By Fabrice, France. Harvest looks simple from the supermarket aisle. In Fabrice’s world, it is a season of watching, tasting, waiting, preserving, sharing — and knowing what nature is doing before it is too late. At the moment, I am surrounded by fruit. There are plums to collect, apples and quinces coming, nuts later, and…
By Ismar, Brazil. Electricity, mobile phones, Sunday shopping, online gambling and an election led me towards a different everyday mystery: perhaps what we take for granted is not the thing itself, but the life we have built around it. When I press a light switch, I expect the light to come on. I don’t think…
By Babette, Germany New colleagues, favourite colleagues, lunch negotiations and the small routines that make a workplace feel human. There is a new colleague at work. I normally go into the office on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but because he was starting, I wondered if I should change my plans and go in especially. I…
By Babette, Germany. Babette does not love roller coasters. Her children do. Somewhere between growing children, theme parks and one unexpectedly quiet day, she discovered that courage can arrive one ride at a time. There are certain signs that your children are growing up which are easy to miss. One day you are helping with…
A small public service announcement from Fruitloop & the Mayor. Pineapple now has its own little home on your phone. There is no app store to visit, nothing to buy and no need to search through a sea of apps wondering which Pineapple is ours. You simply add Pineapple to your phone and open it…
By Babette, Germany. Babette went to Egypt hoping for a wonderful family holiday. She came home with a wobbly bed, an improvised cocktail, a stingray she couldn’t photograph, four massages and a firm belief that Egypt deserves another chance — just somewhere else. Coming home from holiday is difficult enough. Coming home to three weeks…
By Sylvie, France. From tennis nerves and supermarket calculations to concert crowds, safari nightmares and the quiet art of letting someone go first, an ordinary conversation about waiting kept finding somewhere else to go. Sylvie lost her tennis match 6–2, 6–1, which did not particularly surprise her. What mattered more was that the score did…
By Fabrice, France Janita asked me to explain two local traditions she had never heard of: a wild boar dinner among old military vehicles, and a 12-kilometre Marche Gourmande built around food, wine, music and friends. Janita looked at the photographs and said, “I know absolutely nothing about the wild boar dinner. Start at the…
It started with a drawer full of random things. It ended with the quiet rules I learned from my mother, and the question of which of those rules still matter now. By Alexander, Germany. The famous drawers. We do not have one of those famous drawers where everything goes when nobody knows where else to…
By Fabrice, France There are objects we keep because they still work. Others stay because they carry a story. In my workshop, the difference is not always easy to see. Janita showed me a photograph of a workshop and asked what I noticed first. It was much too tidy. Everything had its place. The tools…
