Thérèse Neelands

French Taste by Laura Calder

Steph got this for me for Christmas, and I am just now finally able to sit down with a cup of tea, toast (with lots of butter) and a soft boiled egg, ready to run my hands through its soft, elegant pages and take in the smell of the press (a favourite past-time).

At this time of the year, a lot of us are contemplating what we’ll do different this time around; what we can improve, attempt to define what we want, and configure the necessary steps to get there.

Over the last 5 or 6 months or so, once a week I do two hours of Yoga. Among the many things I have learned in the practice, one of them is “paying attention”.  Stop. Breath. Listen to the quiet. Feel the heart thrumping. And in this, I have found the importance, or the value in,  taking pleasure.

It may be cliché to go on about pleasure, but I do feel it is the secret to living well. (And I say this fully aware that pursuing it is more easily said than done.) At its most basic, the natural human pursuit of pleasure is what makes the body prefer a ripe fruit over a rotten one (a very practical feat of genetic engineering, that). At a higher level of evolution, it’s what makes a person bother to stop, sit down at a table, and enjoy a sandwich off a plate with some dignity, rather than rip at one like a bloodhound while simultaneously driving a car through a deluge and phoning the cleaners about the overcoat dropped off last Wednesday. (We all have our desparate moments, fair enough, but you’d have to be a masochist to make a habit of them.)

French Taste: Elegant  Everyday Eating Laura Calder

How To Eat, French Taste by Laura Calder

So my resolution for this year: take pleasure in everything. But wait. I don’t mean to say that I will quit my job, eat roast every night while polishing off a bottle of wine, and then partake in lusty entertainment. A Taurus like me, must take heed to avoid the fall into pure hedonism – it is no laughing matter.

Rather, when I have my breakfast, I will not gobble and think about my day ahead of me and all the bloody things I have to do, and give myself a stomach ache to boot. I will sit down, and savor the thick, creamy, silky ball of yolk. I will warm my hands on my favorite coffee mug and experience what the good, brown liquid does to me; comfort, warmth, relaxation, nostalgia, home.

Par example: today I have a great deal of sanding, plastering and painting to do. I HATE it. I cannot tell you how much I hate doing it. It is ironic that I, who loves to make paintings, am the worst house painter in the world. I have no patience for it. But rather  than do the job in frustration which will most probably guarantee a shitty outcome, I’ll get into my grubby painting clothes, put on some tunes and a happy face, and take pleasure in it.