Monday

I don’t know whether to walk into the sea or burst into joyful song. The young folk, you see, have taken to … unboxing conkers on the interweb. It is, I am told by people hundreds of years younger than me and yet still not quite young enough to be participating themselves, the latest trend on TikTok. Instead of opening up their latest purchases or freebies on the platform (or is it a channel? Zoetrope with notions?), they have taken to easing conkers out of their spiny cases and marvelling at the beauty within.

On the one hand, how wonderful, how wholesome is this! That the ancient tradition, the profound sense of connection with nature, of appreciation of the wonders it performs, endures within human beings in the year 2025, despite what we might fairly describe as “everything”.

On the other hand, shouldn’t they be doing this face to face by a hedgerow or playground? And shouldn’t they really, really not be referring to them as “nature’s blind boxes” (blind boxes: packaging that does not give away precisely what you have bought) or “nature’s Labubus” (collectible, terrifying homunculi sold in blind boxes as a testament to the infinite gullibility and acquisitive urge of mankind that will ultimately doom us all) as they do so?

I don’t know. Answers on a postcard or video clip to the usual address, please.

Tuesday

Speaking of the acquisitive urge that will doom us all: I have discovered TV merch. What a rush! I no longer have to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine on a loop as my sole remaining refuge from life’s cares and woes – I can now wear a T-shirt showing The Nine Expressions of Holt (they’re all the same picture of his face), drink my coffee out of a Jake Peralta mug with “Cool cool cool, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt” written all over it and rest my weary head on a cushion bearing the legend “Chills, literal chills” above a picture of the I Want It That Way line up (if you know, you know)! And – here’s the thing – all WHILE watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine on a loop as my sole remaining refuge from life’s cares and woes! You know where I, Jake, Amy, Terry, Rosa, Charles and Raymond are if you need us.

Wednesday

Psychologists – they’re always so busy, aren’t they? – think they have discovered the reason for Ikea’s success. It’s not the revolutionarily potent combination of great design at affordable prices, it’s the quirk of human nature that leads us to value things we have made ourselves more highly than stuff bought ready-made.

This has, of course, led to the traditional slew of jokes about the assembly of flatpack furniture and the impossibility/aneurysm-burstingness thereof. And, as ever, I feel I must step in. For I, a certifiable idiot in all matters practical and dextrous, have put together a vast array of Ikea furniture in my time, from the simple Billy bookcase to the eight-drawer Hemnes chest of drawers without any more than the occasional exasperated sigh. I have got divorced several times while in-store buying them with my hitherto beloved, but that’s a separate issue. Ikea’s instructions are matchlessly clear. All you have to do is stay humble. You do not know better than the people who created the furniture or who wrote those things for you. If you rush at it, you will go wrong. If you follow step by step, you will not. If you take care to distinguish one length of screw from another, as they show you how to do, you will arrive at your goal without incident. There is a reason those instructions contain each step they do. Every line in every diagram means something. Ignore them at your peril. Accept that you do not know best. Give yourself up to a higher power. Know peace. And sturdy storage solutions.

Thursday

Gwyneth Paltrow has given an interview to Vogue in which she announced that the world needs a book on “conscious uncoupling” – the phrase, for those of you who had until now remained mercifully unaware, with which she and her then-husband, Chris Martin, informed the world that they were splitting up.

I take this as a threat. For it is my very strong feeling that the world does not need a book about conscious uncoupling from Gwyneth Paltrow. In fact, I will go further. It is my very strong feeling that the world needs neither a book on conscious uncoupling nor anything further at all from Gwyneth Paltrow. And that is because it is my very strong feeling that there is enough already in the world from people whose greatest strength is monetising guff. We have all Gooped more than enough Goop for one lifetime. Goop off.

Friday

I’m coming up to my final book event of the year. God, I’ve had a lovely time, travelling round the country talking about my book, other people’s books, books generally, books as objects, books as friends, books as illumination, education, consolation, books as everything, really. If you’d told me as an anxious, useless child finding refuge only in reading that this would one day be part of my life, I wouldn’t have believed you, but I would have clung to the idea as a beautiful, irenic dream while non-bookish sorts tried to stuff my head down the loo at school.

Now all I have to do is read all the books I acquired on my travels. Michael Hogan’s The Dogwalkers’ Detective Agency. The Treasures, by Harriet Evans. Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire. Hop, Step and Jump, by Winifred Watson. And many more. My grandma was right. It’s a grand life if you don’t weaken. And learn to hold your breath in bog water. That bit’s really the key.