I keep thinking “I am going to enjoy that so much” but then every moment I might do all the puzzles and enjoy reading the articles I think “this moment is not quite special enough”. Also by my bed waiting for the perfect moment I have:
Delayed Gratification magazine (yes yes, the irony)
La Fete a book by the wonderful Zoe de las Cases about entertaining
the game Chants of Sennaar - it’s a TEN OUT OF TEN game about LANGUAGES, ffs
Unbuilding (apparently I put off the books with pictures because they are too much pleasure?)
The Shakespeare Requirement - a follow up to the deliriously funny Dear Committee Members which I just think everyone would enjoy, here I am talking about it on A Good Read
Benbecula - a new short novel by the amazing Graeme McCrae Burnett
I have put these off apparently because they are so enticing that they demand their own special time. But these things aren’t just for Christmas! They can be for today, just today, an ordinary weekend day in October.
Maybe I am the only person in the world who does this, and everyone else falls on intellectual enjoyment immediately. But I think that I might not be the only one and we might all be scrolling on our phones not really enjoying it because we’re thinking ‘oh this is only five minutes, it’s not the right time or a special enough time to devote to that novel/long article/brilliant magazine/bit of studying’.
And my suggestion for myself is that it is. It would have been my mother’s 83rd birthday today, so maybe that is why enjoying things while we have the time is in my mind. Actually, my mother was great at this. She loved reading and she loved making art; after she died every single place she sat had a book next to it with one of her own handmade bookmarks in it. She had grown up in real poverty without extra money for books (though they always went to the library) or other such treats and she always valued culture2 intensely as the high-point and real meaning of life.
So. Having noticed that I’m doing this, I want to stop. This weekend I’m doing the FT Weekend games edition, and reading at least one of those books. Let’s have a really good weekend of enjoyment.
I will do another post at some point going on about language learning and how if it works for you Michel Thomas is the very best method, I have never found anything so quick and it just goes straight into the brain and I find I never do quite forget it even if I don’t bother to keep up the language after I had fun with the course. But anyway, if you are an auditory learner ie you retain well from listening, you love audiobooks and podcasts etc, do give Michel Thomas a go he was a genius. (Also I love how Substack has footnotes. Incredibly useful.)
High and low, she didn’t differentiate, as interested in seeing Coppélia at the Royal Ballet as in reading a thriller by Mary Stewart. Who is, btw, due a revival I think. My mother was one of those people who pronounces a lot of words ‘wrong’ because she had read so so much but didn’t know people who actually says those words out loud. I think she married my dad at least partly because he has an Oxford PhD and is an academic and would give her access to more of the life of the mind.
Love the joy list and recommendations...
Perhaps part of the problem is that, with so many horrors around and general insecurity, we don't always feel as though we should be enjoying ourselves, it doesn't seem quite right. But that's why it's so important to enjoy wonderful books and joyous experiences when we can because we're lucky enough to be able to do so!
My favourite everyday household items are the old things from my parents. Not the fancy stuff, but my father's battered but beautiful wood and brass, elliptical, spirit level and my mother's favourite china and handwritten recipes. They wear the marks of time but they are instantly transporting to the, fortunately, golden days of a long ago rural childhood. They mingle in the cupboards and drawers with our contemporary stuff, cheerfully blending the generations
I absolutely loved this. I’m completely guilty of falling into this trap myself, and thank you for all the fabulous recommendations too! Very intrigued to read more about your language learning.