All I ask of life, really, is that I am entertained, that I am safe and comfortable, and that I am well fed. For all that I love to write, and read, and live in my mind, it’s the physical that wins you in the end.

The material comforts of hearth and home. The opportunity to laze on the couch and watch DVDs for hours. To luxuriate in a scented bath. And most of all to enjoy good food – preferably with good company too – but perhaps, in truth, the food’s the thing!

Coffee by my side as I write, dark, deep and redolent. Fruit, fresh and sweet. Chocolate – oh, chocolate! That, and mangoes, are the only real evidence I recognise that there is a god, somewhere! Thai takeout. Creamy winter soups.

Can you imagine a life without your sense of taste? Can you imagine? I can’t. That wouldn’t be a life.

I’m not a cook, not a culinary creator, but I am an enthusiastic audience for such offerings. At my work we have some great home-bakers who bring cakes and biscuits and other treats in regularly, and while I swear I’ll not over-eat, that I’ll show some restraint, that I’ll think about my waistline, how can one resist? It’s interesting, too, that these bakers are also very generous souls more generally – perhaps there is something within the preparation of food for others that calls to the souls of those that love to give?

Something in the physical, the material realm, that echos something in the spiritual.

I should say, though – I’m not a glutton. I don’t want to leave the wrong impression. I can practice moderation. My diet is the ‘make every calorie count’ diet – if you are going to indulge, indulge in the best. It tends to satiate you more quickly in any case, and why waste calories on something not worthy?

So while I write less of the physical, the material, it seems I live more of it. Perhaps that’s just balance. Perhaps that’s all.