Old fashioned/simple pleasures that you still enjoy?

[TheQuietDignityOfASandwich]

There are plenty of things that I appreciate about modern life including MN but I’d love to read about some old fashioned ir simple things that you still enjoy.

Perhaps not the best example but the other day I went to a garden centre and I had an egg mayonnaise sandwich on wholemeal bread with a pot of tea and it was lovely. I often find that a lot of cafes put too many ingredients and sauces in their sandwiches so it was nice to have something relatively plain.

Also sitting having a cup of tea and a simple iced bun while listening to a Radio 4 play. And I’ve been watching old one off dramas and mini-series on Youtube. They’re so much slower paced than dramas now but all the more enjoyable for that.

What simple pleasures do you enjoy?

The Archers omnibus on Sunday mornings
The Shipping Forecast late at night
Walking on the beach in winter looking for sea glass
Working on my allotment
Writing Christmas cards
Hand knitted blankets
Cheese on toast
My very simple cafetière - keep your nespresso machine!

Getting my treasured Parker ink pen out of the drawer and filling it up to write my Christmas cards. I bought it in 1981 when I started my A levels.
Enjoying a snowball at Christmas, complete with a cherry or two on a cocktail stick.
Selecting an LP, taking it out of it’s sleeve and playing it on a record player.

Dog walk with Desert Island Discs or Just A Minute playing.
Re-potting baby plants that have sprouted into their own pot.
I weirdly enjoy using a dirty sock to dust skirting boards/top of the washing machine and tumble before I put it in for the wash.

My favourite clock stopped working last week - the first thing DH and I bought together nearly 30 years ago. I ordered a new movement, it came late last night. So this morning, I dismantled the clock (photo every step, little pots for the bits), cleaned it with a soft brush, fitted new movement and reassembled. It worked first time.

I definitely saw at that moment, just what pleasure a craftsman gets from their work. A simple pleasure for a Sunday morning.

Many of the above things. A vase of flowers on the coffee table.

Owning a teasmaid (bought my first one second hand when I was a teenager) and lying bed for an hour or so in the morning with a choice of radio, podcasts, solitaire, Mumsnet.

Then breakfast with a pot of looseleaf Barry's tea.

Spotting wildflowers when out and about, and enjoying all the seasonal changes in plant and birdlife. Noticed my first redwings of the year on Thursday.

Thanks to this excellent thread I put the very good but quite painful to read Lionel Davidson thriller (1) I was part way through aside, am enjoying re-reading Venetia and have ordered one of the few Angela Thirkell novels I've never read as a Christmas treat.

And some Janet Evanovitch Stephanie Plum books, I need some Morelli vs Ranger, Grandma Mazur misbehaving at a funeral, and a blown-up car or two.

(1) Davidson Making Good Again, a German Jew now living in Israel in the late 1960s looking for reparation. As I said, excellent, but not fun.

Simple Things is available online through my library for free. Perhaps others will have access to it through theirs?

My simple pleasure is going to a library or a bookshop to browse and then reading one of my finds in a coffee shop.

This, absolutely. I love my Kindle, but there is something wonderful about curling up with a physical book.