{"id":667120,"date":"2026-07-01T01:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T01:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/667120\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T01:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T01:45:08","slug":"absolutely-sensational-my-week-savouring-lifes-little-pleasures-from-drilling-holes-to-licking-trees-mindfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/667120\/","title":{"rendered":"Absolutely sensational! My week savouring life\u2019s little pleasures \u2013 from drilling holes to licking trees | Mindfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"

What was the last thing that made your body feel good? Maybe it was the first sip of tea or blast of water in your morning shower, the warm silk of a cat\u2019s back arching to meet your fingers, pulling on a T-shirt softened by repeated washing or the moment you align the numbers on your bike lock and it releases with a weighty clonk? Maybe somewhere you encountered a paper coffee cup with a cardboard sleeve embossed with ridges that offered \u201ca surprisingly gratifying tactile delight\u201d? Maybe you\u2019ve never considered paper cups much; I hadn\u2019t before I read that in Ian Bogost\u2019s The Small Stuff: The Sensory Enchantment of Everyday Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Small Stuff is a manifesto for tuning into the tiny opportunities for gratification being human offers, even in increasingly frictionless<\/a>, AI-enabled, automated lives. Starting from that paper cup, Bogost \u2013 an interdisciplinary academic at Washington University, video game designer and writer \u2013 explores how we\u2019ve become what he calls \u201cdematerialised\u201d and how to fight back, analysing the idiosyncratically pleasing qualities of plastic drinking fountain tumblers, using \u201csteel-crank-roll paper towel dispensers\u201d and \u2013 don\u2019t tell me this one doesn\u2019t resonate \u2013 peeling the plastic protective film off, in his case, a wooden knife block (I have happy memories of doing this on our microwave door).<\/p>\n

From the first few pages I feel instinctively that tapping into these tiny enchantments could be life-enhancing, but also challenging. I move through the world with the grace of Mr Bean, bumbling, pratfalling, unable to operate the simplest mechanism or tool. I keep a tally of self-inflicted physical incidents in one day: I drop pasta down my top, steer my bike into a bollard, am suddenly unable to close the clasp on trousers I\u2019ve worn for ages, can\u2019t get a shower gel pump to work and bang my shin on the dishwasher door. I\u2019m also funny about sensory stuff: there\u2019s a \u201cright\u201d mug and spoon, a narrow range of acceptable temperatures for everything and all sorts of noises I hate. Can you find enchantment in the physical world when your relationship with it is so fractious? I\u2019m taking a week to find out.<\/p>\n

Day 1: the daily grindThe morning coffee ritual offers ample small pleasures. Photograph: Shaw+Shaw\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

I\u2019m already fretting. It feels as if capturing the pleasure of these moments means being more fully present \u2013 what does that mean for someone like me, who has never managed a microsecond of mindfulness? \u201cI have always found mindfulness less useful than I expected to as a technique,\u201d agrees Bogost, surprisingly. \u201cThe difference is this problem of gratification is not really in your head. In some ways, I think it\u2019s exactly the opposite of mindfulness \u2013 getting out of your head and into your body and into the world.\u201d Bodyfulness, I think to myself, but I don\u2019t say it, because it\u2019s a repulsive coinage.<\/p>\n

I start asking everyone I know what gives them bodily gratification and both my friend Tom and my elder son rave about manually preparing morning coffee: grinding, weighing water and primping the ground beans with a pronged instrument called a \u201cWeiss distribution tool\u201d. It sounds like a hipstery drag \u2013 my machine does all the work \u2013 but it\u2019s a good starting point, so I unearth a manual grinder and stovetop espresso pot. Inevitably, I\u2019m baffled by the grinder and need my husband\u2019s help assembling, but it has a nice heft and a pleasingly textured surface, and as the beans crunch through the mechanism, there\u2019s a real haptic satisfaction; the smell is wonderful too. Grinding hurts my bad elbow, though, and while the Bialetti makes a fun bubbling noise, it feels agonisingly slow at 6.30am \u2013 and my soulless machine makes better coffee.<\/p>\n

Bogost isn\u2019t, he says, suggesting analogue or old-fashioned physical sensations are better, though he understands people pining for rotary phones or tape decks. \u201cSome of that stuff was so visceral, really gratifying, and it\u2019s been lost.\u201d But there are plenty of opportunities to enjoy physical stuff in a digital world (a section of the book is devoted to ASMR \u2013 those sensory, tingle-inducing videos of things like towel folding or cooking<\/a> \u2013 and how it allows people to access pleasurable sensations off as well as online). \u201cIt\u2019s not really the analogue experience \u2013 it\u2019s living fully in your senses in the physical world.\u201d Maybe it\u2019s OK to relish pressing a button and letting my machine expertly caffeinate me?<\/p>\n

Day 2: spreading the joy<\/p>\n

On a trip to our local repair cafe<\/a>, I ask some fixers what they find gratifying. Organiser Catherine Djimramadji tells me about the sensory pleasure she gets from knitting coarsely textured wool, while Catherine Heinemeyer, busy mending a hem, shares her love of textured textiles, getting out a piece of grainy, scalloped-edge vintage linen to show me. I\u2019m neither crafty nor manually dexterous, but as I potter home, recalling an anecdote of Djimramadji\u2019s about licking trees (she enjoys it occasionally), I realise I keep touching plants. It\u2019s irresistible: the grainy seedheads of grasses, robust, oily rosemary needles, leaves with velvety soft hairs and best of all, in early summer, big, soft, scented roses. I don\u2019t just touch or smell; I stick my whole face into them almost every time and it\u2019s such an intense and transitory pleasure I resolve to do it even more. I give one of the trees a lick when I get home; it\u2019s fine, but not for me.<\/p>\n

Crunchy peanut butter and sourdough \u2013 a gratifying sensory entry point. Photograph: Shaw+Shaw\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Food is, though, and it\u2019s one of Bogost\u2019s gratifications too. \u201cI add a bit of nuts and granola into my yoghurt in the morning,\u201d he suggests as an easy entry point, \u201cso that I can feel it crunch under my teeth.\u201d In the book he calls this gratifying contrast \u201corthogonality\u201d (\u201ca fancy name for a perpendicular\u201d). In a food context, it can mean contrasting tastes or textures, but Bogost also describes how people enjoy activities quite different from their day jobs: a busy university English teacher who empties his head with fly fishing; a journalist who finds peace in solo knitting. I can definitely eat orthogonally: at lunchtime I pick lettuce from the garden (selecting and neatly snipping leaves with scissors is its own sensory pleasure) and put it in a bowl with nuts, avocado and other interesting textural bits. I toast a fat slice of sourdough until the edges char, spread it thickly with crunchy peanut butter, then eat the lot, combining textures with each mouthful \u2013 it\u2019s ecstasy. Is toast my greatest sensory enchantment?<\/p>\n

Loving tools isn\u2019t essential for achieving sensory satisfaction, but I\u2019m envious of the joy they bring users, including my extremely practical husband, whose only suggestion of a sensory delight (he\u2019s a bit baffled by the concept) is his favourite drill. He gives me a go and it\u2019s a lovely heavy beast \u2013 I enjoy revving it, and the satisfying \u201cclonk\u201d \u2013 haptic and audible \u2013 of turning it off. It\u2019s fun drilling a hole in the garage wall under his supervision, but he loses me trying to show how pleasingly it tackles long screws. \u201cNo, you\u2019re not straight,\u201d he says, repeatedly adjusting my angle. I end up pretending I \u201cget\u201d it when I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Can drilling induce sensory satisfaction? Photograph: Shaw+Shaw\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Writer Tim Hayward is a tool person. He\u2019s currently obsessed with making the experience of using the main tool of our shared trade \u2013 keyboards \u2013 more enjoyable by creating bespoke ones<\/a> and enthuses, infectiously, about the \u201cthocc<\/a>\u201d sound keys make when you strike them and the different tactile experiences they can offer. I hadn\u2019t really thought of my MacBook as a tool, but it\u2019s actually a lovely one \u2013 I like the little bounce of the keys under my fingertips, the cool smoothness of the trackpad and the sense of vague competence it gives me as I touch-type. It\u2019s a relief to realise that such a huge part of my daily life offers some gratification.<\/p>\n

Since most of my friends are middle-aged, weeding keeps coming up, too \u2013 especially the bone-deep satisfaction of getting a deep root out. It gives me a newfound appreciation for another tool: my hori hori gardener\u2019s knife<\/a>, a heavy wooden-handled piece of badassery that digs out big-rooted weeds with lethal accuracy.<\/p>\n

Day 4: a mug\u2019s game<\/p>\n

I use the same mug every morning but, inspired by watching reels of Japanese ceramics shops, I get out a long-forgotten, vaguely Japanese-looking sea-green and blue cup, with gentle undulations and an unglazed bottom. I try it out, and it\u2019s a triumph \u2013 my thumb keeps exploring the ridges and roughness for ages, like I\u2019m deeply stoned.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still stroking it when my friend Tom texts me another source of sensory pleasure \u2013 his sausage dog, Gershwin: \u201cPast a certain hour, he comes to lie next to me and I untangle his armpit hair.\u201d I lost a lot of sensory gratification when my whippet Oscar died<\/a> \u2013 gently pulling his silky ears, rubbing his scratchy paw pads, cupping his head with my palm, stroking his bare pink belly. There\u2019s some enchantment in hen keeping \u2013 I love the smooth glide of running a hand along their backs, and holding a still-warm egg is wonderful \u2013 but oh, I miss Oscar. When I meet an acquaintance walking their spaniels later, I insist on spending ages tickling the curly hair on their floppy ears.<\/p>\n

Day 5: grab that little moment of gratification<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bad day \u2013 I\u2019m under pressure and in pain (I\u2019ve hurt my shoulder), there are spillages, a wasted journey, the dentist and a tissue in the wash. Sensory gratifications struggle to cut through the stress: I usually enjoy the steady, calibrated glide of our car\u2019s steering wheel through my fingers but I\u2019m too impatient to take it in and while I spot the dentist\u2019s waiting room has exactly the paper cups with a ridged sleeve Bogost describes, I\u2019m in no state to appreciate them (I put one in my bag to examine later). Back home, I stomp off to the greenhouse, where finally, a reliable gratification \u2013 pinching out my tomato plants\u2019 side shoots \u2013 slows me down and straightens me out. Any tomato grower knows this pleasure: the neat pincer movement of finger and thumb, the slight hairiness of the stems and the heady smell of gently crushed tomato leaf.<\/p>\n

Finding contentment among the tomato plants. Photograph: Shaw+Shaw\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Bogost reassures me that struggling to enjoy the small stuff when bigger stuff goes off-kilter is standard. \u201cAny little moment of gratification that seeps through the cracks, I just try to take. Maybe it lasts a second, and that\u2019s all, and that\u2019s enough. And if it\u2019s qualitatively worse than it would have been under a different mental state, that\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother way to think of it,\u201d he adds, \u201cis that there\u2019s no scarcity to sensory experience \u2013 there\u2019s more pleasure to be had.\u201d There is. When I\u2019m getting ready for bed, I\u2019m reminded of something Catherine Heinemeyer from the repair cafe said: if you can\u2019t enjoy the small stuff of daily life, \u201cevery tooth-brushing is drudgery\u201d. It helps me notice that much as I moan about the tyranny of contemporary dental hygiene demands, I quite relish the tingle of my electric toothbrush on my front gums.<\/p>\n

Day 6: sharpening kitchen skills<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t enjoy cooking but it\u2019s regrettably necessary and people keep telling me how much they love elements of it. \u201cAdding sugar to whipped egg whites and watching it turn glossy \u2026 and scraping the fat off the top of a chilled bowl of beef stock,\u201d are two of Sue\u2019s; Annie loves making mirepoix (finely chopped carrots, celery, onions etc) using her drawstring manual chopper, \u201cscraping out with a wooden spatula \u2026 and it sizzling away.\u201d My friend Cristina relishes this stuff so much so she took a career break from biochemistry to work in professional kitchens. I invite myself round to see her knifework. She sharpens a deadly looking eight-inch thing with wonderful dexterity, demonstrating how to test the sharpness against my nail. \u201cI like the crafting of it,\u201d she says. \u201cHow it\u2019s weighted; they obviously spend a lot of time figuring out how things feel in your hand.\u201d Watching her quarter, deseed and peel a cherry tomato is extremely satisfying, and I fall into a reverie (I think we both do) as she expertly fillets two seabass.<\/p>\n

\u2018Wonderful\u2019 \u2013 a sharp knife brings a new dimension to food prep. Photograph: Shaw+Shaw\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Back home, I\u2019m emboldened to try my son\u2019s heavy, sharp knife, which I\u2019m usually too chicken to use. The weight and efficacy of its tomato slicing (obviously I don\u2019t attempt peeling) is wonderful \u2013 it definitely adds a dimension to the tedium of food prep.<\/p>\n

Day 7: drinking it all in<\/p>\n

To celebrate a week of small sensory joys, I make a dry martini using a sensorily inspiring technique Hayward<\/a> described: smashing three giant ice cubes, stirring the shards in a heavy jug with booze, then pouring the concoction into a chilled glass with a freshly peeled twist of lemon zest. Cracking the ice with a pestle is fun, the transporting scent of fresh lemon oil is delicious, as is the finished drink, but it\u2019s too much faff for me to adopt regularly.<\/p>\n

One person\u2019s drudgery, it transpires, is another\u2019s sensory delight. Over the week, I\u2019m assured there\u2019s enchantment in ironing, vacuuming and clearing gunk out of sink drains (my most-loathed chores); my friend Thom even claims washing the dishwasher filter daily is \u201crapture\u201d. I\u2019ve been introduced to a few new delights, but the lovely process of discussing other people\u2019s little gratifications has mostly helped me tune into my own: teasing apart intertwined plant seedlings with the perfect degree of pressure; the click of my scent bottle\u2019s magnetic lid; the cool smoothness of a fresh pillowcase under my cheek.<\/p>\n

The clue is in the book\u2019s name: it is small stuff \u2013 \u201cstrange, silly and trivial\u201d, as Bogost writes. But it also felt quite profound to recognise my simple bodily existence has so much to offer, if I let it. As Bogost says: \u201cI am living in my body the whole time. How do I allow it to happen to me?\u201d I put the dentist\u2019s paper cup on my desk, to remind me of what he calls this \u201clow-level, ongoing practice\u201d, and of the tiny delights even a klutz like me can find in the physical world. Then I catch my leg in my computer cable, spilling a nearby glass of water over my trousers. Baby steps.<\/p>\n

The Small Stuff by Ian Bogost (Penguin, \u00a320). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n

This article was amended on 30 June 2026. An earlier version made a reference to licking a fig tree; however, the sap of a fig tree can cause skin irritation. This reference has been removed.<\/p>\n