The Weekly Slice 15: Six Seats, One Broken Wi-Fi, and the Frost That Makes Us Sweeter

On Wednesday, the internet cable was cut. Literally cut. Janita was reporting from mobile data like a war correspondent, while somewhere else a washing machine was being defended like national territory, and in Scotland a man was checking whether his tail was still attached.

It was that kind of week.

Mr Mayor began by asking what would have happened if Christopher Columbus had hired a growth consultant instead of a crew . There he was, stuck in Seville, perfecting his funnel, building a waitlist for the Atlantic. “Boat. West. Spices.” Three-second clarity. Historically catastrophic. The joke landed because it felt uncomfortably familiar. How many of us are still redesigning ships that are already seaworthy? How many of us are polishing sails instead of leaving port?

And then, in a completely different living room, Janita was sweeping toy cars into a bin while SpongeBob’s laugh drilled into her nervous system . She had survived a “car-collision-that-wasn’t” and a Swing Ball assault that left her ribs staging a formal protest. Her son handed her a Valentine’s card. The lollipop and cookie had already been eaten. She could have the paper.

Somewhere between Columbus and the empty-handed bears, a theme started to form: we optimise the Atlantic, but life still eats the cookie.

Guinea Pig took us into a quieter house. A particular silence when the trains have left and supervision has evaporated . At 09:12 there is an idea. At 09:14 something that worked perfectly well is being restructured . Not lack of motivation. Lack of fences. Fuel without containment eventually burns something unintended. “I am not disorganised. I am over-enthusiastic.” If you read that and felt personally attacked, welcome to the paddock.

Ralf rolled in with a Bollerwagen full of northern beer and frost-touched kale . Two hours to walk 100 meters because every crossing requires a break. The glass hangs around your neck. Always ready. Democracy in cabbage form . And beneath the laughter, something steady: when grief arrived, this was the group that sat down together. Ritual as infrastructure. Frost that makes the leaf sweeter. Like people, sometimes.

Monday arrived like a damp towel. SpongeBob at weaponised volume. Call of Duty gunfire tenderising a brain . A digital pirate detour just to find out if the ice hockey player will finally fall in love . An oil stain on a shirt. A small victory: no pedestrians harmed . Sometimes proof of growth is simply survival.

Alexander asked whether he is German or Bavarian. Lederhosen for trade fairs. Beer tents for special occasions. But identity, it turns out, is weekly football, Monday meet-ups, living seven minutes from family. Paradise is not costume. It is proximity.

Two Beaches gave us a photograph in Kerala and a comment about Brazilian openness in the same breath . A wife seeing the ocean for the first time. A country stitched together by languages and gestures. Freedom with safety instructions. Freedom without them. You could feel the carefulness in the conversation — not romanticising, not condemning — just trying to say, “This is how it feels from here.”

Martin drove through snow and secondary roads to Edinburgh. A hotel room with no windows but no witnesses. Parking tickets collected like decorative stamps. A poster handed directly by the singer. And somewhere between kilts and vocabulary, the reminder that devotion is often quiet and slightly ridiculous — and worth it.

Back at the desk, HTML replaced horizon lines. Eating optional. Cleaning irrelevant. Mammalian focus. Then the code worked. Not applause. Proof. Proof of sea legs. It’s a particular kind of relief when something complex finally behaves.

Lunch with Janita & Frank turned values into weather. Washing machine treaties. Supermarket trolley rage. Thunderstorms that clear into rainbows. Hurricanes that slam doors but keep hinges intact. The big question was philosophical. The real answer was practical: values show up in kitchens, in timekeeping, in how you say no.

And then came the Peeling Potatoes decompression episode.

“Are we live?”
“We are live.”

Immediately, chaos. Fingers together. Eyes closed. “I will give the mayor grief.” Ritual as parody. Parody as ritual.

The Wi-Fi had developed moods. The house greeting was no longer “hello” but “Is the Wi-Fi fixed yet?” Excavators had apparently mistaken fibre optic cables for decorative roots. And yet — something strange happened.

Without Wi-Fi, the fridge was cleaned. Cupboards sorted. Laundry vanished. Games were played. Fish and chips were eaten with dignity.

Interruption created presence.

While one nervous system spiralled over booking systems and automation magic, the other said something radical: “Let’s start with dinner.”

Not mindset. Not theory. Dinner.

Cheeseburger. Possibly an egg on top. Shrimp pasta with elaborate shell rituals. Chicken à la king. Steak frites because France requires dignity.

Then the pink Post-it. The two-minute rule. Wash the cat blankets. Shrink the list. Stop before “wonky.” The lesson wasn’t productivity. It was regulation.

Watching it unfold felt like watching two people refuse to spiral at the same time.

He escalates. She simplifies.
He abstracts. She grounds.

Teasing without threat. Advice without superiority. Humour absorbing sharp edges.

By the end, they returned to the fingers. Breathe in. Reset .

And if you step back far enough, you can see the thread running through the entire week.

Columbus refusing to optimise the Atlantic.
Janita refusing to fight the rain.
Guinea Pig asking for fences, not cages.
Ralf trusting frost to do its work.
Alexander choosing proximity over prestige.
Ritesh holding a first ocean in a photograph.
Martin crossing seas for a song.
Code that finally behaves.
A trolley that triggers a hurricane.
A Wi-Fi outage that cleans a fridge.

Complexity everywhere.
And underneath it, a quiet insistence on structure that holds.

Six seats.
A paddock, not a cage.
A Bollerwagen with flexible rules.
A pink Post-it.
A burger with an egg on top.

If you only read one piece this week, you saw a story.

If you read them all, you saw a pattern.

We are not trying to optimise the Atlantic.

We are trying to stay upright in small storms.

And next week, someone else will sit down with their own frost, their own trolley, their own unstable Wi-Fi.

The table is still there.

Middle finger and thumb together.

Breathe.