A-Z of pleasure

Words Lucinda Stump

LYING on the verandah in the morning sun with a good book is one of my greatest pleasures. And I was doing this the other day, listening to the echidnas burrowing beneath the floorboards, when I put my book down and began musing on all the things in my life that give me pleasure.

Anyone who knows me well would be able to list the most obvious ones quite easily: chocolate, Rafa (short for Rafa-Puppy-Mummy’s-Baby, the 56-kilo Rhodesian Ridgeback with whom I’m currently sharing the verandah sofa), babies, the colour green ... did I mention chocolate?

But, in my mind, I was ticking off the more obscure ones that don’t often get a mention but that put a spring in my step and a smile on my face. I began jotting them down on my phone, a sort of incomplete A to Z of simple pleasures. Perhaps you recognise some of them.

A is for answers. I am, I confess, impatient. I want answers. I’d love to frame it as curiosity, but it’s basically just impatience, plain and simple.

I skipped B, although I should probably have noted books, with which I have conducted a lifelong love affair. I’ve already covered C. And D, as mentioned, is for my dog. And for dancing.

E is for echidnas, even though their burrowing has damaged the house’s foundations to such a degree that some of the doors don’t shut and most of the windows don’t open. I’ve watched their babies basking in the sun and rolling in the dust outside my kitchen window and they are totally adorable. Well worth the havoc they wreak.

F. I was trying to type finishing into my phone, because I love completing a task, but it auto-corrected to fishing. No. Definitely not fishing. See previous note about impatience.

G is for girlfriends. They literally are the glue.

H is for home.

I’m skipping I and bundling J, K and L, for joking, kidding and laughter. I simply love being with people who make me laugh. Last week, I overheard a neighbour say, in all seriousness, that it should be a criminal offence to go to town and come home without a cooked chook. And when my son was getting a little over-excited at our local picnic races recently, his girlfriend apologised to me for not lungeing him before taking him out in public.

I ignored L, M and N, and went straight to O for opera. The 17th-century French playwright Molière is supposed to have opined, “Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.” Yet I can’t help but love it. I don’t get to many performances, for obvious reasons, but I love to belt out La Traviata on the loudspeakers if I have a day home alone.

P is for politeness. It need not be over-the-top, but the text message “thanx for having us” doesn’t quite cut it. Manners can never be overrated. And here I went down a bit of a rabbit hole reflecting on all the visitors we’ve entertained here at Eurambeen over the years: the ones who arrive with a cake or a plant, or a really good book they’ve just read; the ones who offer to whip up a salad dressing or a dessert. At the end of the night, these are the ones enthusiastically competing in the Stump family game, “Who can jump high enough to touch the kitchen ceiling?” Annoyingly, there has also been the other sort. You know the ones: those who watch you juggle a whining two-year-old, a white sauce and a mountain of washing while you make them a G&T.

Q is for queuing. I’m English. I like order and I’m happy to queue. R is for reading (at the moment, anything by Irish writers) and S is for shoes, silly!

T is for thank you and for taking the trouble; U is for understanding; V is still for visitors despite what I said about the annoying ones; W for walking, especially if it’s overseas with a gang of girls (see G), and I’m not sure about X.

Y is for yes; hurray for people whose default position is yes, not no. And certainly not “maybe” (see A).

Z is for this zip and zing. Please Lord, may I always have a bit of them.

On that note, I’d better heave myself off the sofa and get back to work. Note: cooking, cleaning and accounts are unlikely to ever make it onto the list. Unless, of course, I finish them (see F).