A couple of months ago, I went to the butchers’ for the first time.
Inspired by Ben Slater’s Substack Gristle, I needed a particular cut of meat to make a terrine, but couldn’t find it in the supermarkets where I usually shopped (vegetarians & vegans, don’t worry – there’s no more specific meat chat, so you can keep reading!)
As I walked out, bag in hand, I felt a sense of genuine achievement and joy. I realised that I had, in fact, been wanting to do this for quite some time, to live out my cottagecore fantasy and approximate the lives of the brown-paper-bag people on Instagram who call ingredients “produce”. (I know, I know: this is just how it was a few decades ago. But I’m a Zillennial, let me exercise my right to rose-tinted glassily look back at recent history!) In fact, as I emerged back onto the high street, I had the genuine thought: “Well, that’s that ticked off the bucket list.”
But immediately, that felt wrong. My bucket list is less a concrete list, more an amorphous blob of “huh, that would be cool”, but I instinctively felt that ‘going to the local butchers’ shouldn’t really be given quite the same billing as ‘Roadtrip across America’, ‘See the Northern Lights’ or ‘Party with the DJs after a Radio 1 Big Weekend’. It wouldn’t be a very long game of spot the odd one out, you know?
So where does it belong? By the time I got home, I’d devised an entirely new list, which I’m calling my Bucket and Spade List.
because buckets for the beach are smaller, get it?
My Bucket and Spade List is the home for everything I dream of doing that isn’t quite Once-in-a-lifetime level, but is instead a few-times-this-lifetime.
A snippet of said List, for your delectation:
Try a deep fried Mars bar
Buy myself flowers weekly
Keep up my one line a day diary for 5 years
Learn to play the drums
Buy a baguette and carry it home peeking out of the top of my tote bag
Ingrid Fetell Lee’s Joyful Home course
To me, the Bucket and Spade List reflects the fact that there is joy to be found in the everyday; a reminder that, as that famous Annie Dillard quote goes, “how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives”. These items are not every day occurrences, but they’re also not pie in the sky. In that way, it’s not a replacement for the Bucket List — which is to say, if anyone is best mates with Greg James or Vick Hope, holler at your gal — but an accompaniment to.
What would be on your Bucket and Spade List? Or, for that matter, your Bucket List? I’d love to know!
Here’s a little window into what I’m enthusiastic about at the mo…
01 lusting after
a sewing room. I finished a sewing project on Saturday night and I love it but the logistics of maintaining a sewing hobby in your 4-room (total, not bedrooms, obvs) flat in London is hard. I genuinely think if I had a room where I could just keep all my sewing stuff out, I’d be unstoppable (the shirt still turned out CUTE though, don’t you think?!)
02 currently reading
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez (#afflink). I’m in a race against time to finish this one, because someone else has reserved it in the library after me (the audacity!!!) but I’m loving it!
03 wishing I wrote
Every single tweet I came across about the Lionesses’ win on Sunday. Truly, I know that app is a hellsite, but times like this are pretty much the only reason I’m still on it.
04 whipping up
This cherry salad, from @eatlovemove. Bellissimo!
05 listening to
Chromatica, by Lady Gaga. I went to the concert on Friday, and it was sensational — even if the flamethrowers were perfect prep for the fiery pits of hell :)
The final thing from me is just to say that whilst writing this, I hit 1000 orders on The Enthusiast - so thank you SO MUCH if you’ve ever ordered from me. What a brilliant bunch you are! (And if you want to join the crew, pre-orders close at 8pm tonight.)
Love,
Ellie xxx