Colm O'Regan: Here's my don't-do-enough list — eating beans on toast is number one
Minihane Examiner Denis Picture: In Colm Edian Pictured Cork Columnist O'regan And Irish
“This is brilliant! Why don’t I do this more often?”
I’d just finished the first beans-on-toast I’d had in a while, and was berating myself.
It’s not that I’m usually eating roast swan painted with gold leaf. Beans-on-toast is not beneath me. I just never remember to eat it enough.
Well, after one mouthful, I wired into it. Milled into it. Horsed into it. All the violent eating metaphors you like.
So what else am I denying myself?
I have to be careful here in case I reveal some disturbing personal habits – “washing yourself, who knew? Have you guys tried it?”
But there are a few obvious things that are just nice but surrounded by inertia.
I’m not talking about sea swimming or long walks. These require effort and planning. I’m talking about things that are within reach, yet inexplicably underused.
Okay, I know probably 50% of the population know all about hot water bottles as a necessity at certain times but I keep forgetting to make one for myself.
For the first 22 years of my life in an unheated upstairs, the hot water ritual was as ingrained as brushing your teeth.
Boil the kettle but not all the way, fill the hot water bottle but not all the way, burp the bottle to get excess steam out, close the lid, wipe the lid area with a tea-towel.
Place in bed. The ultimate sustainable heating device. Heat the space you’re in, not the 12 inches just below the ceiling.
The greatest cleaning bang for your buck you can get besides the demo in a shake and vac ad.
Cleaning an oven takes all day, no one notices. Cleaning windows – lets the light in. Takes the shame out of the house.
Also, while doing so. you can pretend you are in a saucy 1970s film.
Long before gastro pubs and “neighbourhood eateries”, there was, is and ever shall be, the carvery.
The shining food-lamp on the hill, the haven on a cold winter’s day. You never get a ‘goo’ for a neighbourhood eaterie.
But when you feel it in your bones that it’s a carvery day, you will look at your spouse with longing, hoping they’re thinking the same thing.
“Bitta stuffing, bitta gravy?” and you’ll head for the nearest bain-marie.
The last bit of socialism left. The last place you can sit without having to pay for it. No hostile architecture. No bird poo.
I called into a library FOR NO REASON recently. I swear my heart rate dropped by 10 somethings.
It’s not the absolute quiet. For that, go to a church. There is still hubbub.
There is a skittering of from children’s area, the rustle of jackets as teenagers do homework and send each other comments, but even all that is absorbed by the books.
You can smell them before you see them. Waiting for you. An infinite scroll arranged by category and alphabet.
Not by an algorithm designed to make you mad. Take a book down at random. Be bored with it. Put it back. Waste time there.
I took a not-used-enough-one down from the shelf yesterday.
It’s one of these Draw Things In Steps ones. You know the type.
The first three steps are Don Conroy, the last step is Donatello. But still, you have a rough shape of a polar bear at the end of it.
And show it to no one on social media. It’s not for them. It’s for you. It’s not a competition. It’s pointless. That’s why it’s great.
Do you know what else we don’t do enough of? Making don’t-do-enough lists. So part two is coming soon.
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