At a time of trauma, it can seem facile, churlish, even immoral to talk of anything other than the source of that trauma. And yet, you will have to eat breakfast. You will still need something to drink. Dinner will happen nonetheless. Food is part of the fabric that binds us, across age, across accents, across oceans, across nations.

So, why not take a moment from the sweat and dust of modern life to celebrate the small things that keep our hearts beating—to celebrate the very best food to have been made this week?

Take it away, Instagram.

Here is an almost-perfect depiction of my Year 8 PE class in which I—nine stone and counting—tried to do floor gymnastics surrounded by a group of pre-adolescent girls in cycling shorts and white vests, to the haunting strains of Berlin’s 1986 hit “Take My Breath Away.” It must have been glorious to watch. Truly glorious.

Gourd bless you for giving it a shot, Chakrashakes but, honestly, I think it’s going to take an awful lot more than a couple of beetroot and some coriander slop to make me stop crying into an actual towel this week.

Something variety something spice of ladle something something.

As the poet Chad Davidson once wrote, it’s the consistency of flesh that drives us. Drives us, I would say, unto despair. Despear. Oh, forget it.

Ever since I took a misty dawn swim in a near-freezing pond surrounded by semi-naked women last week, I’ve had the most insatiable craving for cinnamon buns. One explanation, of course, is because the pecan-topped cinnamon bun tray one of the frigid paddlers brought with her was so still-warm delicious, that I thought I might accidentally go down on it. The other is that the only thing that can make contemporary politics even vaguely palatable is industrial quantities of butter, sugar, spice, and all things nice.

What’s the word for when you anthropomorphised a root vegetable, but into an animal? It is, I believe, “zoomorphism.” Or, you know, dickheadery. Whichever you find easier to spell.

This is just your regular friendly reminder that if you eat a bunch of sticks, pine cones, needles, bark, and leaves it will do untold damage not only to your teeth and breath but it will also wreak havoc on your anus. I mean, you’d think this sort of thing would go without saying but, after the year we’ve just had, it seems that maybe we need to go back and start covering the basics again.

Nice to see your Uncle Martin is really running free with his creative side since you gave him that new Sunday Love Songs compilation. Also, can I just be the first to say that you are never too old for a kimono—all power to his silken elbow.

We may be broken, we may feel empty, we may be scrambled but, my god, we must keep going. Think not off the breaking shell, but of the laying; worry not about the damage done but try to build a better future.

Honey, I know, I know, I know times are changing. It’s time we all reach out, for something new, that means you too. I only wanted to see you dancing in the purple rain.