At the moment, I am surrounded by fruit.

There are plums to collect, apples and quinces coming, nuts later, and mushrooms if the weather is right. For the next four or five weeks, there is always something to do. The problem is simple: one day still has only 24 hours.

This year there are a lot of plums. By the time I finish, there will be well over 2,000 litres waiting to go through the process for schnapps. That sounds like a lot because it is a lot. You do not simply look at the trees and say, “Ah, nice harvest.” You pick, sort, taste, store, wait, protect, preserve and eventually process what you have collected.

And before all of that, you need to know when to start.

You taste one.

People asked me how I know when a plum is ready.

I taste it.

Not every plum, obviously. One. Maybe two. Perhaps three, four or five if the scientific work becomes very difficult.

At first the fruit can still be hard and bitter. Then you try again a week later. It may still be firm, but now it is sweet. That can be the right moment if you want it for a tart.

If I am collecting plums for schnapps, I wait longer. The fruit becomes softer and juicier, with much more natural sugar. Then it is ready for another purpose.

There is no single definition of “ready”. Ready for what?

That is something you learn by doing it. You look, touch and taste. The calendar gives you an idea, but the fruit gives you the answer.

Quinces are different. Apples are different. Nuts are different again. Some fruit comes from the tree. With plums, I collect them from the ground.

To somebody who has never done this, perhaps that sounds strange. Why would you wait for fruit to fall and then pick it up?

For me, it is simply normal.

That is the funny thing about knowledge. Something can be completely obvious until somebody asks you why.

Rain, warmth and mushrooms.

Mushrooms are another story because you cannot put them into your diary and say, “Tuesday, 10 a.m., mushrooms.”

You watch the weather.

For porcini, September and October can be good, but it depends on the conditions. Rain matters. Temperature matters. After two or three days of rain, followed by warmer weather around 20 degrees, you begin looking.

Only sun and no rain is no good.

You also learn where to look. Certain trees matter. I look around spruce trees, and when I find a good mushroom place, I remember the surroundings. Taking a photograph of the area can be more useful than photographing the mushroom itself, because next year you want to find the place again.

The forest is big.

I once found a mushroom weighing about 1.3 kilos. I have seen even larger ones. And once you have found them, the question becomes what to do with them. You can eat them with potatoes or pasta, or clean them and freeze them.

I once found a mushroom weighing about 1.3 kilos. I have seen even larger ones. And once you have found them, the question becomes what to do with them. You can eat them with potatoes or pasta, or clean them and freeze t

Of course, freezer space then becomes another agricultural problem.

We have two freezers, but they are not empty. There is meat. There are other things stored for later. At some point you begin negotiating with the freezer.

Perhaps Janita had the right idea: bread for fruit. Bread for mushrooms. One kilo of bread, one kilo of fruit. We may have invented a new economy.

The harvest does not end when you pick it.

With plums for schnapps, picking is only the beginning.

The fruit goes into large barrels and stays there for weeks while it macerates. Air is the enemy, so eventually the barrel has to be closed properly. You want the fruit and the gases from the process inside, not fresh air coming in and spoiling it.

Then you wait again.

I hope some of this year’s harvest can go to the distillery in November. Other batches may come later.

That is another thing hidden behind the finished bottle. You see schnapps on a table. You do not see the weeks of collecting fruit from the ground, checking it, filling barrels, waiting for the fermentation, watching the containers and arranging the distillation.

The bottle is the last part of a much longer story.

I learned some of this through my family, from my grandparents and the older generation. When I was young, I was sometimes told I was too young for parts of it. Much later I began doing it seriously myself.

I hope the knowledge continues.

Not because everything old must automatically be preserved, but because once nobody knows how to do something anymore, getting that knowledge back is difficult.

When there is simply too much.

Nature also has no interest in supermarket quantities.

You do not order six quinces, twelve plums and exactly enough apples for Thursday.

Sometimes a tree produces far more than you can use.

Then you find another solution. Friends can take fruit. People can help themselves. You preserve what you can. You make tarts, compotes or other things. You process it. You store it.

For me, the important thing is that good food should be used rather than left until it is spoiled.

This is where having too much becomes almost comic. One successful tree creates another job. Then another. Suddenly you are not asking, “Do we have fruit?” You are asking, “What are we going to do with all this fruit?”

The answer is rarely: eat everything immediately.

Unless Janita is helping me test the plums.

Then perhaps we have a chance.

The supermarket changes the picture.

Later in the conversation we talked about supermarkets.

Today you can walk into a supermarket in winter and find fruit from all over the world. Strawberries can appear when strawberries would never naturally be growing outside here.

Of course, this is convenient.

But when you grow something yourself, you experience food differently.

You plant tomatoes and then you wait. You water them. When the weather is dry, you may have to water every evening. You watch the plants grow for weeks. Something can fail. Something else can produce far more than expected.

You put work into it.

Then finally you pick a tomato and eat it.

For me, that is not the same experience as buying one kilo of tomatoes in a supermarket.

The same is true with strawberries. The strawberries from a garden may be smaller than the enormous ones you sometimes see in shops, but smell and taste matter to me. Size is not everything.

Growing your own food is certainly more work than going to the supermarket. I am not pretending otherwise.

But there is pleasure in going into your own garden and bringing something back to the kitchen that you have watched grow.

You know where it came from.

You know what happened before it reached your plate.

Food does not begin in the shop.

By the end of our conversation, we had travelled from plums to mushrooms, quinces, apples, nuts, tomatoes, pumpkins, strawberries, bread, pork and finally pasta.

Without mushrooms, Janita insisted.

Perhaps that is what becomes strange when you spend enough time growing, collecting and preserving food. The supermarket starts to look like the final chapter of a book in which most of the pages are missing.

Before the fruit reaches the shelf, something had to grow. Somebody had to wait. Weather had to cooperate. Somebody had to decide when it was ready. It had to be picked, stored, transported or preserved.

Sometimes that knowledge is complicated.

Sometimes it is very simple.

Taste a plum.

If it is bitter, wait.

If it is sweet, you are getting close.

And if you have 2,000 litres of them, clear your calendar.

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 asked whether it was important for me to be there.

The answer was simple: no. I could meet him on Monday.

So now I have questions.

How old is he? Where does he live? What is he like? These are the things you slowly discover when somebody new arrives. He is a salesman, working in the same kind of position as some of the other people I work with, while my own work connects with theirs through the different regions and customer orders.

I will meet him properly on Monday.

And then I can investigate.

Favourite colleagues are allowed.

Of course, not everybody at work stays a stranger for long.

One of my colleagues already knows that he is my favourite colleague. There is no secret about that.

I handle part of the work connected with his region, while another colleague handles a different area. That does not necessarily stop him from asking me when he needs something outside my area.

Sometimes I tell him, “That’s not my problem. You must go to the other colleague.”

Then comes the answer.

“Babette, please, please, please.”

Apparently, there are official work responsibilities, and then there is the unofficial system of knowing exactly which colleague you can ask anyway.

That may be one of the unwritten rules of working together.

There are other changes happening around us too. People arrive, positions change and responsibilities move around. We recently heard that one colleague will be moving into a new position, which I see as positive. There has already been quite a bit of change in the team, so I am curious to see how the new arrangement develops.

But some of the most important workplace relationships are built in much smaller moments.

Like lunch.

The fish problem.

Yesterday, I had lunch with colleagues.

I asked one of them what he wanted to eat, and his suggestion involved fish.

There was one small problem.

I don’t like fish.

Then he asked, “Do you like sushi?”

No.

That did not improve the situation.

In the end, several of my colleagues went inside to get their fish while I found something else. I chose pizza. Then I had to carry my plate through the whole place to get back to the others.

When my colleague saw what I had chosen, he took out his mobile phone and pretended to make a memo to himself:

“I don’t ask Babette for lunch.”

That is what happens when colleagues know each other well enough. Nobody has to pretend that everybody likes the same things. They can eat fish, I can eat pizza, and the difference becomes the joke.

That is what happens when colleagues know each other well enough. Nobody has to pretend that everybody likes the same things. They can eat fish, I can eat pizza, and the difference becomes the joke.

Better than expected.

Work is only one part of the week. Darts has become another.

At our recent game, the team lost 5–7. That was disappointing, but the result was still better than two weeks earlier. We left before the end because it was already late and there was school the next morning.

The next match will be difficult for me to attend because of the travelling time and my husband’s night shift, so I may have to wait a little longer before I can play again.

For now, there is training.

And the last training surprised me.

I had to finish on doubles, and suddenly the darts were doing what I wanted them to do. In one round, after hitting a five and a treble one, I finished on double one. Later, I needed ten points and checked out on double five.

The other members of the team noticed.

“Whoa!”

I was surprised too.

It was better than I expected, although I am not getting too excited yet. There is another training session on Monday.

We will see what happens then.

A weekend with no plan.

After work, school homework, darts and everything else, you might expect me to have a detailed plan for the weekend.

I don’t.

“It will be a surprise.”

There are a few jobs waiting. The swimming pool needs to be made winterproof, and the last vegetables need to be harvested from the garden. I have already turned four or five kilos of tomatoes into purée for tomato sauce, and there are still more tomatoes.

Then a new possibility appeared in our conversation: tomato jam.

At first, I was not completely convinced.

Tomatoes? Sugar? On toast?

But once we looked at a recipe, it began to sound possible. Tomatoes, sugar, vanilla and a little lemon juice are not very complicated, and I can make it in my Monsieur Cuisine.

There is still one sensible rule when trying something strange for the first time: do not make too much.

Instead of starting with a huge batch, I can try half a kilo of tomatoes and see what happens. I already have the vanilla and lemon juice.

I only need to buy sugar.

And somebody else in the family can taste it first.

That is another useful unwritten rule.

The next project is always waiting.

Autumn and winter are coming, which means I am already thinking about my next projects.

I have two 1,000-piece puzzles waiting for me. They are made from baby pictures of my children, and a puzzle like that normally takes me only two or three days.

There may also be another project after the school parents’ evening. One of the children has a new class teacher, and I already know that her favourite colour is green. I am thinking about asking whether she has any special wishes for a Christmas present.

If she does, I will have my next project.

There is still plenty happening before then: a new colleague to meet, another darts training session, a garden to finish for the season, a swimming pool to prepare for winter and possibly a jar of tomato jam that nobody in the house quite knows what to expect from.

That is probably enough.This weekend, I buy the sugar.

Before we reached the subject of inventions, our conversation had already travelled through quite a few parts of everyday life. We talked about the things happening in the world, the floods and difficult news, and then moved closer to home — to my tennis tournament and my daughters, who are very different from one another. It was one of those conversations where one subject naturally leads to the next.

Perhaps that is why talking about inventions did not feel like a separate topic at all. They are simply another part of ordinary life: the things we use, depend on, complain about and sometimes only notice when we stop to think about them.

There are inventions I use so automatically that I hardly think of them as inventions anymore.

My credit card is one. That was the first thing that came into my mind. It certainly makes spending money easier — perhaps sometimes too easy, because you can spend now and only see the deduction at the end of the month.

Then there is the phone.

I grew up without one, so I can remember another way of living. Our children cannot really compare because they have always had phones around them. Without them, perhaps we visited people more. We spoke face-to-face more. If you wanted to call somebody, you used the fixed phone.

Today, I would find it difficult to imagine going back completely.

If I am driving somewhere at night and something happens, I have my phone and I can call somebody. When I remember going to the discotheque when I was younger, we did not have that. Somehow we managed. Now, knowing that help is sitting there in your pocket has become normal.

But I am still not sure the phone is entirely a good invention.

It makes communication easier, but it also makes other things easier. It is easy to criticise somebody through social media. It is easy to publish something negative or share photographs that have been manipulated. And on the road, I see people looking at their phones while driving — in cars, trucks and even tractors. You can see the phone sitting on somebody’s knee while they are supposed to be watching the road.

That is something I will not do. If I am waiting for an important call, I find somewhere to stop and park.

So perhaps a good invention does not automatically mean we use it well.

The machines that quietly help.

Some inventions are much less complicated.

The dishwasher is brilliant because it makes life a little easier. Of course, the machine does not solve everything. Somebody still has to put the dishes inside, and somebody has to take them out again. Then comes the usual household question: who is going to do it?

The washing machine belongs on the list too.

I also like having a printer. We can keep more and more things digitally now, but sometimes, when I really need to understand something, I prefer to have it on paper in front of me.

Not every modern convenience feels necessary, though. I could live without air conditioning. In the past we did not have it everywhere, and sometimes I do not even like it. The air can be too cold, or the wind blows directly onto you. Something can be convenient without necessarily making you more comfortable.

And then there is one invention that, for me, has changed much more than a household chore.

The e-bike.

Before I had an e-bike, going cycling meant thinking about the wind.

With a normal bicycle, you look at which direction the wind is coming from and try to plan your route so that, at least for part of the journey, it will be behind you. But at some point it will be in front of you, and then you have to fight it.

With the e-bike, it does not matter so much whether it is windy or not.

There is no excuse.

That freedom changes where I can go. I can explore more places and ride much farther than I would with an ordinary bicycle. On Sunday, I went out alone and cycled about 45 kilometres. With a normal bike, especially with the wind we had that day, I would never have done it.

On longer rides, 80 kilometres is possible, and my battery can take me close to 100 kilometres when I use the normal assistance. I could stretch it farther by using the economy setting, but the bike itself is heavy, so then cycling becomes much harder. For me, around 100 kilometres in a day is already enough.

The electrical assistance stops helping from about 26 kilometres per hour, although sometimes I can still go faster when the wind is behind me or the road goes slightly downhill.

The funny thing is that an e-bike could sound like a way of doing less exercise. For me, the opposite is true. Because the difficult parts become manageable, I cycle more. I go farther. I explore places I probably would not have reached with my normal bicycle.

That may be what I like most about a really useful invention. It does not have to do everything for you.

Sometimes it only needs to remove one obstacle.

Even if that obstacle is the wind.

When I press a light switch, I expect the light to come on.

I don’t think about where the electricity comes from or who keeps the system working. I press the switch. The same with water. I open the tap and expect water to be there.

I notice these things when they stop.

Perhaps that is what taking something for granted really means. Something becomes so normal that it disappears from our attention.

Once we started talking about this, I realised that the same thing happens with much more than electricity and water.

When a mobile phone was something to show.

When I was 30, we didn’t have mobile phones. I was living in Manaus then, around 1991, and somehow we managed.

I bought my first one several years later, when I had my dental office as well as my work with the Brazilian Air Force. I needed to communicate with colleagues and patients.

The early phones were expensive, and some people made sure everybody could see them. Those large Motorola phones were worn on belts almost like status symbols.

I thought they looked terrible.

Mine was smaller, and it was really just a telephone. You talked on it. That was all.

Now our phones are cameras, newspapers, maps, banks, music players and communication centres. We have absorbed all of that so completely that losing a phone can feel as though part of ordinary life has stopped functioning.

Within one lifetime, something extraordinary became ordinary.

When walking was normal.

Asked what I might bring back from the past, I didn’t immediately think of an object.

I thought about walking.

As a teenager, I frequently walked the kilometre and a half from home into downtown Campo Grande. Later, when money mattered more, I walked to a preparatory course rather than pay for the bus.

Today I again live roughly the same distance from downtown, but I don’t walk there very often.

The sun feels stronger to me. There are more cars. And, strangely, I feel as though I have less time.

The car solved one problem and created others.

In my experience, a car in Brazil can also represent status. A young person gets a job and may spend years financing one because a car says something about having succeeded.

So it is not enough simply to tell people to use public transport. The alternative has to work.

Travelling from my home to my mother’s by bus can take half an hour or more, followed by a walk in strong daytime heat. By car, it takes around ten minutes.

Convenience wins very easily when the difference is that large.

Someone is stealing my time.

Then we imagined that everything still worked tomorrow, but ten times more slowly.

Messages take an hour. Deliveries take a day or two. Payments take five minutes. Websites crawl onto the screen.

How would I react?

At first, probably with anger. Then I would have to adapt.

But underneath that answer was something more interesting.

We expect things now.

Waiting can create the feeling that somebody is stealing your time. Stealing your life.

I have experienced long waits in public services. During the pandemic, I remember waiting hours to speak to a doctor. Many years earlier, after hurting my foot, I had an X-ray quite quickly and then waited for a specialist. Eventually I left. Other people seemed to be in more urgent situations than mine, and I imagined I might remain there until the next morning.

Many years earlier, after hurting my foot, I had an X-ray quite quickly and then waited for a specialist.

Intellectually, we understand that some things take time and that somebody else’s need may be greater.

But our time still feels like our time.

Once speed becomes normal, waiting starts to feel like a failure of the system.

And from there our conversation moved into politics.

If enough people become dissatisfied and complain publicly, I think governments notice, especially when elections are approaching. If people complain only among themselves, very little may change.

That is my interpretation. But it raised a larger question: perhaps political responsiveness is another thing we take for granted.

The supermarket that never rests.

Availability creates the same problem.

In Brazil, I can go to a supermarket on Sunday. I don’t particularly like that.

When I was a child, the large supermarkets were closed on Sundays. Today we expect to buy what we want when we want it. Some shops remain open around the clock.

But somebody has to make that convenience possible.

Why should I have my weekend while another person cannot be with family or simply relax at home?

I remember periods of my own working life when I had only one free weekend in a month. I know what that feels like.

Of course, there is another side. Somebody may need to shop on Sunday. An employee may prefer weekend hours. Somebody who needs a job may not have the luxury of rejecting the schedule.

That is the interesting part.

We say, “The supermarket is open,” as though the building opens itself.

It doesn’t.

People make our convenience possible.

Gambling in your pocket.

Online gambling is another example of something becoming almost frictionless.

It is no longer necessary to travel somewhere special. The betting shop can be in your pocket.

Brazil has spent considerable political energy regulating online betting, particularly because of concern about indebtedness and vulnerable families. During our conversation, I questioned the timing of recent government action so close to the presidential election.

My reaction was political: why now rather than earlier?

That is my interpretation, not proof of anybody’s motive.

But it reveals another form of taking things for granted. Once an activity becomes easy, legal and constantly available, we may stop asking what its availability is doing to people. Then, when government intervenes, another argument begins: is it protection, political calculation, restriction—or some mixture of all three?

The same action can look completely different depending on where somebody is standing.

What do we take for granted in a democracy?

Brazil votes in its general election on 4 October 2026.

I said clearly that I hope President Lula is not re-elected.

I also said that I do not consider the alternatives particularly good.

That matters, because my concern is not simply that one politician should replace another. It is about trust in institutions and about how people interpret what they see happening around them.

During the conversation, the Mayor raised another question: can people also take democratic freedoms for granted?

The right to vote. The ability to criticise a president. The possibility of reading different newspapers, using social media or looking outside Brazil for information.

My response was that the issue is not only whether those possibilities exist. It is whether people use them.

Many people, young and old, appear to me not to be very interested in politics or in what happens at the highest levels of government.

The possibility of becoming informed exists.

That does not mean people become informed.

And perhaps indifference is itself something we take for granted.

A freedom can exist without being exercised.

A vote can exist without much curiosity about what sits behind it.

I also have concerns about the limits of political speech in Brazil and about how challenges to institutions are treated. Those are my concerns. They should not be confused with proof that Brazil’s electronic voting system is fraudulent. The official electoral authorities maintain that the system is tested, audited and secure.

For me, the more interesting question is the disagreement itself.

How much scepticism should a democracy tolerate? At what point does criticism become an unsupported accusation? How should institutions defend themselves without making people feel that questioning them is forbidden?

I don’t have a simple answer.

Perhaps that is precisely why the question matters.

Younger does not automatically mean better.

Someone recently suggested to me that Brazil would improve when older politicians disappeared and younger people replaced them.

I asked: are you sure?

I don’t think age solves the problem automatically.

Young people can be indifferent. Older people can be indifferent. Young people can be responsible. Older people can be responsible.

I see a very small version of this at university, where I am usually the oldest student in the room. In one class, some of the younger students talk during the lesson, leave chairs out of place or leave rubbish behind.

That is one classroom. It proves nothing about a generation.

But it does make me suspicious of the easy belief that younger automatically means better.

There is also a young student in that class who is different from the others and, in my observation, was being left outside the groups. Nobody wanted me in their group either, perhaps because I am much older.

So I invited him to join me.

We became a group of two.

I joked that we were the two awkward people.

That small scene probably tells me more about people than any theory about generations.

Someone else may see what you don’t.

Towards the end of the conversation, the subject became more personal.

I spoke about my girlfriend.

She is five years older than me. When I say we are old people, she disagrees. She doesn’t feel old.

She is also much more optimistic than I am.

That interests me because, from what she has told me about her life, she has had reasons not to be optimistic. Yet she has a good humour and a spirit that I admire.

When I was asked what she sees in me, I wasn’t so certain.

She says I am good company.

I am not always convinced.

And perhaps that belongs in this conversation too.

We notice electricity when the lights go out. We notice water when the tap is dry. We notice speed when something becomes slow, convenience when a service disappears, political freedom when we fear losing it.

People may be different.

Sometimes another person sees something in us that has become invisible to us.

Maybe that is one more thing we should be careful not to take for granted.

We began with inventions.

We ended somewhere else.

The things we stop noticing are not always things.