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There's a particular kind of disappointment that comes from trying to recreate your nan's stew and getting it almost right but not quite. I think mine is the bay leaves — she always said two but she always meant three. I tried three this week and the kitchen smelled like a Sunday I'd forgotten.

My grandmother kept a notebook of everyone she'd ever owed a phone call to. She crossed names off when she called them. I found it last weekend cleaning out her flat. Three of the names were already crossed off in 1996 and I have no idea who they were.

The first batch of sourdough I made after moving was unrecognisable. Same flour, same recipe, same hands — different water, I think. The bread tells you where you are if you let it.

Spent the first half of the year convinced I'd outgrown Joni Mitchell. Spent the second half realising I just wasn't listening properly.

I keep a list of books I've started and not finished, and a separate list of books I haven't started and probably won't. The second list is honest. The first list lies to me.

There's a particular kind of disappointment that comes from trying to recreate your nan's stew and getting it almost right but not quite. I think mine is the bay leaves — she always said two but she always meant three. I tried three this week and the kitchen smelled like a Sunday I'd forgotten.

My grandmother kept a notebook of everyone she'd ever owed a phone call to. She crossed names off when she called them. I found it last weekend cleaning out her flat. Three of the names were already crossed off in 1996 and I have no idea who they were.

The first batch of sourdough I made after moving was unrecognisable. Same flour, same recipe, same hands — different water, I think. The bread tells you where you are if you let it.

Spent the first half of the year convinced I'd outgrown Joni Mitchell. Spent the second half realising I just wasn't listening properly.

I keep a list of books I've started and not finished, and a separate list of books I haven't started and probably won't. The second list is honest. The first list lies to me.

Spent four hours debugging what turned out to be a missing semicolon in a config file the linter doesn't lint. There's a lesson there about tooling but the actual lesson is that I should have gone for a walk after the second hour.

The bus from Tirana to Shkodër takes three hours if you're lucky and five if the driver knows someone in Lezhë. I was lucky on the way up and unlucky on the way back, which I'm starting to think is how most things work.

There's a kestrel that hunts the same hedge every morning at 7:14. I know because I'm at the bus stop at 7:14, and so is she, and we've been doing this for six weeks now without acknowledging each other.

There's a building in our neighbourhood that's been wrapped in scaffolding since 2019. Nobody's ever working on it. The pigeons have a system.

The tomatoes came in late this year — too cold in May, too dry in June, too late in July. The plants don't read calendars but they're patient with the ones who do.

Spent four hours debugging what turned out to be a missing semicolon in a config file the linter doesn't lint. There's a lesson there about tooling but the actual lesson is that I should have gone for a walk after the second hour.

The bus from Tirana to Shkodër takes three hours if you're lucky and five if the driver knows someone in Lezhë. I was lucky on the way up and unlucky on the way back, which I'm starting to think is how most things work.

There's a kestrel that hunts the same hedge every morning at 7:14. I know because I'm at the bus stop at 7:14, and so is she, and we've been doing this for six weeks now without acknowledging each other.

There's a building in our neighbourhood that's been wrapped in scaffolding since 2019. Nobody's ever working on it. The pigeons have a system.

The tomatoes came in late this year — too cold in May, too dry in June, too late in July. The plants don't read calendars but they're patient with the ones who do.