savourites #29

why women grow events | full cold moons | softness

The behemoth winter cold came for us, both in our noses and on the ground. It had, admittedly, been a while. I used to be the kind of (gross) person who was sort of just permanently snotty, somewhere between an undiagnosed lactose allergy (a butter-free road is not one I’d like to embark upon) and a genetic predisposition to sinusitis. Since the lockdowns and changing a few things to my work-life balance, I’ve been healthier, I guess. Nevertheless, megacold turned up sometime last week and, as London received its first frost and the last full moon before Christmas appeared, has gently started to take its leave.

I am not a good patient. I am an impatient patient, more comfortable with denial and frustration than the sweet malaise of illness. It’s a privilege to be so, I appreciate - my body works well enough and I appreciate the good fortune of that - but I still see illness as a kind of great inconvenience rather than an indicator that I should stop doing certain things and start doing other ones. I took a sick day for the first time in nearly a year, when I had covid. I have been lying down. I missed swim club, which was disappointing, but I was unable to convince M or others that doing a few lengths in 7 degree water would be a “cure-all”. I have eaten oranges and drunk honey and lemon and coughed in the night and inhaled steam. I have tried to “listen to my body”. I can smell the Christmas tree. I am getting better.

Anyway, this is by way of setting the scene for this week’s savourites round-up: cosy things, escapist things, salty things, good things: