How Can You Find Moments of Joy?

Behind the Scenes #11 Finding a forgotten book sparked memories and moments of pleasure

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I’m Sanjida. I’m an award-winning writer and I write about writing, wildlife and wilderness. Subscribers receive two posts a month from me, a backstage pass into the writer’s life - with thoughts on writing, advice and journalling exercises, plus mini doses of inspiration from the natural world in the form of Wild Notes from our rewilding project.

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The other day I received a note from the post office telling me I needed to pay for a parcel as the sender hadn’t paid any postage. I was a little annoyed - there was also a fine to pay for not paying the postage and I had no idea who it was from or what it was. Could it be a scam?

I paid the fee and when the parcel arrived, I opened it and inside was another parcel. This was also addressed to me and also had no stamps.

Inside that, was a book. It was small and dog-eared and in French. The title was La Première Gorgée de Bière et Autres Plaisirs Minuscules; the English translation is called The Small Pleasures of Life: The French Art of Living a Good Life by Philippe Delerm.

Reading The Small Pleasures of Life: The French Art of Living a Good Life by Philippe Delerm in Crete this summer.

Postcards from the past

There was a postcard from a retired teacher who had taught at the same school where my mother was the head of French and with whom she’d had a somewhat fractious relationship. The teacher said that my mum had lent her the book and it had taken her a long time to read it, but now that she had, she had loved it. She was returning it to me, but she hoped that I would send it back to her.

This seemed somewhat cheeky - to borrow a book, hold on to it for years, post it to the daughter of the person whose book it is without paying any postage and then demand the book be returned. I assumed the book had been lent many years ago because my mother, sadly, has dementia and has been in a care home since 2021.

Intrigued, though, I opened the book. It was careworn, with notes scribbled in it in blue biro. Even with my rudimentary French, I could understand the titles of some of these small pleasures, each one of which was a mini chapter in the book - the pleasure of eating a croissant on the street, of reading a novel by Agatha Christie, the first sip of a cold glass of beer.

As I was looking through the book, another postcard fell out. It was a watercolour by Elizabeth Blackadder, Indian Still Life with Fans and it written by me, in very careful handwriting, to my mother. There was no date, but this is what it said:

Dear Mum,

I came across this book when I was doing my research for the pleasure article. It’s out of print so I had to buy you a used copy and it’s a bit more used than I anticipated!

Love Sanjida

I have no memory of any of this. I assume the article was about the science of pleasure for the Guardian or the Independent newspaper because, until the financial crash of 2008, I was a features writer for those newspapers, writing about science and the environment.

I was touched by this note. My mother and I love each other, but we haven’t always had the best relationship. She showed her love for me in practical ways. She read and kept a copy of every single article I ever wrote - and I was being published by UK national newspapers and magazines for almost twenty years. Yet she told me she was not proud of me, and she had frequently told me my journalism was ‘incomprehensible’, she had ‘no idea what you’re writing about’ and my writing, before being edited and published, ‘was too flawed to read.’

The book and the postcard reminded me that in spite of what she said and how hurt I was by her comments, she had, in her way, been proud of me (surely?) and that I and my writing must have been such a big part of her life if she had kept all those articles (surely?).

It also reminded me of something else: that in spite of scant emotional validation when I was growing up, I am a kind person.

I had sought out a postcard of an artist I thought my mother would have loved, I had tracked down a copy of a book that was not easy to find, bought it for her and posted it to her in the hope it would bring her a small pleasure in life.

What are small pleasures?

To fully understand what the book was about, I bought the English translation. In many ways, the joys are ones that I would not consider a pleasure or are old-fashioned: learning about the death of an obscure (to me) French singer whilst on the French motorway; trying to phone someone from an old-fashioned phone box as the coins drop through the slots; inhaling the smell of apples one has picked and stored in a cellar.

Others transcend time and culture - a buttery croissant, still hot from the bakery, eaten outside; picking and eating blackberries; losing oneself in an Agatha Christie novel; a garden at sunset at the end of summer.

For a few seconds you become both the bucolic grandfather with his white moustache, and the child at the water’s edge where the scent of elder trees lingers. In the time it takes to open and close the blade, you’re not so much caught between two ages as straddling them.

From A Knife in your Pocket by Philippe Delerm

What they seemed to be about was nostalgia, for a time long past or even recently past, for a liminal period of time, reminding one of past, present and future selves, such as the pleasure of carrying a pocket-knife, an old-fashioned wooden one that one’s imaginary grandfather might have carried and used to peel off a slice of apple, and which you as a child might once have coveted to whittle a stick.

Your thoughts drift, sometimes right back to childhood - hazy memories of counting each step on walks spent worrying about school and longing for romance. You feel overwhelmed. The upheaval in your soul is as strong as summer rain, washing across you in familiar waves of joy and sorrow.

From Sunday Evening by Phillippe Delerm

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Reading this book prompted me to write about some of my own small pleasures in life:

• the smell of coffee

• opening a new book and inhaling the scent of ink and paper

• the way flowers glow, back-lit by the sun

• sliding into freshly laundered sheets after a shower

• the sweet, sharp smell of cut grass

• a sip of a dry rosé on a hot day, condensation beading the glass

• the smell of jasmine at dusk, the heat of the day trapped between the petals

• the colour of autumn leaves

• bluebells in spring

• biting into a crisp Discovery apple, white-fleshed with a pink stain below the skin

• my dog wagging his tail so hard he hits my legs with one sweep and his face with the next

• a wood fire.

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And if you wish it, a little creative writing exercise:

1. What are your small pleasures in life?

2. Can you write them up in a way that uses all of your senses?

3. Can you reach that liminal point in your writing where you float through time, connecting the past, the present and the future - your own self, or others, or a period of time in the past, present and future?

Please post the ones you are proudest of in the comments!

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