Nothing tastes the way it used to

Where the room started

With small specifics, which is how this circle usually gets warm. Tea, for two of them, which in one house is a genuine loss and not a joke. Coffee for three. Bramley described his usual lunch going from something he looked forward to to a set of objects he was expected to have a relationship with. Bel had stood in front of an open fridge with perfectly good food in it and cried, and could not explain to her husband why, because the explanation sounds like nothing when you say it out loud.

What came up

That this is a loss, and that naming it as a loss was the thing several people had been missing. Appetite is not only fuel. For a lot of people it is how the week is organised, how care for other people gets expressed, what Saturday is for. When it quietens, the structure it was holding up wobbles.

Practical, from Sonia, who has had two years of it: go smaller and more intense rather than trying to want a whole dinner. One good tomato with salt. Three olives. A slice of ham from the counter rather than the packet. Her appetite would not come to a plate of chicken and peppers but it would come to something small and strong-tasting.

Where we left it

With a clear line, said by me and repeated by two members. Eating enough is the goal. Not eating is a problem to solve, never an achievement, and this circle will say so every time. Gigi closed it with the best thing on the call: her nonna could not stop cooking, so they gave her a job in it. Small bowl, eat what you eat, the rest goes in a container. The fix was not about food at all.