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Little pleasures
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A chance to exchange notes on the little everyday things that cheer you up when you're down, or make an ordinary day into a better one. Winning move unaltered.
This is one over which I happen to agree with several generations of family pets; the pleasure of having a good scratch; one that successfully banishes a persistent and deep-seated itch.
Having a quiet chuckle on hearing your team leader getting a bollocking for something you warned them about but "they knew better".
The smell of freshly ground coffee.
The opposition's top batsman lofts yet another six, this time over the pavilion, and smashes through a car window, which belongs to his captain, who is also his batting partner.
Hidden textThis was one of the few entertaining moments for our team on Wednesday.
The sudden feeling of clarity left behind when a large piece of furniture that has sat in a room for many years has been removed to the scrapheap.
Mowing stripes into one's lawn
Clearing out a pile of 'stuff' that has accumulated over several years
Getting into one's car that has been sitting outside on a sunny day at the end of winter and feeling warm for the first time in the last three months.
Being the first person to make footprints in fresh snow.
Putting the roll of toilet paper the right way round
Switching off and going home or, to put it another way, going home and switching off.
Coming over the brow of a hill
Successfully introducing someone new to a band, author, artist, place... that you already love
Sneaking into Software's house and reversing all the rolls of toilet paper
On my way to work, getting through the S-bends between Hampstead Norreys and Compton, on the B4009, without dropping below 60mph
When someone else makes a coffee for you at work, and gets it just right.
Going through a series of green traffic lights.
I dropped into a trade outlet to match and buy some bolts at lunch time. Not only did the guy find the right ones, he also said; 'You just want 20 - just put a pound in the charity box'. So: unlooked for kindness and generosity (Thank you Fixingsplus)
Discovering a game like this and remembering to notice the good little things again, instead of ranting about the little bad ones.
[NJ] I had a similar experience in the optician's section of ASDA of all places! They replaced both the "nose rest" rubbery bits (when I'd lost one), gave my glasses a good clean, and asked only for a donation in the charity box. I was stunned and delighted.
Is it only me who cleans my glasses under the hot tap with washing up liquid and polishes them on a clean tea-towel? Everyone at work gets used tome 'washing my windows' every morning... (and back on subject)
the squintingly bright sun that has appeared through the office window making me struggle to see the screen, after days and days of gloom.
Chocolate bourbon biscuits Nicer even than the mighty HobNob and its chocolate-coated cousins IMO. Certainly when I gave up biscuits, they're the ones I miss the most.
Getting an email that is not only not spam, but is actually from someone you know. (pen, glasses) Not just you. Sometimes I use soap - just as good.
An empty inbox (I haven't seen one of those for quite some time.)
Gin-soaked olives 'Nuff said.
A Bank Holiday Weekend combined with a good weather forecast
Hidden text105 minutes to go
[cfm] Olive-infused gin is good, too. :-)
[CdM] Are you married? ;-) Coming in from the cold. Especially when there's a wood fire burning.
Going for a 40-mile bike ride and getting home at last after a 40-mile bike ride.
Bluebell woods - especially if there are ramsons as well.
An unexpected opportunity to sit and think, undisturbed.
Cool, white, freshly pressed hotel bed sheets
Waking up in a sunlit bedroom
Going out at dawn in summer for a brisk walk over the fields where the dew is just beginning to lift to make the sort of mist that, when you're in the middle of it, still seems to start about 30 yards away from you in every direction.
Border Collies
A hot tub - especially when there's very light snow which is wafted away by the rising hot air
[NJ] Gin/olive combinations and hot tubs are the only things on this list I've never experienced. At present.
[Phil] And the closely related but even greater pleasure that is golden retrievers. :-)
[cfm] I was going to say that if you made it to the UK I could offer the gin/olive/hot tub combination, but then you said you preferred fluff-head retrievers to collies.
Oh and the call of a curlew
Starlings or Asbo-birds as we call them in our house.
[Phil] BTW When did you sneak into Software's house?
[NJ] Wouldn't you like to know!
A lark, ascending. And the necessity of being in open countryside away from urban noise to be able to hear it.
A lie-in with no underlying feeling of guilt
Seeing a cat, any cat, anywhere.
Listening to the song of a blackbird at the cooling end of a stiflingly hot summer day
Lagavulin - both the drink and the place.
Seeing a very familiar place in an unfamiliar way, and hence really noticing it for the first time.
The sound of pouring rain on the roof
New potatoes
puppy dogs!
blowing bubbles
Watching a transit of the International Space Station
Watching the All Blacks perform the Haka. A better sight in sport I have not seen.
A perfectly ripe mango.
friends
Getting my car back from my friend who had borrowed it for the weekend, and finding he has, quite unbidden, cleaned it inside and out. There's even an air freshener in there!
An eclectic list. The concatenation of the last 4 things mentioned here, for instance.
Remembering that England only managed 3 points against Wales in the Six Nations this year.
Walking into an office that is airconditioned on a hot day. It's 33°C at 8.30pm, this is NOT on.
[Tuj] Indeed.
[Raak] I saw it twice when Cmdr Hadfield was onboard, thanks to Twitter notifications, and caught it by accident last Saturday night too. In fact, on Saturday, I also saw the Red Arrows fly over my house here in the Netherlands - on their way from a Dutch air show back to their base in my native Lincolnshire. That was an impressive and moving day for skywatching for me.
Smiling at strangers.
Getting back into bed after a loo visit in the wee (sic) small hours.
Getting things done
[penelope] the Dead Sparrows used to practice over Nettleham Police HQ when I was a late teenager there. I feel a special bond to them (especially after one of them waved both hand and wings to me and my mum while we were dog-walking). I miss watching the three new recruits each winter gradually getting closer and closer to the other six as their confidence and skill grow. Hence:
The Red Arrows
Having an unexpected day off I'm sorry the client's factory is on fire, really I am, but not having to make a 120km round trip is quite nice.
The two glasses of lovely red house wine I just drank with dinner in the restaurant in the next village, and the resulting headiness.. Long day, taking notes to transcribe a conference on which I have been working on the planning for 6 months. I was there at 07.45 and left at 18.00 . Dinner out with the windy miller. I didn't let him get a word in edgeways as I unburdened the events of the day, an d it took two glasses of wineto tell him everything. What a cheap date.
Singing along with the car radio.
Using your free bus pass
Your odometer getting to 100000km SO excited.
When your pee smells of asparagus
Victoriously relaxing my elevated cheek (sic) muscle back onto the chair.
[Tuj] I've eaten asparagus many times, and never noticed this alleged odour. However, I can't say I've ever sniffed my pee, so who knows what delights I've missed :-)
Rapid debugging of other people's code
There was a philosopher of whom I have read that he once walked into a room and announced, "I've just had the most glorious bowel movement!" Ah, one recognises the feeling.
[Lovely Gravy] Watching the All Blacks perform a haka on one side while Tonga performed one on the other really was impressive.
[SM] For me it was the Welsh team refusing to move first after the Haka in Cardiff in 2008. Still gives me goosebumps watching it on Youtube.
Perpetuating stereotypes mercilessly, but A nice glass of wine and a sit down after dinner.
Summer sunshine in Britain - hoorah!
A cold shower on a hot day
A hot shower on any kind of day. [SM] I've never 'got' the cold shower thing.
A hard ride on a racing bike, on a bright and sunny (but not too hot) day.
The Ashes
When the last strawberry in the punnet is the sweetest.
Baked beans on toast [with a crunchy sprinkling of rock salt and some ground pepper.]
Baked beans on toast [when the toast has been liberally coated with Marmite]
A glass of very cold beer on a summer evening.
The words "This one's on me" when uttered by the landlord of one's local at 10.30 on a Sunday night. Ok, so it's not an everyday occurrence, but it made my day.
Giving a present to someone you love.
(Phil) cf. this: I presented a nearly empty glass and said "Just a half in there" and meant it. The man topped it up. "It's an Irish half", said he, and he was indeed of the Hibernian persuasion. I had to drive home rather carefully.
[Rosie] We used to call that a pensioner's half, or a Hilton Half. Named after Hilton Spratt, who was at that time a very young Conservative councillor, and is now Mayor of Lincoln. My new local does a good generous half too :-)
Right now. I'm sitting outside at 11pm on Friday evening with a cup of coffee, a citronella candle and the iPad, with the prospect of three whole weeks off work. I don't go back until August 12. And there's a heatwave.
Still being alive. After 3 near death experiences in the last 12 months, simply still being here, watching us tonk the Aussies, despite being other-half-less, is more than enough to make me smile. The fact it's warm and sunny helps, too.
My bedroom is inhabited by the amorous ghost of a showgirl who takes joy in keeping me up nights after the wife has dozed.
Cooking for a friend who appreciates it.
Driving somewhere lovely with the windows down. Can't recommend the Aosta Valley highly enough!
[nights] Oh cor yes. On a childhood holiday we drove through the Mont Blanc Tunnel along the road to Aosta and the alternating bridges and mountainside galleries were spectacular.
(Nyet) I'm not sure nights would appreciate that too much.
[Rosie] hee hee :-)
Closing the deal.
Opening anything.
(Botherer) Wot, even a waste food container? :-)
Heavy windless rain.
Perfect timing.
(Rosie) Anything!
The pursuit of contentment rather than happiness.
Lying in the sun because I can.
I thought this might have been mentioned earlier, but Not wearing pants :)
Re-reading old love letters
[cfm] BBBBzzzzttt!! Oh no - that's a cringeworthy task! (Or is it just me who thinks that, because my husband has never written me a love letter so all the ones I have kept are from previous and rejected or jilting boyfriends?)
Spending money you don't have. To be followed, in about a month, by a Little Displeasure.
[Pen] *is reminded of the penultimate line of Charlotte's Web* :-)
Discovering this game. A one-off, unrepeatable pleasure, of course.
And a proper move: Sitting on the sofa reading a gloriously huge, heavy book printed in 1943 that references and discusses a whole load of medieval manuscripts... and being able to view those manuscripts in their entirety a couple of minutes later just by walking over to my computer and downloading complete full-colour facsimiles from the host library. How I love the 21st century. I imagine that the author of the said book (the musicologist Higinio Anglés) would have creamed his academic pants at the prospect, especially since, working at that moment in history, even the slow option of travelling around Europe to visit the collections in person wasn't open to him.
[CdM] I just had to google it. I think I last read Charlotte's Web when I was 8 or 9
Introducing my children to great films from before their time as they grow up - While Mrs Phil is poorly in bed, 'little' Miss Phil and I have watched 'Raising Arizona', 'Airplane!', 'The Big Lebowski', 'Shaun of the Dead' over the last 4 nights. Admitedly, she'd seen two of them before, but it was good to bring her up to speed on the Coen Brothers. Maybe 'Full Metal Jacket' tonight, or perhaps 'Withnail and I', which neither of us has seen.
Watch 'Withnail' for that going-into-work-after-a-bank-holiday-with-a-surreal-feeling feeling.
[pen] not back to work till thursday
[Phil] If you're going to watch 'Withnail and I' you can play 'Spot the anachronistic road sign'.
[Phil] However, what I find with MsCdMJr is that any film that dates from before 2004 is greeted with a comment of "That's so old!"
[pen] That was cfm, not me. It is a good line, though. Mind you, we should remember that the author of Charlotte's Web was also a co-author of the odious Strunk and White Elements of Style, and so not someone that I particularly acknowledge as a judge of good writing. :-)
Sautéed mushrooms
[CdM] We've managed to avoid that. Both our little beasts will happily watch anything, so long as it's good, e.g. Psycho :)
[Phil] She'll watch and enjoy. She just complains first...
Tiling an irregularly-shaped bread roll with cheese, using the fewest possible cuts.
Recreational mathematics
(SM) Demonstrate, using longhand methods only, that 398712 + 436512 <> 447212. Then do it on a calculator.
Reprieves
The MD saying "In that case, I'll go away and let you get on with it"
Breaking a pane of glass you no longer want. The first blow, with a club hammer, is the best.
Being able to make a comment on a complete stranger's website/blog/whatever and get a reply from someone who lives potentially thousands of miles away.
One's favorite blue jeans
Overtaking a very expensive car, whose driver is obviously in a hurry, by picking the right lane at a junction/roundabout.
Walking a fast half-hour circuit of the village last night under a clear and almost-full moon, seeing the stars and flashing lights of the planes circling for Rotterdam and Amsterdam airports, and hearing the very last of the summer crickets chirruping in the grass. (And the imaginary dog trotting along beside me, of course)
Farting in the bath.
Observing that the complicated program that one has just written is working exactly as it should.
A free lunch each Friday just because you're a student.
Making things
Watching football managers lose their rag or becoming, as they would put it, "disappointed".
(SM) I'm with you on that. I have just made one of these. Prior to that a contour map of the entire North Downs at 1:80,000. The wonders of Photoshop.
Hearing from a friend you have lost touch with
Sky-watching. In particular, watching the sunrise over the sea from the deck as the overnight ferry pulls into home port, with a cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant; seeing mammatus clouds with my own eyes for the first time, a shooting star, and a night-sky full of stars out in the country. All over the past week or so.
The smell of tertiary butyl alcohol. A bit like isopropanol (de-icer, various cosmetics) only more so. Minty and a bit camphor-like. Rather nice - even better than ether.
[CdM] Hear, hear! Via Facebook, I've just regained contact with an Estonian fireman I use to chat with about 12 years ago. The downside is the cyrillic script on my FB timeline now!
Christmas!
Those first few moments in bed
The second coffee of the morning
A quarter-bottle of wine
In that case: Arriving home from work to discover that your teetotal wife has opened a bottle of red wine, to make lasagne, and the rest of it requires drinking. I love getting out of the car to the smell of lasagne, as it means I don't have to feel guilty about opening a bottle, just for myself.
Guessing the latest AVMA
The entire sensory spectrum of chips cooked in beef dripping.
Ordering a treat for yourself - in my case, cricket pads, bat, and gloves.
Getting home to find that said order has been delivered
Boxy concrete buildings built on a grassy slope overlooking big swaths of nature. Only realized how nice this makes me feel the other day when looking at some pictures.
Mullion Cove at low tide.
The Science Fiction of Samuel R Delaney
Sunshine
Knowing how to spell Samuel R Delany
The memory of having met and conversed with Samuel R Delany face-to-face, and of loaning him a copy of Driftglass when he had nothing for his scheduled reading and thus saving the day. 8oP
Being blissfully unaware of science fiction authors ;-)
Wot, even Arthur C Clarke? Even Ian McLeod? Even Charles Stross?
I've heard of, nay read (but not for nearly 30 years), A C Clarke. Never heard of the others.
Wow, and I picked UK authors of great stature too.
Cherry Garcia.
[Stevie] I did read quite a lot of John Wyndham when I was a teenager, plus A C Clarke, and a couple of Harry Harrisons. Unless you count Stephen King, I think my adult science fiction reading has been limited to Douglas Adams.
[Phil] Well, I have a non-standard view of genre classification: If you think it is SF, it is. I may not agree with you, but so what? Delaney would at one time hold that you might not have the vernacular needed to properly appreciate SF unless you can recognize it when you see it, but I reckon if you enjoy a story at whatever level genres are irrelevant, and anyway all the people I've conversed with here are intelligent enough to acquire the vernacular as they go.

Years ago Raak and I differed with feeling over whether "Perdido Street Station" was Hard SF or something else. While many a satisfying hour can be passed arguing this over pints of beer, in the end all that matters is that it is a bloody good story sufficiently different from stuff sitting next to it on the shelves that it should please anyone reading it on your recommendation.

You should check it out of your library and give it a go, Phil.

Re: John Wyndham. Scariest thing I ever read was from The Day of the Triffids, the line about the blind man scuttling from a looted store with two tins of red paint under his arms and a cunning grin on his face (the context is that he thought it was food). The implications of that little vignette left me profoundly disturbed for weeks.
Watching the Aetheric Neuralizer's plasma effects in action. Worst build blog in the history of the universe, but the steampunk gun is spiffy.
[Stevie] I don't think I've specifically avoided SF, and I havea major problem in that I read so little nowadays. I know my son enjoyed "The City & The City", so I'll give Perdido a try. I really ought to get round to registering with the library too. The mobile library's next visit isn't for another 12 days, so it looks like a trip into town is required.
[Stevie] Aha, thanks for making me look up our library. I've found there's one only 6 miles away, and it's open on Saturday mornings. To Pangbourne, me hearties!
(Phil) Pangbourne is town? No answer to that.
[Rosie] Newbury is "town" Pangbourne is half the distance, and has a fish & chip shop, to boot!
The prospect of a long weekend in England; I sail back on Thursday night.That means seeing family and friends, not having to worry about not understanding what's being spoken about, eating familiar and favourite foods, and resting my eyes on familiar landscapes. Bliss.
Keeping my eyes inside my head... (Pen rests eyes on landscapes ... I prefer mine remain in their sockets!)
Witnessing another's earned success Case in point - This little animation makes me smile every time I watch it: katana girl (gif)
[Stevie] I think the Moran blog may be suffering from cybernautic gremlins. You don't seem to be able to comment - comments submit far too quickly, it seems to me, for them to be actually be being transmitted anywhere.
[Simons] Intollerable curbation of free speech! I'll have a look what knobs can be twiddled.
I just did an anonymous test and it worked fine for me other than the capcha being so fiendish it took three refreshes to make it spell something I could figure out. I used the "Anonymous" profile (you have to pick one from a list). There aren't any moderated comments waiting to be let out of the pen.
Watching Jeremy Clarkson say "I've ruined m'car!"
Getting a letter from the bank that refunds, with interest, the £30 that the ATM didn't dispense in June 2008, and that you assumed you'd just absentmindedly walked away without taking.
Contemplating the engineering excellence and sheer zombie-stopping power of my new Hammershot revolver and my Sledgefire shotgun. The Weapon Shops of Nerf are awesome.
First class travel. I have just upgraded from what was going to be four hours standing in the end of a carriage to a luxurious seat and free coffee for a mere £15. Privileged? Sure am.
Truly, it is wonderful to sit up in first class with a complimentary coffee and Wi-Fi and think of those down the other end, below the food car, and say to myself, "I'm posh and they're not."
You'll be drinking in the lounge bar next. As a friend once said to me while we were about to enter the UEA Union Bar: "You get a better class of scum in the lounge bar".

La Famile Stevie got upgraded to 1st class on a trans-Canada flight a couple of years ago. I was so impressed I wrote it up for mi blog.

Non-sensible (e.g. pink-paisley-silver-spike-heeled) shoes.
[cfm] May I ask, without prejudice, if you are a person of the female variety?
[Phil] You cannot ask, and cfm is not required to tell you if you do. Because it's more fun that way.

Firing the Nerf Rapidstrike submachine gun. Top o' the world, ma!

Hidden textAt last, a suitable vehicle with which to express my utter rejection of The Colbert Report and the fucktard who presents it.
Rare-breed pork chops bought from the butcher at home in Lincolnshire last week for dinner tonight in the Netherlands The pork here is shocking, and mostly reared indoors. These tasted soooo good.
[pen] Is it me, or is "rare-breed" pork so ubiquitous that one wonders just how "rare" these breeds are? It might just be a Berkshire thing, to be honest.
"Ahuh! Ahuh! Ahuh huh huh! Bet you can't guess what I'm doing?"
[Geo] Are you singing the second line of The Proclaimers' "I'm on my way"?
Puns. Endless puns. and reading back up the page I'd put a word in for Iain (M) Banks as a SF author worth reading... Also, should it be "an SF author"?
Listening to TMS at work
Hidden textThat's "Test Match Special". The BBC's incomparably excellent radio commentary on England's international cricket matches
[Geo] Not fair! It must give us two guesses! You are doing either:
a) Your Elvis Presley warm-ups prior to opening your Las Vegas drive-thru Chapel of Burnin' Love for the day

or

2) Your Tommy Cooper wind-up to the eggs/tray/water-filled glasses trick.
Discovering that my "Ten Years Without Gnawing A Leg Off" certificate bears the notorious doctored version of the city seal, in which the minuteman depicted on one side seems very pleased indeed to see the indian on the other.
Hidden textEven when honoring me they give me the shaft.
Petrichor
Also, knowing the word for petrichor. :-)
[SM] Excellent, on both counts.
Certain TV show theme tunes. Today's nominee, even though I only ever watched about two shows, is the Dexter Theme Tune. A fun little track, that one.
[Simons Mith] Good one. I'll volley that back with the "Morse" theme. I'm particularly fond of the bit where the French Horns swell up. Into tubas, presumably. But then they'd be French Potatoes I suppose. Musical theory was never my strong suit.
Riding on new bicycle tyres. Mm, pumped up really hard.
I'm not sure how I feel about walking through an antiques fleamarket and thinking, not once but several times, "that's not old, I had one of those!" A box of metal puzzles that I'm sure was exactly the same make and design as one my brother had, a set of mathematical instruments, manual sewing machines just like my aunt's, a metal right-angle just like the one my father made in the army (and which I still have), and of course any number of slide rules.
Being able to point at the giant sliderule hanging next to the canoe and the stuffed Springbok head in a local "casual dining" restaurant and say "I know how to use that to do hard sums".
Doing sums in my head faster than someone else does them with a calculator e.g. deducting VAT.
New windscreen wiper blades
Sitting in a 6th floor office in Rotterdam with a window that faces west over the city towards the Port of Rotterdam and watching the storms coming in from the North Sea only 20 miles away, swallowing the city's skyscrapers as it approaches.
The Alps in summer. The really green bits. With the cowbells. And the wildflowers. Don't care if it is like the Sound of Music.
Serving dinner to hungry teenage boys.
Being able to do simple diy stuff, like today, clearing an airlock in the hot water system; repairing a useful bag with a staple gun; making a jig to remove downlighters without damaging the ceiling.
What!?!?!? No! That cannot go unanswered!

Ripping the living bejaysus out of any recalcitrant home fixture with my mighty Tiger Saw prior to replacing it with one that works.

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