This isn’t about abuse I get so bored of it
I was musing this morning and I started to think about things I like and why I like them.
There are obviously foods that hit the spot. I can’t do fake flavours; crisp flavours never taste like anything but chemicals to me. The intense taste and smell of vanilla is a smell that I never tire of. Vanilla ice cream made with real vanilla seeds on a hot summer day just feels like the ultimate in luxury.
Likewise, the sensual feel of Swiss chocolate melting over your tongue is hard to beat. Simple foods like a crisp salad with the perfect oily dressing, or a steak with a good mustard.
The scent of Jasmine on a summer evening is a heavy, poignant perfume that seems to hang in the air as if you are walking through it.
A fast car, the feel of power and the way it can hold a corner, the growl of an engine as it pulls away — that can’t be primeval, that must be a modern thing that man has learnt to appreciate or respond to.
How, if you pick tomatoes off a vine you smell of them for the rest of the day, like the plant has branded you as one of them.
The cocky smile of a cheeky boy, one who knows instinctively how to charm and is just understanding the power he has. I like girls who pass you in the street with a waft of perfume and tanned legs and who look and smell like summer.
Beautifully designed anything, a chair with the perfect curved arm, the wood all polished by hundreds of hands that have rested there. The perfect knitted blanket with love entwined into every stitch. A MacBook Pro with its smooth satiny finish, especially in Space Grey, which is just a dark grey but like Farrow & Ball it isn’t a proper colour unless it has a daft name.
I like the bustle of big fast cities that seem to know how important they are and make lots of noise day or night.
I like the way you can be walking somewhere you don’t know and suddenly you round a corner or step out of some trees and the sea is stretched out in front of you, or a view to the horizon that takes your breath away. It’s as if it knows that its job is to make people gasp as it has done for hundreds of years. Maybe it relaxes when nobody is there and just sits waiting for the next visitor, always ready to sparkle or glow and show off the perfect vista it knows it is.
Casually picking up a book and flicking the pages and a waft of eau de words fills your nostrils and you wonder where this one will take you and you settle down in a nearby flumpy sofa and fall into its world.
A newspaper made of news and actual paper that you can fold and turn and curl up with and stretch out and ponder the crossword and growl at the opinion and ignore the screaming adverts and leave feeling informed and sated.
The laughter of children on a sunny day with the occasional high-pitched scream of delight and hands sticky with ice cream and hair tousled with dirt and excitement
all these things and more …
Open Journal is taking a break for the holidays. it will continue in 2026.
a blog less ordinary 