Tag Archives: coconut milk

Money where your mouth is

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Colorful bowls with apple on wooden table

Posh cosmetics are absurdly expensive, or so it seemed to me whilst browsing the department store shelves for a new moisturiser. But we still buy them: most bathroom cupboards are so well stocked with lotions and potions they could be apothecaries.

I suppose it’s understandable that when it comes to beauty no expense is spared. We all like to look our best (and youngest) and these products very convincingly promise they will help us do just that. But they don’t, not really. Good genes, happy lives, healthy diets and enough sleep are far more important (though I do continue to slavishly follow the expensive skincare routine I introduced on turning thirty – ah, sweet delusion). Continue reading →

The protest cabbage

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Supermarket

I had gone to the supermarket to buy milk but soon found myself far from the dairy aisle, staring bewildered at the tubs, tubes, tins, packets, and bottles stacked meticulously – a visual stampede of farm workers, factory packers and carbon footprints. 

Living in Berlin and mostly going to our nearby organic shop or local supermarket (much smaller than its UK counterpart), I hadn’t been in a really big UK supermarket for a while, possibly a year or more. Perhaps this meant I was more attuned not only to the scale of the operation but also to how little of the food in there I wanted to buy. In amongst those garish packets, schools voucher schemes, traffic light systems, and special discount offers, the real food was lost. My intense love of food shopping – that endless daydreaming of possible meals – vanished. This wasn’t fun, it was grotesque. Continue reading →

The day after the night before

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Fatigue

Mastering self-control is much harder when you’re tired (and hungover to boot). Somehow indulging the body feels very justified, rather like when you’re a little bit ill or sad. And therein lies the fallacy of indulgence. That stodgy breakfast, milky coffee, late afternoon slab of chocolate may gratify your desires but won’t make you feel in better; indeed, it will almost certainly make you feel worse.

Pleasure is your goal, not indulgence. A tired day needs careful management right up to the point at which you can take pleasure in it again (especially in dark and chilly January). This longer term view should provide the discipline to carry you through those bleak hours of fatigue, which can rear up and tempt you throughout a day after a night before. Continue reading →