What I've been missing

 I haven't talked so much about missing normal life lately, partly because it feels like it's coming back, partly because I'm remembering the bits I don't miss as they start to resurge. 

But apparently in my subconscious there are weird things I do miss. I didn't have a lunch plan for today. If it had been sunny I might have organised a takeaway to mum and dad's garden when I took their shopping over, but they seem less interested in that now tbh. I knew it wasn't going to be sunny, obviously, but it didn't seem worth planning much. I've been guilty of overcatering a lot over lockdowns, there's always toast, I could easily buy something with my folks' food, there's pesto in my freezer, and all that. There might even have been exciting bank holiday snack stalls out. Or, I was going to follow Helen's example and do something brunchy with eggs.

Or, none of the above. I actually dropped off my twice-weekly delivery, listening to the Line of Duty podcast (I'm sorry, I just didn't hate the ending) and I felt bank holidayish. Let there be walking! (Despite the plane fluff.) Let there be sitting on a park bench! (Despite the threatening rain... I've sat on two benches over the weekend and each time a friend has been at the other end. Once totally planned, weeks in advance, once a random coincidence of walks. Benches are suddenly back in my life.) Let there be a takeaway from a lovely restaurant in town centre... except suddenly I lost the oomph and just went to M&S. And bought myself... a hotel picnic. 

 

Back in normality, I used to buy myself a lot of food for eating quietly in a hotel room on a work trip of an evening. It was often in a station M&S. I didn't hate it. It was much preferable to busting my expenses allowance eating an unwanted pizza in a bored branch of Zizzi. Freer, less overlooked, more ability to sit around half-dressed and gnaw on chorizo while watching ITV3 if I wanted - which, in retrospect, may be a suggestion about why I haven't struggled as much with lockdown as I might have expected. (I've mainly been dressed but there's been a fair amount of ITV3.)

But I haven't browsed for a hotel picnic since, oooh 6 February 2020 in Manchester Victoria station. Or thereabouts. I'm not dwelling on it. 

It was especially exciting as M&S have brought back their beetroot juice with apple and ginger, a reliable sangria/slah/vitamins mixer for dreadful plastic red wine. So I did that. And chorizo cheese rolls, and a prawn cocktail and a treat of rhubarb fool. I didn't buy potato chips, and I also didn't buy bread as I wasn't going that deep into #ElsewhereKitchen territory. I have bread at home.

Pure nostalgia. It's not half as nice as stuff I can make myself, and eating a hotel picnic in my own kitchen felt ridiculous. But for a once every 15 months collapse into someone-else-sort-it-out laziness, eh. Why not?