Wall Lights and Other Small Victories

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe morning began quietly, which is always a slightly suspicious gift when you know what's coming after it. A full list waiting, and an hour or so beforehand that belonged entirely to me. So I made coffee and, for reasons I couldn't entirely justify at the time, decided that this was the moment to sort out the wall lights.

They'd been sulking for a while. Nothing dramatic — one of them had developed the habit of coming on only when it felt appreciated — and I'd been walking past them for weeks with the vague intention of doing something about it. There is a particular satisfaction in fixing a small domestic thing before eight in the morning. It's not a meaningful achievement by any reasonable measure, but it sets a tone. The lights now behave. I stood there for a moment admiring them the way one admires a dog that has finally learned to sit.

Then the morning proper arrived and went at full tilt, as expected. Busy in the good way — the sort where you look up and discover that two hours have gone somewhere without informing you.

Lunch was with the pharma people, at Amici, just across the road. Italian, and rather good, which does a lot of quiet work in these situations. There's an art to a working lunch: everyone knows what it is, nobody pretends otherwise, and the food is left to do the diplomacy. We got through the business over pasta without anyone having to force enthusiasm, which I count as a success on both sides. I've sat through enough of these to appreciate the ones where the conversation is genuinely useful and the bread is warm.

The afternoon was paperwork. I won't dress it up. It is what it is — a steady procession of forms and signatures and things requiring attention that will never thank you for it. There's a rhythm to it if you surrender to it early enough, and I did, and it passed.

Home earlier than usual, because of a haircut. Which sounds like a small thing and is a small thing, but I always come out feeling faintly reorganised, as though a bit of admin has been done on my head as well as on my desk. The barber and I have long since arrived at a comfortable arrangement where neither of us feels the need to make conversation, and I've come to value that more than I expected to.

Dinner in front of an episode of The Gentlemen. Guy Ritchie doing what Guy Ritchie does — everyone speaking in fully-formed paragraphs, violence arriving politely, and a country house being treated as a character. Great fun, and undemanding in exactly the right way after a day of forms.

Idlan was out with friends, so the house had that particular hush to it. Not empty — Anita was here, dinner happened, the evening carried on as evenings do — just quieter. You notice the absence of someone before you notice anything else about the room.

A good day, in the end. And the lights work.