The Pleasure Reports are notes on the pleasure I found in my life each week. This purposeful focus on pleasure began in 2010. I was working with countless managers who were working themselves sick, our aim was to establish new ways of working that would not make them sick. And then realising that whilst ‘not sick’ might have been a good aim to start with, it was a terrible one to stop at. How about ways of working that are a pleasure?!  And so the study of pleasure began with The Pleasure Reports – a weekly record of -how many things were a pleasure -how many a pain and -what the pain to pleasure ratio was that week. I thought I’d do it for one year and ended up carrying on for three. You can read the whole story of how it began here and here.

Week 51 in the year of pleasure.

You know that means next week is the final week of this first year of pleasure!

There’ll be some thing to say about that next week. For now………

The Pleasure

41 points

and a 41:1 pleasure to pain ratio

A selection of the pleasure

Plump sultanas

I started warming the milk for my breakfast cereal a few weeks back when it was minus something outside and we needed all the warmth we could get.

Now I’ve kept it up even though the temperature has reached a relatively balmy 11 degrees.

And the reason…….

plump sultanas

Oh the sweet little treasures

Are they sweeter do you think when warmed and plumped?

Or is it just the warm plumpness alone that makes me close my eyes and emit noises befitting a true pleasure?

Five rhythms once more

More noises, uncontainable bursts of squee as we danced.

Five rhythms dancing to be precise.

I’ve been away from the class for a while now but the new term started last night and I was there.

I thought I’d be easing myself back in, take it gently to start with, but he played ( the tempter) some tracks that just seem to inhabit me and I let them.

Woah…..wild dancing.

Today I feel about 93 years old but I don’t care.

Lovely wine and clean floors

My gentlemanfriend got some lovely wine.

We’re not hugely knowledgeable but we like sipping and savouring together and expressing our appreciation.

Our vocabulary is a bit on the paltry side but we manage an ‘mmmm smooth’ or ‘oh yes it is soft isn’t it’ or (my particular speciality) ‘ooo it’s very wide’

Some Viognier’s are just wide. It’s a good thing, full flavour without being overpowering is what I think I’m getting at.

This week was extra lovely as my gentlemanfriend (not one much for cleaning), knowing how hard it is for me to really relax and enjoy myself if I’ve had to wade through or sit in amongst dust and crumbs and such, had cleaned. The floors were hoovered and he’d even dusted and polished. Oh wow.

Lovely wine AND a clean house to appreciate it in. No barriers to our sipping pleasure.

He’s a lovely lovely man. (And no you still can’t have him)

The Pain

Brambles and bogginess

The sun shone this weekend and given that we’re just back from the land of the dark (Arctic Circle Norway offering 2 hours of gloomy dusk per day and pitch black for the other 22 hours), we were especially keen to feel some of it on our faces. We went for a walk.

I like walks, but it was boggy everywhere and we were sinking and there seemed to be no-where with firm sure footing except right at the edges where there were brambles catching their thorns in my trousers.

Sink or be savaged.

Not my happiest choice. And we didn’t really know our way about and so couldn’t be sure if turning round and going back would be the thing or whether a solid path was just around the next corner. I’ve plodded happily round many walks like this with a platform of mud building up on my boots, batting not an eyelid, but this time it was a pain.

I felt really vulnerable and whimpery and just wanted a path now.

I suppose we’d just experienced force 10 gales at sea for days on end and dry land that stayed still was something I was more in need of than normal.

I got by asking pointedly ‘ So is there a path SOON?’ and ‘Would we be better to go back?

The pain I did something about.

It really took me by surprise how vulnerable and whimpery I felt out walking in amongst the boggy and the brambles.

We did eventually reach a path and then a bench in the sun. So we sat and let everything be still. No sliding about and nothing grabbing at our legs.

The sun was weak and there was none of that thing where you close your eyes and see a bold red and then feel the heat spreading through your body, but it was light and it was still and that was enough.

The Pleasure Posse

Pleasures tweeted this week using the #itsapleasure hashtag on twitter

@LadyChrisMyers Cozying up in my home office w/fave blanket & a space heater. #itsapleasure

There were others I thought I’d tweeted, but that remain, it seems, in my head or lost in the twitterverse

How about you?

How’s your pleasure and pain been this week?

Come and tell us all in the comments.

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