Saturday began without much ambition.

There was no elaborate itinerary waiting on my phone, no alarm urging us out of bed before the rest of the world had properly woken, and no determination to squeeze every possible activity into the day. After the usual rhythm of work, responsibilities, and the endless little things adulthood insists are urgent, I simply wanted to go outside. The weather was kind, Birmingham had been given one of those precious stretches of English sunshine that always feels slightly borrowed, and staying indoors suddenly seemed almost disrespectful.

So I put on something I liked, stepped outside with Jan, and allowed the day to decide what it wanted to become.

Perhaps that is why I remember it so fondly. Nothing extraordinary was supposed to happen.

We began by walking along Birmingham’s canals, where the city seems to reveal a different version of itself. Away from the busiest streets, the pace changes. Old brick buildings rise beside the water, bridges curve overhead, and the reflections of modern Birmingham mingle with remnants of its industrial past. I have walked around the city many times, yet there is something about the canals that makes me look at it differently.

The water was unusually still that afternoon. Buildings, bridges and pieces of blue sky appeared almost perfectly duplicated on its surface, disturbed occasionally by the smallest movement. We slowed down without discussing it. There was nowhere we urgently needed to be, and for once, I wasn’t thinking several hours ahead.

I stood beside the water for a little while and watched.

It sounds almost embarrassingly uneventful when written down. I stood beside a canal. Nothing profound happened. No revelation descended from the sky. Life did not rearrange itself dramatically around me.

And yet, I think adulthood has made me appreciate precisely those moments.

There is an enormous difference between doing nothing because you are bored and doing nothing because, for a few minutes, you are completely content. I spend so much of my working life thinking ahead—what needs doing next, what needs checking, what cannot be forgotten—that sometimes simply standing somewhere without needing to solve anything feels like its own peculiar luxury.

Eventually, hunger reminded us that contemplation has limits, and we made our way to Piccolino for lunch.

There is something about eating outdoors when the British weather finally cooperates that makes an ordinary meal feel almost celebratory. Perhaps it is because sunshine here never feels guaranteed. When it arrives properly, people respond as though someone has announced a national holiday. Tables appear outside, jackets disappear, sunglasses emerge from drawers, and suddenly everyone behaves as if we have collectively relocated to the Mediterranean.

We settled into our table and, almost immediately, the day slowed another degree.

I ordered a citrus mango drink, bright and cold and exactly the sort of thing sunshine persuades you to order. It arrived glowing in the glass like summer had somehow become drinkable.

Then came the food.

There was golden calamari, crisp enough to make that first bite particularly satisfying, followed by seafood and pasta tangled together with tomatoes and all the flavours that make you stop talking temporarily because conversation can wait. Another dish arrived with prawns unapologetically intact—heads, shells and all—which, to my Filipino eyes, is usually a promising sign rather than an inconvenience.

Food has always been one of the ways I remember a day.

I might eventually forget exactly what time we arrived or which route we took, but I will remember sitting outside beneath the Birmingham sun, reaching across the table, talking between mouthfuls and having nowhere else we particularly needed to be. I will remember the flavours because they became attached to everything surrounding them—the weather, the conversation, the person sitting across from me.

Perhaps that is why sharing food can feel so intimate. We are not merely eating. We are attaching taste and scent to memory.

Dessert made an already good lunch considerably harder to leave. There was pistachio panna cotta with raspberries and crushed nuts, delicate enough to look almost too beautiful to disturb, although naturally we overcame that difficulty. Then came an affogato: vanilla gelato meeting hot espresso, simple in principle and ridiculously satisfying in practice.

I took my time with it.

That might be one of the quieter things I have learned as I have grown older: enjoyment does not always need to be earned by exhaustion. We have become remarkably good at treating pleasure as a reward that must follow productivity. Finish the work. Complete the chores. Reach the goal. Survive the week. Then perhaps we are permitted to enjoy ourselves.

But what if an ordinary Saturday is reason enough?

What if sunshine is reason enough?

What if being alive, having someone you love beside you and having enough time to sit over dessert without watching the clock is already an occasion worth recognising?

After lunch, we wandered again with fuller stomachs and considerably less urgency. Somewhere along the way, I found a greeting card bearing the words, “I was not made to be subtle.”

I laughed when I saw it.

Maybe because there was something amusingly accurate about it. I like colour. I like words. I feel things deeply. I can spend far too long thinking about something apparently insignificant and then turn it into several paragraphs on a blog. There are parts of me that are quiet, certainly, but subtle? Perhaps not always.

And I am increasingly comfortable with that.

Growing older has gradually made me less interested in shrinking the parts of myself that bring me joy simply because they might appear excessive to someone else. Wear the bright scarf. Take the photograph. Order dessert. Write the sentimental paragraph. Laugh loudly when something is funny. Tell people you love them while you still have the opportunity.

Life already asks us to be serious often enough.

Later, we headed to SEA LIFE, which deserves its own story entirely. There would be glass tunnels, strange underwater creatures and the childlike fascination that seems to return whenever you stand close enough to something you normally only encounter on a screen.

But when I think back to that Saturday, the part that stays with me most is not necessarily the attraction we visited afterwards.

It is the space between everything.

Walking beside the canal. Sunshine against old brick. Sitting across from Jan with food between us. A mango drink catching the light. A ridiculous little greeting card that made me laugh. Leaning against someone I love beside the water and having absolutely nothing important to say.

Once, I might have thought memorable days needed to contain something exceptional. Travel taught me to search for spectacular landscapes and adulthood taught me to celebrate milestones, but ordinary life has been teaching me something quieter: a good life cannot be built entirely from extraordinary moments, because extraordinary moments are rare. It has to be built from our ability to recognise the ordinary ones while they are happening.

That Saturday did not change my life. And perhaps that is exactly why I want to remember it. Because life is not only the birthdays, promotions, weddings, holidays, departures and arrivals that divide our years into recognisable chapters. Most of a lifetime happens between those things. It happens over lunch. During walks. While choosing what to order. While laughing at greeting cards. While holding someone’s arm beside a canal on a sunny afternoon.

We spend so much time waiting for life to become memorable that sometimes we fail to notice that it already is. So no, there were no fireworks that Saturday. Nothing dramatic happened. We simply walked, ate, talked, laughed and spent the day together. But somewhere between the calamari and the sunshine, I remembered something worth keeping: joy does not always announce itself. Sometimes it simply sits down beside you on an ordinary Saturday and waits to see whether you are paying attention.

I am glad I was.

With love,
Anj ♥