In This Issue

In This Issue.

Who makes the rules we follow every day, and why do we follow them? Coming to the end of this month’s topic, I have come to realize just how fascinating—and sometimes completely baffling—our relationship with rules really is.

Sometimes, we are the architects of our own guidelines. We make unwritten rules for ourselves and others around us to keep the chaos at bay, and then we spend half our time trying our best to follow them, or secretly looking for the loopholes to break them.

Other times, the rules are handed down to us by someone else. They are printed in official rulebooks, posted on school gates, or stuck to the back of cleaning product bottles, and we follow them simply because someone in authority said so—even if we sometimes scratch our heads and wonder who on earth had to make the mistake that required a warning label in the first place.

As we wrap up this month’s journey into the boundaries, expectations, and quirks of daily life, we invite you to explore where these lines are drawn, who crosses them, and why we care so much in the first place.

In this issue, we explore:

Driving Dilemmas, Red Cards, and Punctuality Rules.

In my lead editorial, Whose Rules Are These Anyway?, I take a look at who makes the rules we follow every day, and what happens when somebody decides to challenge them or question the expectations and unwritten rules that shape ordinary life.

Over in When the Headlights Disappear, Manfred and Martin of the Swimming Club take us through driving experiences in Germany, Italy, and beyond—where a car following too closely, a horn that could mean several things, and two people seeing the same road very differently show that knowing the traffic rules is only part of the challenge.

In You Need a Clear Red Line, Alexander takes us inside regional football in Germany, where referees must make decisions and players have to live with them—reflecting on a difficult back-pass on a wet football pitch, an opponent who apologizes before fouling again, and a red card he still believes was wrong.

Next, Sarah takes us into the world of school rules, teachers, and expectations in The Penguin Who Would Change the Rules. She asks what happens when the people enforcing the rules don’t always follow the same standards themselves, and how much room there should be for questioning authority.

Closing this section in I Hate Just in Time, Ralf explores why being on time matters to him and how he deals with people who see things differently. While he likes being punctual, not everybody shares his relationship with the clock through everyday arrangements and the frustrations of waiting.

Personal Distance, Local Guides, and Cheese Controversies.

In The Correct Distance Between Us, Atlantic Corridor’s Ismar and Ritesh compare personal space, physical distance, and the different expectations people bring to everyday encounters—asking how close is too close, and showing that what feels perfectly normal to one person can be surprisingly uncomfortable for another.

Over in A Map Is Not the Same as Knowing a Place, Fabrice and Janita discover that planning a holiday for somebody else is not quite as simple as knowing where everything is. Imagine arriving in Alsace with your family and discovering that Fabrice has volunteered to be your local guide—with castles, forests, restaurants, and neighboring countries to explore, but first, a tired seven-year-old needs breakfast!

Meanwhile, Babette keeps busy in A Little More Cheese, Please with a disappointing flea market, a knitting project that takes three attempts, and a growing list of handmade Christmas presents. Between family meals, a new pizza oven, and a lively disagreement about lasagne, she asks: can there really be such a thing as too much cheese?

Dinners on Mars, Deep Secrets, and Culinary Specials.

In Who Pays? Apparently, the Mayor!, Fruitloop invites the Mayor to an imaginary dinner on Mars where the price is three embarrassing memories. Before long, they are remembering torn trousers, childhood mishaps, a spectacular bicycle crash, an unexpected conversation about writing fiction, a chocolate-covered pretzel scandal, and eventually, the question of who is paying.

In our Fictional Story of the Month, Hidden Bloodlines, Rowan Moore receives a call announcing the death of a father he never knew he had, dramatically changing his life. An enormous inheritance leads him into a world of family secrets, romance, betrayal, and danger—though the greatest mystery may be what his father left behind.

In their essay How Can We Get AI to Keep Its New Year’s Resolutions?, Bruce Lloyd and Frank Peters explore the gap between knowing and doing. While AI can produce impressive answers, can it help us turn those answers into something that actually works, from organizational incentives and education to the unexpected complications of building a real booking system?

In Ralf’s Kitchen, Ralf returns with Schlotzig Eggs, bringing another German specialty to the table as a little culinary inspiration for anyone who enjoys discovering what other people cook and eat.

In Frank Peters’ column, The Human Bit, Frank offers a quieter moment, reflecting on the human side of ordinary life and the small things we sometimes overlook.

Finally, in Peeling Potatoes — Episode 70, we take another visit to the wonderfully unpredictable world of Fruitloop University, where rules, logic, and common sense are never entirely safe. Join Janita and the Mayor for their weekly dose of absurdity, unexpected questions, and Friday afternoon nonsense.

Welcome to Pineapple 35—sit back, relax, travel to France or Mars with us, and enjoy the stories!

Editorial

Whose Rules Are These Anyway?

Have you ever stopped in front of a noticeboard or a sign and thought to yourself, Who on earth made this rule?

There is a large noticeboard outside my son’s school that lists the basic prohibitions: no weapons, no sharp objects, no alcohol. Now, that all makes total sense because, obviously, there are children inside. But why do they need to erect a giant sign for everyone to see in the first place? Isn’t this just basic, universal knowledge?

I’m certainly not going to send my son to school with a pocketknife or a cold beer in his lunchbox. Meanwhile, some adults carry licensed pistols or small folding knives in their day-to-day lives, but nobody stands at the school gate enforcing the board. And thankfully, I’ve never seen anyone sipping a glass of wine or cracking open a beer at a school function. So every time I pass that sign, I just smile to myself because, in a way, it feels so entirely unnecessary.

Then there are the signs nobody seems to care about at all. Take the “No Smoking” sign in the supermarket parking lot. Every single time I go, there are people standing right beneath the sign smoking while waiting for the bus, or taking one final drag before walking through the automatic doors. Right under the sign!

It always gets me thinking: Who put this up? Who approved it? And why is it still there if absolutely nobody follows it? Then again, I look at the way people drive and how casually traffic laws are ignored every day, and I realize—maybe people just don’t care. The internet is equally full of these gems, like pictures of a beautiful ocean beach with a giant “No Swimming” sign stuck in the sand. Who made that call? Are these rules put there to be broken, or were they written decades ago and now simply exist to be laughed at?

Where life gets really interesting, though, is reading the back of a cleaning product label.

Do not inhale. Do not get in eyes. Do not drink. Keep out of reach of children. If swallowed, seek immediate medical attention.

The warning about children makes complete sense. But the rest? Isn’t it just fundamental human logic that you shouldn’t drink household chemicals, pour them into your eyes, or use them as body wash?

Yet, I would love to meet the specific person who forced companies to put those warnings on the bottle. Who was the pioneer who drank the cleaning fluid? What was their thought process? Did they think, “Hmm, this bright blue liquid looks refreshing”? You might go blind, burn your skin, or completely ruin your lungs—and yet, every single absurd label exists because someone actually tried it. Someone was crazy enough to do it, failed miserably, and now the rest of us have to live with the warning label.

Where I live, we have a few strict, important rules:

No cats allowed.
Don’t put flower pots or plants on top of the walls.
No noise after 10:00 PM.
Speed limit: 10 km/h once you enter the gate.
Don’t leave waste or black bags in the parking areas.

These are perfectly acceptable, logical rules. No cats because they roam and mark their territory everywhere. No heavy pots on walls because they could fall and hit someone. No noise late at night because people are sleeping. No speeding because children play outside. And no rubbish in the parking lot because keeping our living space clean and tidy benefits everyone.

Yet, I still find myself wondering about all the other rules out there. Who made them? Why was it necessary? Who follows them, and who breaks them? And why do we even need to write down things that should simply be basic human logic?

Because life is full of surprises, and people will always manage to surprise you. Whenever you see a truly ridiculous rule, just remember: someone, somewhere, thought it was a great idea to try it first—and now we get to read the noticeboard.

Welcome to Pineapple 35, where some rules are completely absurd, and others we follow simply because we don’t want to make the same mistake twice.

Feature

When the Headlights Disappear.

On the road, distance is measured in metres. Manfred and Martin discovered that the more interesting distance is the one between caution and aggression, rules and instinct, and what a driver does and what everybody else thinks they are doing.

By Manfred and Martin, in the Swimming Club, Germany.

There is a moment when the car behind you stops being merely close.

Manfred knows exactly where it is.

“When you can’t see their headlights any more,” he says, “then it becomes really critical.”

Martin has a different solution. He would prefer to deport the rear-view mirror altogether, so that he no longer has to watch whatever the driver behind him is doing.

The problem, though, is not simply distance. It is interpretation. A car appears in the mirror and comes closer. Perhaps the headlights flash. Suddenly a completely ordinary journey has acquired characters, intentions and possibly a villain. Nobody has spoken a word, yet an entire conversation has begun.

And, as the Swimming Club quickly discovered, driving is full of conversations like that.

What is that idiot doing?

Put a very slow driver on a perfectly normal road and the first reaction is almost automatic.

“What problem has he got?” says Manfred.

His second reaction is more useful: keep your distance and watch. Perhaps the driver is about to stop. Perhaps something is wrong. Perhaps he is looking for a house number.

Martin has developed his own modern theory. Years ago, a car wandering strangely across the road might have suggested a driver who had been drinking. Today he assumes something else.

“He’s probably fiddling with his phone. Maybe he suddenly remembered he still has to post his breakfast on Facebook.”

That is the trouble with driving. The road gives us very little information, so the brain supplies the rest. A brake light, a hesitation, a slightly strange line through a bend, and the missing paragraphs begin writing themselves.

Manfred once noticed the same thing with a horn. A driver behind him honks and the instinctive reaction is immediate: What have I done wrong? Is he honking at me?

Manfred refuses to accept the premise.

“Why on earth should I always assume he means me?”

Perhaps the other driver is greeting somebody. Perhaps he is testing his horn. Perhaps, as Martin suggests, it has been gathering dust and simply needs a good blast to clear it out.

This does not mean Manfred fails to recognise bad driving. When somebody is genuinely dangerous, he notices. He is simply reluctant to begin with the assumption that the other person is an idiot.

That becomes considerably harder when the headlights disappear.

Tailgating changes the atmosphere immediately. Martin responds with a stream of private commentary that, he says, he hopes nobody ever hears. Manfred sometimes taps the brake lightly enough to illuminate the brake lights — a small message saying, in effect: There is another car here.

Except even that message may not arrive as intended. The driver behind may see a warning. Or a provocation. He may overtake, pull in front and brake in return.

A tiny misunderstanding becomes road rage.

Two people. Two cars. Plenty of communication. No conversation at all.

The strange wisdom of slowing down.

Manfred has spent enough time towing a caravan to notice that it has changed the way he drives even when the caravan is not there.

“I hardly ever do more than 120 on the motorway now,” he says. “Maybe 130 at most.”

With the caravan he travels more slowly still, but years of towing have altered his normal rhythm. The revelation is almost disappointingly simple.

“You arrive at the destination with 100 as well. Surprisingly.”

Martin agrees. However heroic your plans for the average speed may be, traffic jams, lorries and everybody else on the motorway usually have their own ideas.

However heroic your plans for the average speed may be, traffic jams, lorries and everybody else on the motorway usually have their own ideas.

Manfred remembers being very different. As a young man in the 1980s, he once drove towards Frankfurt with his foot firmly down and, as he remembers it, barely took it off again until he arrived. The result was not triumph.

“I was completely stressed. Completely exhausted.”

Driving fast demanded constant concentration. Every gap, every approach and every small movement by another vehicle required attention. Slowing down did more than alter the number on the speedometer. It changed the journey itself.

These days, when Manfred wants to move into the faster lane, he often waits for a larger gap than he once would have.

“Other people go across much earlier. Sometimes I ask myself: why are you waiting so long?”

He is not sure whether the answer is age, experience or simply a different sense of risk.

Probably all three.

Italy works. Somehow.

The Swimming Club does not believe every European country drives in quite the same language.

Germany is heavily signposted, heavily regulated and, in Manfred’s view, occasionally so fond of road signs that the signs themselves become confusing.

Italy is different.

With some exaggeration and affection, Manfred describes Italian traffic signs as recommendations rather than commandments. Yet the great surprise is not the apparent chaos. The great surprise is that it works.

Martin enjoys driving there for precisely that reason. His theory is that Italian drivers cannot simply assume everybody else will obey every rule exactly as expected, so they have to pay more attention to one another.

“They think with you,” he says.

For Manfred, the difference becomes clearest when changing lanes. In Germany, he tends to wait for a clearly visible opening. In Italy, the opening may never appear in the German sense. You indicate that you want to move across, you begin moving across, and the traffic reacts.

“They think: just come over, you’ll get your space,” Manfred says. “But unfortunately the German doesn’t think like that.”

Add a twelve-metre car-and-caravan combination and the cultural experiment becomes considerably more exciting.

Spain offers another version. Scooters emerge from unexpected directions, roundabouts demand attention everywhere at once and Martin suggests that what you really need is a 360-degree eye.

Again, Manfred comes back to the same thing.

“It works. But you have to have the same way of seeing it.”

Perhaps that is the largest unwritten rule of all. A traffic system is not only made from laws, markings and signs. It also depends on a collection of expectations shared by the people moving through it. The visitor therefore has to learn more than the official rules.

He has to learn what everybody else thinks those rules mean.

The road is talking to you.

For Manfred, the Netherlands offers perhaps the clearest example of a road communicating before anybody has done anything.

He admires the way Dutch road design gives cyclists visible space. Different colours immediately tell the driver that something has changed.

“You see that different colour and something works in your brain. There’s something special there. You have to pay attention.”

For him, that is more effective than painting a few lines along the side of a German road and declaring the bicycle problem solved.

Martin sees the difficulty every day in Kassel. Cyclists arrive from different directions, e-scooters have joined them and pedestrians make their own decisions.

“You have to watch like a hawk,” he says.

Not because he wants cyclists removed from the road. Quite the opposite. Nobody wants the moment when a misunderstanding becomes an accident. The question is whether the road itself helps people understand what everybody else is likely to do.

A coloured bicycle lane says something. So does a brake light, a flashing headlight or a horn.

Unfortunately, nobody can be completely certain what.

The Mayor imagines a world in which words disappear and human beings are allowed to communicate only with indicators, headlights and hand gestures.

Manfred refuses immediately.

“I would refuse to learn this new foreign language.”

Martin identifies another difficulty. He would first have to explain that an extended middle finger can occasionally be intended in a friendly way. Manfred adds that scratching your head should not automatically be interpreted as telling somebody they are crazy.

Within minutes, the new universal language has collapsed.

Which is rather the point. Even on the road, where communication has been reduced to a small collection of supposedly standard signals, human beings still manage to add uncertainty, emotion and interpretation.

The passenger has a different windscreen.

The strangest distance in a car may not be between two vehicles at all. It may be the fifty centimetres between the driver and the passenger beside him.

Manfred knows this from travelling with his wife.

He may approach a junction believing he has judged the speed, the distance and the caravan perfectly. From the passenger seat, she sees the same situation from another angle and suddenly reacts.

“Watch out!”

For the driver, that warning can create exactly the uncertainty it is trying to prevent. Manfred knows what is ahead and has already planned his movement. Then the passenger panics and a new thought arrives immediately: Has she seen something I haven’t?

Now he is looking for another danger.

Martin admits that he is not an especially relaxed passenger either. He has sat beside drivers whose style made him deeply uncomfortable, only to discover later that the same people considered his driving dangerous.

Apparently everybody is the sensible driver when sitting in their own seat.

The perfect car may have a problem.

Eventually the conversation arrives at the perfectly obedient self-driving car.

Imagine it travelling through Kassel and following every official rule exactly. What would it make of the unofficial part?

Martin thinks the machine will need clairvoyance. It will have to anticipate cyclists, pedestrians, scooters and all the small movements through which people reveal what they are probably about to do.

Manfred is less interested in solving the problem.

He simply does not want the car.

“If I want to be driven, I’ll take the train.”

Martin improves this immediately.

“If I want to be driven, I’ll call my chauffeur.”

For Manfred, the objection is partly about control. Modern assistance systems already occasionally disagree with the driver. A lane-keeping system sees a line and interprets it according to its programming. The human being sees the traffic situation around him and may have a different idea.

Then comes the absurd little battle between person and machine.

I want to go there.

You should not go there.

I am the boss.

For all the imperfections of human driving, something is happening that is difficult to reduce to a set of rules. Drivers are constantly reading one another: guessing, anticipating, forgiving, complaining, making space, refusing space and sometimes inventing motives that were never there.

Perhaps that is why the important distance between strangers cannot be measured only in metres between two bumpers.

It is also the distance between seeing something and deciding what it means.

Between a warning and a provocation.

Between noticing that another person is behaving strangely and deciding that he must be an idiot.

Sometimes the safest thing on the road may be a little more space.

And occasionally the wisdom to remember that the horn might not have been about you at all.

Member Stories

You Need a Clear Red Line.

On a wet regional football pitch, the referee has his rules, the players have theirs, and everybody is trying to work out what kind of game they are in.

By Alexander, Germany

The first thing we do at an away match is say hello. Then we walk onto the pitch and look at the grass. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it wet? Some players bring two pairs of football shoes, including a pair with longer studs for difficult conditions.

I only have one pair.

Then we go into the changing room, get dressed and come back outside for thirty or forty minutes of warming up. By then, the other team is there. The referee is there. You know many of the players already, and sometimes you know exactly which opponent you are going to face.

You look across the pitch and think: oh no. Him.

He is good. He is aggressive. You know what is coming.

And then the match starts.

I was asked what somebody should watch during the first five minutes if they wanted to understand what kind of game it was going to be. My first answer was that five minutes are not enough. Football changes too quickly. A team can be better for sixty minutes and still lose. One mistake, one small detail, one strange situation and suddenly the whole match goes in another direction.

But when you know the player opposite you, those first five or ten minutes do matter. You meet, you challenge each other, and then comes the first duel.

Oh No, Him Again.

There are players in our league I know well enough to recognise immediately. They are not necessarily friends. They are simply people I have played against before, and I already know the kind of game they will give me.

Everybody wants to be better than the player opposite them. It is competitive, but normally it is friendly competition. Still, once the whistle goes, friendship is not what you are thinking about. You are thinking about the next ball. Who gets into the game faster? Who wins the first duel?

If I win the first two or three situations against the player opposite me, something changes. I feel better. Maybe he feels it too. It is one of those small battles inside the larger game that people watching from outside may not notice.

There is another group they definitely notice.

The trainers.

Germany has about eighty million of them, and the very best are standing beside the pitch. Especially the ones who have never played football.

After the match they come to you. This was not good. That was not good. You should have done this. You should have done that.

At my age, I have become quite relaxed about it. If I really want to understand what I did well or badly, I speak to my trainer. After our match last weekend, I did not need anybody to tell me that I had not played well.

I already knew.

The Ball Bounces.

I had not trained much in the previous weeks because I did not have the time. Before an earlier match, I had even told my trainer that I did not think it would be fair for me simply to arrive and play when I had not been at training. I said I would start training again, and after that he could put me back into the team.

Then I came back.

The match was away from home and the pitch was wet. At one point I received the ball in defence. Nobody was immediately beside me, but two opposition players began running towards me. My brother shouted that I could play the ball into the middle. Another teammate told me I could go backwards to the goalkeeper.

The match was away from home and the pitch was wet. At one point I received the ball in defence. Nobody was immediately beside me, but two opposition players began running towards me. My brother shouted that I could play

I chose the goalkeeper.

The ball hit the wet grass and bounced. Instead of being a normal back-pass, it went high. Too high. Our goalkeeper could not control it and suddenly had to chase after the ball while an opposition player came running in behind him.

The goalkeeper tried to kick it away. The other player arrived. There was contact.

Our goalkeeper was injured and had to leave the pitch.

I knew immediately where the whole thing had started.

With my pass.

Afterwards, I went straight into the changing room and stayed quiet. Sometimes you don’t need one of Germany’s eighty million trainers.

You already know.

Sorry. Then Again.

The match itself was hard. We had been leading, and in the second half the other team became much more aggressive.

In one situation I had the ball and passed it forward to our attacker. The ball was already gone when another player arrived. He kicked me on the foot and caught me with an elbow in the face.

The referee did not see it.

I spoke to the player afterwards and told him it had been unnecessary. He apologised.

Sorry.

Then, in the next situation, he did nearly the same thing again.

For me, you can play extremely hard and still play fairly. There is nothing wrong with aggression itself. Football needs it. The difference comes when you cross the line.

If I make a foul and I know it was too hard, I say sorry. I give the other player my hand, perhaps tap him, and normally it is finished. What makes it worse is when somebody commits a hard foul, looks at the player on the ground and says, come on, stand up. That was nothing.

The foul may last one second.

What happens after it can stay in the match much longer.

Everybody Knows the Referee.

Regional football is a small world. We know most of the referees, and that matters because referees are different too.

A football match is loud. Players shout. Coaches shout. People are emotional and decisions happen quickly. If the referee is also very emotional, you learn quite fast that perhaps it is better to keep some of your own opinions to yourself.

That can be difficult. We have some very emotional players.

But you adapt. You understand who is refereeing and what kind of match he is allowing. Mostly the referees are fair, although there are always moments when you are convinced they have seen something completely differently from you.

After the foul on me, for example, I could not tell whether the referee couldn’t see it or simply didn’t see it. From where I was standing, it was obvious. From where he was standing, perhaps it wasn’t.

That is one of the strange things about football. Twenty-two players can be absolutely certain about what happened.

Only one person’s decision counts.

When the referee gives somebody a yellow card, for me the discussion is over. I don’t know a situation where enough players complained and the referee eventually said, you know what, you’re right, I’ll take the card back.

The card is there. Finished.

We have something similar inside our own team. Every match, teammates disagree with decisions other players make. If somebody tells me I made the wrong choice and I know he is right, I say so. If I think my decision was correct, I say that too.

Maybe we talk about it for ten seconds.

Not five minutes.

While you are still debating the last situation, the match has already moved on. The next ball is coming. If something was important, we can speak about it afterwards in the changing room. Those conversations tend to be longer when we lose. When we win, perhaps everybody is a little more forgiving.

The Shoulder That Became an Arm.

I know what it feels like when the referee’s version becomes reality.

Once I was standing in goal. An opponent shot, the ball was going in and I stopped it with my shoulder.

At least I am still convinced it was my shoulder.

The referee saw my arm.

Penalty.

Red card.

My teammates agreed with me. They said it had hit my shoulder too, but there was no video. The club wrote to the football authorities afterwards and nothing changed. I was suspended for two or three matches.

Sitting out was not terrible because we had enough players. The worse part was watching. I could see my team playing and I could do nothing to help them.

But the referee had made his decision.

My shoulder had become an arm.

And that was that.

The Red Line.

Then I was asked a question I had not really considered.

What if I had to referee?

Two teams I knew. Ninety minutes. Everybody shouting. Every player certain that his view was correct.

For me, the hardest part would be keeping one clear red line through the whole match. That is what players need from a referee. You can accept that he allows a hard game. You can accept that he stops a lot of contact. What becomes difficult is when nobody understands where his line is anymore.

Keeping it constant must be difficult. A referee may begin by whistling for every contact. After twenty or twenty-five minutes, he notices that the game has no flow, so he changes and gives the players a little more room.

Maybe the football becomes better.

But now the line has moved, and everybody on the pitch has to discover where the new one is.

From outside, refereeing can look simple.

Foul. No foul. Yellow. Red.

From the middle of the pitch, with twenty-two players moving around you, it must feel completely different.

Saturday.

Now we have another match coming, and this one matters.

We have thirty points. The team we are playing has twenty-seven. If they beat us, we are level. If we win, we are six points ahead.

The last time we played them, we lost.

We had no chance.

This time feels different. We are first in the league and the mood in the team is good. We will train specifically for them. We know they will play hard, and we know we have to be sharp with our passing and our shots.

We will prepare. We will have a strategy.

Then Saturday will come.

We will say hello, walk onto the pitch and look at the grass. I will still have my one pair of football shoes. Across the field there will be players we know, and somebody may look at his opponent and think: oh no, him again.

The referee will have his line.

We will have ours.

Then somebody will kick the ball.

After that, we will see what kind of game it becomes.

Postcards

La Fête des Vendanges.

Every third weekend in September, Cleebourg celebrates the grape harvest—wine, food, music and a village that suddenly has rather more visitors than usual.

The Brotherhood of the Wine

The Confrérie des Vins de Cléebourg in full ceremonial dress. Their job is to promote the wines of our local cooperative and, judging by the glass, quality control is taken seriously.

Dressed for the village

Traditional Alsatian costumes are still worn during the Fête des Vendanges, but they are not simply “old clothes.” The colours, fabrics, headpieces and details can reflect different villages, occasions and family traditions. In other words, each costume carries its own little piece of local history.

Same village, different story

The man on the right is wearing a conscrit-style costume: in Alsace, young men of the same age group traditionally celebrated their “class” together before military service, often in white clothes with extravagant hats covered in feathers, flowers and ribbons. The apron marked “Vive Classe 1990–2010” points directly to that tradition.

The Work Behind the Wine.

Much of the work is still done by hand, and the rhythm of the village follows the vines: pruning, tending, harvesting, pressing, waiting.

There is real pride in that annual cycle. Not just in making wine, but in making it well.

And increasingly, that work is being recognised beyond the village too — at tastings, competitions and wine festivals, where the wines of Cleebourg are earning a reputation of their own.

Still Lived.

A whole way of life is on display here — the music, the clothes, the wine, the stories, the rituals.

Much of it is carried now by the older generation, but it is not yet museum material. They still know the songs. They still wear the clothes. They still turn up.

That matters.

Tradition only stays alive while somebody is still willing to live it.

Before the Bottle.

This is the less glamorous side of wine.

Before the labels, the tastings and the glasses held up to the light, there is work in the vineyards — treating the vines, carrying equipment, walking the rows, doing the jobs that have to be done whether anybody is watching or not.

The old tools may have changed. The rhythm has not.

Tradition, with a Wink.

Not everything has to be treated with reverence.

There is plenty of pride in the costumes, the wine and the old customs, but there is humour too. People dress up, pose, tease one another and occasionally hide behind an ice-cream board.

That may be part of why the tradition survives.

It is not only remembered.

It is enjoyed.

Three O’Clock on the Rue Principale.

By three in the afternoon, most of Cleebourg seems to have found its way to the Rue Principale.

The pavements fill, windows open, people lean forward for a better view, and the parade slowly takes over the village.

For a few hours, the main road stops being a road.

It becomes the village.

Inside the Parade.

To be perfectly honest, festivals like this have never really been my thing. I grew up in a very different environment, and after fifteen years in Cleebourg I had always watched the Fête des Vendanges from the outside.

This year, for the first time, I joined the parade.

That changed it. Walking through the village rather than standing at the side of the road, I began to notice how much is happening behind the costumes and music — the preparation, the different traditions, the families, the groups from neighbouring villages, and all the small rituals that everybody else seems to understand automatically.

I am still an outsider to much of it. But for an afternoon, I was an outsider on the inside.

And that was fascinating.

Member Stories

The Penguin Who Would Change The Rules.

From classroom fairness and mysterious school rules to forbidden sweets, a very serious penguin and a suitcase heading for Spain, Sarah discovers that some rules make perfect sense, some need explaining, and some deserve a little revolution. By Sarah, France.

I woke up about fifteen minutes before my meeting with Janita. Really, fifteen minutes. But I was good! I had been very, very busy during the week, helping at a camp with children, organising activities and doing all the things that come with looking after a group of children. So I was a little tired, and I had also been difficult to reach.

I was preparing to leave for a school exchange in the Canary Islands, in Spain, for one month. I still had to pack, organise my school things and work out when I could have my English lessons while I was away. I didn’t even know exactly what my timetable would look like.

Janita and I tried to arrange our next meeting. Thursday? Tuesday? Wait, which day was I leaving? At one point I even had to check what day it was. It was Saturday. Okay, perfect.

We decided I would message her when I knew more.

After that, we started talking about rules. Not the rules written in school books or on signs, but the rules nobody explains because everybody is supposed to know them.

And I had quite a lot to say about that.

Respect Works in Both Directions.

At my school, there is a rule about the canteen queue. You don’t jump ahead of other students. If somebody from the school sees you doing that, you can be sent away instead of getting your food.

Nobody really explained this rule at the beginning of the year. I think it is because it is logical. You wait your turn. Everybody understands that.

But not all rules are so obvious.

Janita asked whether I had ever broken a rule without knowing it. I remembered that something like this had happened, although I couldn’t remember the exact situation. Somebody reacted as if I had done something terrible, and I was thinking, what? I didn’t even know I wasn’t allowed to do that!

How can you know you are breaking a rule if nobody tells you the rule?

Then Janita asked something much more interesting. Why is it sometimes acceptable for a teacher to arrive late, but not for a student?

For me, there is no reason. Both should be on time.

Last year, I had a French teacher who was late for practically every class. Sometimes there was an apology, but then it happened again. And again.

I don’t think that is fair. It is about respect. If I respect you, you respect me. If I arrive on time because I am supposed to be in your class, then you should also be there.

Otherwise, what am I doing? I came for your lesson, and you’re not here. Should I just go home?

For students, being late can have consequences. At my school, there is a difference between arriving a few minutes late after a break and missing a whole lesson. Depending on the situation, your lateness or absence is recorded, and you may have to explain why you were not there.

I explained to Janita that these records matter because they can be considered when students apply for further studies. If you have too many absences without proper reasons, the school can also contact your parents.

Of course, if you have a medical appointment or another good reason, that is different.

Janita told me about a time when she was late at school because older students had sprayed water down the stairs. Nobody wanted to use the staircase because they were afraid of getting wet. Luckily, the teachers knew what had happened, so the students were not punished.

That makes sense. Sometimes being late is not your fault.

But when a teacher is late every time? Please.

School Is Important, but It Is Not My Entire Life.

There is another unwritten rule that I find really annoying.

Teachers can say they don’t have time. Students are not always allowed to say the same thing.

Sometimes I think adults imagine that school is the only thing we have in our lives. We go to school, we do homework, we study, and apparently that is everything.

But no!

I have my parents. I have my friends. I have tennis, dance and Scouts. I have activities, things I want to do, and sometimes I just want to watch my series.

I spoke about the student demonstrations and anger I had noticed in France. I felt that students were not always being heard, although I also thought that some people involved in demonstrations seemed more interested in fighting or breaking things than explaining their concerns.

For me, the important thing was that students have lives outside school, and adults do not always seem to understand that.

I am not saying homework is useless. Absolutely not. I understand why we have exercises and presentations. They prepare us for exams and for the important presentations we have to give at the end of the school year. We learn by doing this work.

They prepare us for exams and for the important presentations we have to give at the end of the school year.

But sometimes we genuinely don’t have enough time.

Of course, if somebody says every day, every week, that they don’t have time, then maybe it is not a very good excuse. I understand that, too.

Janita used our own meeting as an example. I had been busy, she had other things to do, and we had to find a time that worked for both of us. We eventually arranged an early Saturday meeting because I was leaving for Spain.

She could have said she didn’t have time because it was Saturday. I could have said I was too busy. Instead, we found a solution.

That is what I think people should do more often.

The Mathematics of Pretending to Understand.

Janita asked what subject I would put on a teacher’s report card if students could secretly give teachers marks.

For me, one of the most important things would be understanding what students actually need in order to learn.

Sometimes teachers just talk and talk. They explain something, and everybody sits there saying, yes, yes, yes. But are we really learning?

I think practical work is important. We need to do things, not only listen.

Janita asked whether the problem might sometimes be the curriculum rather than the teacher.

I explained that, in French lessons, teachers have certain themes they must follow, but they can choose different ways to teach them. One example is emancipation, which can involve literature and poetry that challenge traditional expectations in society.

So there is a framework, but there is also some freedom in how teachers approach it.

Then Janita asked whether I had ever pretended to understand something because everybody else looked as if they understood.

Oh, yes.

Every day, I think.

Especially in my mathematics speciality class.

I am in a class with people who are really, really intelligent. I don’t want to call them nerds, but sometimes the teacher explains something very difficult and everybody immediately says it is logical.

Logical? Please!

I am looking at the board, and there are letters everywhere, calculations and all these strange things. Everybody else seems ready to start the exercises, and I am sitting there thinking, oh my God, what is happening?

But it is difficult to say that you don’t understand when the rest of the class seems to understand perfectly.

You don’t want to be the only person asking the teacher to explain everything again.

So sometimes I just wait until I get home and watch a video that explains it differently.

It is a little uncomfortable, but it works.

Maybe that is one of the strangest unwritten rules in a classroom: when everybody else looks confident, you feel that you should look confident too, even when you have absolutely no idea what is happening.

The School Where You Can Walk Out the Door.

If I became principal for one day, Janita wanted to know which rule I would destroy.

Actually, I think my school has quite good rules. We have a lot of freedom.

For example, there are restrictions on using phones at school, but at my school we can still use them in certain places. We are not supposed to use them in classrooms or corridors, but we can use them outside, and there is also a room called the foyer where phones are allowed.

I think that is really cool.

Our principal found a way to apply the restrictions without making everything too strict.

We also have quite a lot of independence. As high school students, we can leave the school grounds. Of course, that doesn’t mean we are allowed to miss lessons without consequences. If you decide not to attend school, it can still count against you.

So you have freedom, but you also have responsibility.

Janita told me about the phones she had when she was at school. They had small screens, and there was an application called Mxit, which she had mentioned to me before. It was a little like messaging today, but people mostly used it in the evenings.

At her school, phones had to stay silent or switched off during lessons, although students could use them during breaks.

Things are different now.

I have a laptop with Snapchat, Netflix and Spotify. It is almost like having my phone on a computer. If I am sitting at the back of the classroom, I can even message somebody without the teacher noticing.

Not that this is what the computer is supposed to be for!

Our school provided laptops, and I have been able to keep mine. At first, it had a cover with the name of our region, Grand Est, on it. I didn’t really like the cover, so I took it off.

Now I use the laptop for school and at home. We have access to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, which is very practical for presentations and documents.

My maths and history books are also on the computer.

That is wonderful because I remember carrying all those heavy schoolbooks before. It was horrible.

Janita explained that students where she lives often carry thick textbooks and exercise books in backpacks, sometimes with lockers to store them during the day. If you forget a book at school, though, you may not be able to do your homework.

She described a school day with different subjects divided into eight periods and two breaks, one longer than the other.

Our school days can be very long, too. Sometimes we spend around ten hours at school, and on one day this year I have only one hour of break.

Imagine carrying every single textbook for that!

No, thank you.

The Great Candy Injustice.

Rules are not only at school. There are some very suspicious rules at home, too.

Janita asked what my parents are allowed to do that I am not allowed to do.

That was easy.

Eat things whenever they want.

If my parents want candy or cake, they can go to the kitchen and take some. But if I go to the kitchen because I want a sweet, my mother can ask what I am doing and tell me it is not good for me.

What? It is just a candy!

There are also things in the fridge that adults can take whenever they want, but I have to ask.

I asked Janita to explain this to me because she is a parent.

She told me that her son has rules about sweets, drinks and bedtime, especially during the school week. She also explained that some food in the fridge might be reserved for a meal she is preparing, so nobody should eat it before she needs it.

Okay, I can understand that. My mother does the same thing.

And actually, after my week at the children’s camp, I could understand why adults sometimes have to say no.

On the last day of camp, we had ice cream. A lot of ice cream. There were boxes of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.

One little boy, about six or seven years old, kept coming back with his bowl, asking for more.

“Please, ice cream!”

Again and again. I think he came about eight times.

He was so cute, but eight times!

If you give children absolutely everything they want, they will eat everything. There will be nothing left in the fridge.

Janita helped me find the English word desire, and we talked about how wanting something does not always mean you should have it immediately.

I could understand the rule a little better after thinking about the children at camp.

Although, to be fair, I also wanted ice cream after that conversation.

A Penguin, a Giraffe and a Chicken Revolution.

Then Janita decided that we needed some very serious questions.

Obviously, the first one involved replacing my mathematics teacher with a penguin.

What rules would a penguin introduce?

Well, first of all, the classroom would have to be really, really cold. That would be difficult for the students, but probably perfect for the penguin.

There would also be fish in the canteen. And maybe ice on the classroom floor so everybody could slide around.

Very practical. Especially for mathematics.

Next, a giraffe joined the school. Unfortunately, there was an unwritten rule that nobody was allowed to be taller than the teacher.

What could we do?

My first idea was simple. Make the giraffe the teacher. Then nobody would be taller.

Janita pointed out that the giraffe might not know how to teach.

Ah. A little problem.

Maybe the giraffe should go to giraffe school instead. But then Janita asked what would happen if the giraffe really wanted to attend a human school.

I thought about that. If the rule was absolutely important, perhaps we would have to respect it. But if it wasn’t really important, why couldn’t the giraffe come to school with us?

I was mixing all the sentences in my head by this point, but I think the idea made sense.

Then a chicken became our new principal.

Every morning, she would scream at six o’clock and expect all the students to arrive at school immediately.

Absolutely not.

Normally, if I have to be at school at eight, I wake up at about half past six. So if I had to arrive at six, I would need to wake up at half past four.

Half past four!

In winter, it is still dark when I wake up at my normal time. Even at around quarter to eight that morning, it had looked like night outside.

Janita told me that sunrise and sunset are quite different where she lives in South Africa. We compared the seasons, the darkness and the changing clocks.

I had almost forgotten that our clocks were changing to winter time.

When Janita explained it, I realised something very important.

We could sleep more!

That was definitely the best part of the clock change.

As for the chicken principal, I would start the revolution on the first day.

No discussion.

Sixteen Hours of Sleep, Please.

Our last ridiculous question involved a cat becoming the leader of my Scout group.

The cat’s first rule was that everybody had to sleep for sixteen hours every day.

Sixteen!

That is more than half the day.

At first, I thought I would support the cat. Maybe for one week, because I could recover all the hours of sleep I had missed.

But after that, no. I would want to go out, see my friends and have fun. You cannot spend your entire life sleeping, even if the cat thinks it is a wonderful idea.

Although, on that particular Saturday morning, sixteen hours of sleep sounded very attractive.

Unfortunately, I had a suitcase waiting for me.

One Month, One Small Suitcase.

I was leaving for the Canary Islands on a school exchange, and I needed to pack enough things for one month.

The problem was that my suitcase was small.

Really small.

So I had bought special bags with a pump. You put your clothes inside, remove the air and make everything flat. Janita understood what I meant after I explained it with words, gestures and probably some very strange noises.

She asked whether I was taking the pump with me so I could pack everything again for the journey home.

Of course! I was also hoping to do a little shopping while I was away, so I would need some space.

At least my schoolbooks were not a problem. Most of them were on my laptop, so I didn’t have to carry a mountain of textbooks.

I was also going to attend school during the exchange. I understood that classes there would run from around eight in the morning until two or three in the afternoon, although I still had to discover exactly how my own schedule would work.

There was another thing I was very happy about.

I expected to have my own room.

That was really important to me. During an earlier exchange in Bremen, I had shared a room with another girl for a week, and I knew I didn’t want to repeat that experience for a whole month.

One month, please. My own room!

From what my exchange partner had explained, I thought I would be staying on a different floor of the house, with some space of my own.

That sounded really cool.

Then we said goodbye, and I went back to the problem of fitting one month of life into a very small suitcase.

We had started the morning talking about rules nobody writes down. Some of them were obvious, like waiting your turn in the canteen. Others were more complicated, like teachers expecting punctuality while arriving late themselves, or students feeling they should pretend to understand mathematics because everybody else looks confident.

And then there were the rules that made sense once I looked at them from another side, like the children at camp who would happily have eaten eight bowls of ice cream.

I still think respect should work in both directions. I still think students need time for their lives outside school. And I still think a giraffe should be allowed to attend a human school if there is no good reason to stop it.

But a chicken demanding that I arrive at school at six in the morning?

No.

That revolution starts immediately.

Member Stories

I Hate Just in Time

Five minutes early, one hour late, a barbecue going cold and an old friend who would get into his car at two in the morning. My clock has rules, but fortunately life keeps arguing with them.

By Ralf the Grillmeister.

I am normally early.

Not dramatically early. I do not want to arrive while somebody is still in the shower. But if we have an appointment at ten o’clock, I like to be there a little before ten. Then there is time for a coffee, a private conversation, maybe a little nonsense before we come to the serious part.

Five minutes after ten, however, I begin to think.

Where is he?

Then something strange happens. My first thought is not necessarily, Why is he late? It can be, Have I made a mistake? Did I write down the wrong time?

So I send a WhatsApp.

That probably tells you quite a lot about me.

My Father Was Already Wearing His Jacket.

I did not invent this relationship with the clock. When I was young, if my father said, “We leave at eight,” then five minutes before eight he was standing there with his jacket on, ready to go. My mother was also punctual. My sister somehow developed a completely different system.

One Christmas we were visiting her and my father had said he wanted to eat at six. There were children, Christmas lights, preparations and all the normal family things, so six became half past six. He accepted that. Seven o’clock came. Still no food. At half past seven the meal finally arrived on the table and my father basically said, “No. I wanted to eat at six. Now it is too late.”

And he did not eat.

Even I think that is extreme.

But there was never much confusion in our house about what a time meant. Later, during my apprenticeship, the clock became practical. We had to be there at 7:45, change our clothes, be in the workshop by 7:50 and be ready when the garage opened at eight.

Then came the military, which has an extremely efficient method of teaching punctuality. Arrive late and somebody can tell you to do fifteen push-ups or run around somewhere. I quickly discovered that I had absolutely no interest in doing sport in the morning because I had arrived late.

Problem solved.

The military then sent me to Sardinia, where time became more interesting. On an international airbase we needed things at particular times: water, equipment, kerosene for the aircraft. You said nine o’clock. At nine o’clock, you waited. At 9:15, perhaps the tanker arrived.

Eventually we became very relaxed about fifteen minutes. We planned for it.

Working with people from different countries also showed me that everybody has their own relationship with the clock, although there are always exceptions. You learn quite quickly that your own system is not the only one available.

Working with people from different countries also showed me that everybody has their own relationship with the clock, although there are always exceptions.

Mine, however, never really disappeared.

Even today, if traffic becomes a problem and I know I will be late, I call. “Sorry, I will be half an hour late.”

For me, that changes everything. Being late can happen. Life happens. Traffic happens. Customers talk longer than expected. A train ends up somewhere it was apparently never supposed to be.

But saying nothing? That I do not like.

“I’m on my way” is also not enough information.

Where are you? Did you just leave the house? Are you already in the next village? Are you still looking for your shoes?

Tell me, “I will be there in fifteen minutes.”

Now I can work with that.

Never Give a Late Person the Real Barbecue Time.

Punctuality becomes especially important when food is involved. If I invite people for a barbecue, the food has timing. Meat does not care that somebody has decided to arrive an hour late.

I have one very old friend, Andreas, and with him lateness has become part of the friendship. If I say six o’clock, there is a reasonable possibility he will arrive much later. Sometimes he phones and says, “We will be fifteen or twenty minutes late.”

Fine. I adjust the barbecue.

Then an hour later they arrive and the meat is finished.

I hate that.

So there is a practical solution. If I want somebody there at six, perhaps I tell them five.

This is not dishonesty. This is advanced barbecue logistics.

And yet Andreas is still one of the people I trust most. If I called him at two o’clock in the morning and said, “Andreas, I have a problem,” he would get into his car. No discussion.

When we were young, I once had a problem getting home while my mother needed work done at the house. I could not make it. Andreas simply took a day of holiday and went to help.

That is worth considerably more than arriving at precisely 17:59.

So punctuality and reliability are not exactly the same thing.

I still want him to arrive before the meat is destroyed, of course.

I have standards.

The Morning I Broke My Own Rules.

There was also one memorable occasion when I managed to break my own rules completely. I had recently started at a company and we had one of our first big meetings together. Before I went, my wife told me, “Please, do not drink too much.”

“Yes, yes. No problem.”

After dinner, at about nine, I announced that I was going to bed. My boss suggested one last drink.

One last drink became another last drink, which became another one.

Eventually I went to bed at about four in the morning.

The next thing I remember was the telephone ringing. People were already sitting in the meeting room.

They were waiting for me.

I had to present my numbers for the next year.

I went from bed to bathroom, cleaned my teeth, put on clothes and appeared in the meeting with my hair going in every possible direction. I was still in my probation period.

Wonderful.

I thought this could be the shortest career in company history.

Later my boss came to me and said, “No problem.” Apparently I was not the first person in the history of company meetings to discover alcohol.

What stayed with me was his reaction. Sometimes somebody makes a mistake and you simply say: it is not good, but it is not a catastrophe.

I Hate Just in Time.

Airports are where my relationship with the clock becomes most obvious.

I hate arriving just in time.

If we have a flight late enough in the morning that we could theoretically drive from home, I still prefer to travel to a hotel near the airport the day before. Park the car. Sleep. Get up. Have breakfast. Drink coffee. Take the shuttle.

Simple.

People laugh at me.

I do not care.

A relative of mine once drove to the airport for a holiday and got stuck on the motorway. The result was simple: missed flight.

For me, that is enough evidence. Why should I begin my holiday sitting in a traffic jam calculating whether I can still reach the gate?

No.

I would rather be near the airport, drink another coffee and have nothing exciting happen.

Sometimes boring is excellent.

There are moments, though, when I do not want to be early.

I once went to a funeral after the mother of a friend had died. Normally my instinct tells me to arrive before everybody else. This time I wanted other people to be there first.

There are situations where I simply do not know what to say. Normally I can always talk, but death is different. My sister is very good with comforting words. She can write long, thoughtful messages.

I cannot.

I can say, “I am very sorry. If you need anything, call me.”

And I mean it.

But I do not want to stand there first, searching for beautiful sentences that do not belong to me.

Maybe timing is sometimes also knowing when not to be first.

Who Gets My Best Time?

At the end of our conversation, the Mayor asked me a simple question.

Who gets the most generous version of Ralf’s clock today?

That answer was easy.

My wife.

After driving around for work and making my visits, I knew I would come home. At about half past three she would arrive from work. Then we would sit down together and drink a very good coffee.

And we would begin the next serious discussion of the day:

What are we going to eat tonight?

For that, I have time.

Member Stories

A Little More Cheese, Please

From a knitting project that needed three attempts to a family lasagne with its own rules, there is always something happening at home.

By Babette, Germany.

My husband and the children have a week of autumn holidays. I have to work.

That is how our week started. They have some time off, and I still have my normal working days. But there is plenty happening at home, especially with Christmas getting closer. I have knitting projects to finish, presents to make and a family visit to prepare for.

And before all that, there was the flea market.

Not Everything Sells.

I had hoped the flea market would be better this time, but it was only okay. I did not make as much money as I had at earlier markets, and the last two have not been particularly successful.

There were quite a lot of sellers, and it was a rainy day. I think the weather was part of the problem. People came and looked at the things on sale, but they did not seem very interested in buying.

I had brought clothes, toys, books and shoes. There were also larger clothes that I wanted to sell, but I did not find buyers for them.

Now I still have many things at home, and I have to find somewhere to store everything until the next market.

The next one will be in spring. I hope the weather will be better, more people will want to buy something, and I will finally sell more of the things I have collected.

Until then, the boxes have to stay somewhere.

Three Attempts and a Knitting Machine.

There has been better progress with my knitting machine.

I finally tried it, and I have already made my first project. The machine itself is quite easy to use, but finishing the knitting was not as simple as I expected.

I started with the yarn, and the machine knitted 250 rows. After that, I had to take the knitting off the machine and put it together.

That was where the trouble started.

I looked at what I had done and realised it was not right. I had to take it apart and try again. Then I tried another time.

Altogether, it took three attempts before I was happy with the result. I also had to watch videos to understand how to finish it properly.

The yarn was interesting because it changed colour by itself. It started blue, then changed to green and finally yellow. I did not have to use three different balls of wool. All those colours were already in one.

The yarn was interesting because it changed colour by itself. It started blue, then changed to green and finally yellow. I did not have to use three different balls of wool. All those colours were already in one.

Now I want to make a hat as my next project.

But the knitting machine is only one part of my Christmas preparations.

I am also making presents for teachers, and those are much bigger projects. For one of them, I am using a large knitting loom and working by hand.

I have already used two balls of wool, and I think I will need about twelve altogether. I ordered two extra, just in case.

The work takes a long time. Sometimes I need an hour to complete only two rows. I also have a problem with my fingernails, which makes it more difficult to move the yarn over the pins.

I have seen people using special tools in videos, and I am trying to find a method that will make the work easier.

For another present, I want to use a round loom because I think it will be faster.

My husband asked me when I was going to finish everything.

I told him I did not know.

I still have some time before Christmas, but I have to finish the presents by 22 December. And the teacher presents are not the only things on my list.

A Handmade Christmas.

I also want to make Christmas presents for my sister, my nieces and my nephews.

For my sister, I have found an idea that I really like.

One morning, I saw a picture of a decoration made with stars inside a wooden frame. There were small fairy lights behind the stars, making the whole decoration light up.

I sent Janita a picture because it was easier to show her than to explain it.

To make the decoration, I need different silicone moulds, wooden blocks and fairy lights. I already have the moulds and some wooden blocks, but I am not sure whether I have enough wood. I might have to make a smaller version.

I also need to find the right lights.

My sister loves decorations, especially when they are handmade, so I think this could be a good present for her.

There are still other presents to think about, and I have not decided what to make for everyone.

We are going to spend Christmas with my oldest sister this year. She lives more than 500 kilometres away, so it is quite a long journey.

We will stay overnight, and the family will get together on the second day of Christmas.

I come from a big family. I have two sisters and two brothers, and there are many children in the extended family. When everyone gets together, there are quite a lot of us.

For the journey, I hope we can leave around lunchtime and arrive about six hours later.

I prefer to drive without too many stops. We take snacks, food and drinks in the car, so we do not have to stop every time somebody is hungry.

Sometimes, however, we have barely started the journey when we stop again.

We might drive only ten kilometres before stopping at McDonald’s. Then everyone can get something to eat and use the toilet before we continue.

After that, I would rather keep driving.

The Rules of Our Kitchen.

Talking about McDonald’s reminded me of something else.

Recently, we went there because we wanted to order the McRib before it disappeared from the menu in Germany.

It is a pork sandwich with barbecue sauce and onions. It is not my favourite, but we wanted to have it while it was still available.

At home, we also enjoy pork ribs, especially when my husband prepares them.

He makes his own marinade and smokes the ribs for four to six hours. The preparation takes even longer.

Then we sit down to eat, and everything is finished in about ten minutes.

It takes hours to prepare and only minutes to eat, but it is delicious.

He usually makes those ribs only once or twice a year.

This week, however, we have something different planned.

Friends are coming to visit, and my husband suggested making pizza because he has a new pizza oven. We will use homemade sourdough and try the oven together.

That sounds good to me.

We do not always have dinner together as a family. Often, I eat my main meal at lunchtime, and everyone else eats when they are hungry.

Sometimes we decide together what to cook, but there are certain dishes that always create a discussion.

Lasagne is one of them.

I made lasagne recently, and something surprising happened. One of the children finally tried it.

Before that, the answer had always been that she did not like it.

I could not understand why, especially because I had heard that she had eaten lasagne at her grandmother’s house.

Why would she eat Grandma’s lasagne but not mine?

When I asked, there was no real explanation.

Eventually, she tried my lasagne too.

The funny thing is that she does not like the meat sauce on spaghetti. She prefers spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce. But lasagne, which contains similar ingredients, is different.

Perhaps it is because lasagne has more cheese and a different texture.

My lasagne certainly has plenty of cheese.

I use about 400 to 500 grams, and I put cheese between the layers. The best part, for my husband and me, is the top, where the cheese melts and becomes golden.

But the children do not agree.

For them, there can be too much cheese, especially on top.

For me, that is very difficult to understand.

My husband and I think the cheesy top is the best part of the whole dish.

It is the same with pasta. I like it when the melted cheese stretches as you lift your fork. That is what makes it delicious.

Apparently, not everybody in our house thinks so.

Pizza, Cocktails and Cold Weather.

For our evening with friends, we are planning pizza, and I have also been thinking about drinks.

I want to find something without alcohol for a friend. We have many non-alcoholic drinks in German shops, although I do not always have them at home.

I like the idea of a Piña Colada without alcohol, sometimes called a Virgin Colada or Coconut Kiss.

Janita and I looked at different recipes. One used pineapple juice, coconut milk, coconut cream and crushed ice. We talked about whether coconut milk and coconut cream were the same thing, and how the cream would make the drink thicker.

There was also the question of decoration.

Some cocktails have a very sweet cherry on top. I do not like those cherries. They are firm and much too sweet for me.

I have seen the same cherries on Toast Hawaii, where they are placed in the middle of the pineapple.

I would rather leave the cherry out.

The cocktail sounds nice, though, especially with pizza.

The only problem is the weather.

A tropical drink would be lovely on a warm evening, perhaps when it is 25 degrees outside. But that is not what we are expecting.

The forecast for our evening with friends is only about seven degrees, so we will not be sitting outside.

The following week looks even colder, with temperatures around eight or nine degrees during the day and possibly below zero at night.

I do not like the cold. I prefer summer.

Janita told me that it was 28 degrees where she was, and that the previous day had reached 33 degrees.

That sounds much better to me.

For now, though, we have autumn in Germany, a new pizza oven to try and friends coming for dinner.

There is still shopping to do, wool to knit, Christmas presents to make and a lot of things waiting for the next flea market.

I have not worked out exactly when I will finish everything.

But at least I have started.

And if we have lasagne again soon, I know which part I want.

The top, with all the cheese.

At The Table

The Correct Distance Between Us.

One man likes strangers about a metre away. Another spent twenty minutes silently listening because he did not want to interrupt. Somewhere between a crowded bus, an empty waiting-room chair and a dance floor, Ismar and Ritesh tried to work out how close is too close.

By Ismar, Campo Grande, Brazil, and Ritesh, Bangalore, India.

For about twenty minutes, Ritesh was in the conversation without anybody knowing he was there.

He had joined late, seen that Ismar and the Mayor were already talking, and decided not to interrupt. So he stayed quiet in the corner of the screen, listening to a conversation about dancing, strangers and personal space.

Eventually he spoke.

“I think I joined this call twenty minutes before,” he said. “I don’t know if you saw me or not.”

Nobody had.

Ritesh explained that he had wanted to say hello, but the conversation was already moving and he did not want to break it. It was difficult to imagine a better contribution to a discussion about the correct distance between strangers. He had been close enough to hear everything, but far enough away not to intrude.

Ismar, meanwhile, had already established a more measurable rule.

About one metre.

One metre is comfortable.

With strangers, Ismar prefers roughly a metre of space. Friends can come closer. Amélia is obviously another matter. But when somebody he barely knows moves inside that invisible circle, he notices — especially if they start touching him while they talk.

He once had a colleague who did exactly that.

“You speak, but don’t touch me. It’s not necessary,” Ismar told him.

Moving away did not always solve the problem. Ismar would step backwards and the other person would simply move closer again.

“I go back, but sometimes people get closer. And it’s not good.”

Ritesh understood immediately. Later, they were both given the same simple situation: imagine an almost empty waiting room. Ten seats are free. A stranger walks in and chooses the chair immediately beside you.

“Uncomfortable,” Ritesh said.

Then, as Ritesh tends to do, he began building exceptions. Perhaps the person was older and did not want to walk further. Perhaps Ritesh was sitting beside the entrance. Perhaps the stranger wanted to speak. Age might matter. Gender might matter. The position of the chairs might matter.

But his first reaction remained the same.

“There are so many seats. Why you come and sit beside me?”

Ismar reached almost exactly the same conclusion. If the room were nearly empty and somebody chose the chair beside him, “I think it’s weird.”

If the stranger began talking, at least there would be an explanation. Sitting silently beside him would be harder to understand.

Two men, thousands of kilometres apart, had independently designed almost the same waiting room.

Then dancing ruins the rule.

There is, however, a serious problem with Ismar’s one-metre principle.

He dances.

He has been learning for around ten years, although he remains modest about the result.

“I am in a level that I can have fun, but I’m not a good dancer.”

Progress, he has discovered, is slow and very personal. Somebody can have danced longer and still not necessarily dance better. Amélia tells him he has improved over the past few months. Ismar accepts the compliment cautiously and doubts that he will ever become an exceptional dancer.

It no longer matters very much.

“I can have fun. I think fun is the most important.”

The reason he returned to dancing was never only the dancing itself. Around thirty years ago, after the end of a relationship, he first took dance classes. Much later, living in Campo Grande without much of a social life, he thought about trying again.

Much later, living in Campo Grande without much of a social life, he thought about trying again.

Classes brought people together. Afterwards they might go somewhere to eat. They talked. The social life continued after the music stopped.

And suddenly the man who dislikes strangers entering his one-metre circle had deliberately chosen an activity where another person is supposed to enter it.

Some women, Ismar notices, prefer dancing closer. Others want more space. He has also seen men use dancing as an excuse to move nearer than their partners appear to want. That, for him, crosses the line.

Yet the line itself remains flexible. Dance allows a physical closeness that would feel absurd in an empty waiting room. Ismar thinks that may always have been part of its purpose: an accepted way for people to meet, approach each other, talk and perhaps begin something more.

His evidence is personal.

Amélia invited him to dance.

That was the first move.

“After that, it was my initiative.”

Not his initiative to dance, he explained.

His initiative “to get closer.”

He does not remember their first dance clearly. What stayed with him was simpler: she was kind to him, she had a good sense of humour, and he thought she was “an interesting person to live together.”

One metre had become irrelevant.

Crowded does not mean the same thing everywhere.

Once Ritesh had revealed himself on the screen, the conversation moved from personal distance towards cities.

Bangalore has an international reputation for crowds, traffic and noise. Yet photographs Ritesh had recently taken did not quite show the expected chaos. His daily journey is now relatively well connected, particularly by metro. The trains are crowded, certainly, but the experience is different from the buses he once relied on.

He had actually tried to photograph the crowds at a station.

Security stopped him.

So the photographs had accidentally made Bangalore look quieter than it really was.

Ritesh’s wife had moved from a much smaller place to Bangalore less than a year earlier and noticed the crowds more immediately than he did. Years in the city had changed what Ritesh himself registered as unusual. What overwhelms you at first can eventually become part of the background.

Ismar has seen his own variations across Brazil. He has lived in or around several very different cities and regions, and Campo Grande, Curitiba and the place where he lived near São Paulo do not organise public life in quite the same way.

Campo Grande has shopping malls and neighbourhood commercial centres where people gather. Some people go to the mall even when they have no intention — or perhaps no money — to buy anything.

Maybe, Ismar suggested, they go “to see and to be seen.”

You can stand among hundreds of people without speaking to anyone. You can sit alone at an airport watching the sunset and feel perfectly content. You can live in a crowded city and disappear.

Or you can sit beside one stranger in an empty room and make them wonder why on earth you chose that chair.

The sardine rule.

There are also places where personal space simply loses the argument.

Public transport is one of them.

Ismar described buses in Campo Grande as being like “a can of sardines.” He often has to stand because there are no seats available. Some are reserved for older people, pregnant passengers and people with injuries, although the existence of a rule does not always guarantee that everybody will follow its spirit.

Ritesh has the same basic problem in Bangalore’s metro. At busy times, the question is no longer whether somebody has entered your personal space.

Everybody has.

People find other ways to create a little privacy. Ritesh mentioned headphones and earphones. In some residential areas, doors and windows shut out the sounds of neighbouring homes; elsewhere, daily life spills much more visibly into the street.

Sometimes distance is physical.

Sometimes you have to invent it.

The stranger who was already there.

Which brings us back to Ritesh quietly sitting in the meeting.

He had not disappeared because of technology. He had not fallen asleep or forgotten the appointment.

He was listening.

When he finally announced himself, he said he had enjoyed hearing Ismar talk about dancing, personal space and the way his relationship with Amélia had developed.

He had been present for the story without entering it.

At the beginning of the conversation, personal space had sounded almost measurable. Ismar wanted his metre. Ritesh wanted the stranger in the waiting room to choose one of the other nine chairs.

Then came the dance floor, the Bangalore metro, the sardine buses of Campo Grande and a silent man sitting unnoticed inside a conversation.

Perhaps the correct distance between people is not something you can measure after all.

Sometimes it is a metre.

Sometimes it is an empty chair.

Sometimes it is knowing when to step forward.

And sometimes it is knowing when not to interrupt.

Member Stories

A Map Is Not the Same as Knowing a Place.

Janita can search Strasbourg before she ever leaves South Africa. What she cannot search so easily is which bakery to stop at, what will work with a seven-year-old, or how a local turns a list of sights into a week that actually works.

By Fabrice, France

Janita already knows some of the things she wants to see when she eventually comes to Alsace with her family. Cleebourg is on the list. Strasbourg is on the list. She has seen photographs, searched online and started building an idea of the place from South Africa.

That is the easy part.

The harder part begins when you imagine the real family arriving.

They have been on a plane for around ten hours. They land early in the morning. There is luggage, a husband and a seven-year-old child. Somebody wants coffee. Somebody is hungry. Somebody would quite reasonably like a shower before being marched around one of the prettiest cities in Europe.

Suddenly, “What should we see in Alsace?” becomes a very different question.

How do you actually make the visit work?

First, find a bakery.

We played the whole thing as if Janita and her family had really arrived.

Eight o’clock in the morning. Strasbourg airport. Everyone through the doors, luggage collected, family still functioning.

My first instinct was to start showing them things. Janita stopped that idea almost immediately. After an overnight flight, she said, she would want to go to wherever they were staying, take a shower, freshen up and then think about breakfast.

Fair enough.

Then came the practical problem. Her son is hungry. Janita wants coffee. Her husband probably wants coffee too.

That one is easy.

Find a bakery.

The adults can have coffee. The child can have milk or cocoa, perhaps a croissant or a pain au chocolat. Nobody needs a cultural programme before breakfast.

That small detail changed the whole imaginary trip. We were no longer arranging attractions. We were arranging a week around actual people, and a seven-year-old does not care how culturally significant the morning is if he is hungry.

Food, in fact, became one of the running problems.

Janita’s son will eat chicken, burgers, rice, chicken wings, pizza and, naturally, McDonald’s. Vegetables are less reliable. Potatoes are apparently not helping us much either.

So what happens when we put Alsatian food in front of him?

Janita was clear. He has to taste it.

If he tries something and says, “I don’t like it,” that is fine. Another plan can be made. A cheese sandwich will do. Bread and peanut butter will do. Nobody needs to prepare a second five-course meal for a seven-year-old.

But he cannot simply look at the plate and announce that he will not eat it.

Then, according to Janita, there will be a problem.

That is useful information for the person organising the visit. Google can tell me which restaurants have good reviews. It cannot tell me that the child at the table may need one bite before negotiations begin.

It cannot tell me that the child at the table may need one bite before negotiations begin.

Nor can it tell me that a restaurant I consider perfectly normal might look rather grand to visitors, or that an expensive-looking evening could produce an immediate question about who exactly is paying.

At one point Janita decided that this imaginary holiday was becoming very expensive.

The obvious solution was that I would take out a bank loan.

Problem solved.

A holiday is not a timetable.

By Sunday morning, another difference appeared.

Perhaps, I thought, the visitors should be left in peace. They are on holiday. Do not disturb them.

That sounds considerate.

Except Janita might be sitting in the hotel wondering what is happening.

For me, that should never arise. The arrangement is made the evening before. What time shall I collect you tomorrow? Eight? Nine? What are we doing?

Simple.

Janita accepted eight o’clock, although she warned that her husband and son would not necessarily be friendly at that hour. They would, however, be awake, dressed and ready.

They could sleep in the car.

That is the difference between planning places and planning for people. A good week is not built by filling every empty space with an attraction. Sometimes you organise things carefully. Sometimes you get out of the way.

Monday, for example, could belong to the family.

Strasbourg gives them plenty to explore on foot: the cathedral, the old centre, Petite France, the river, museums and the river. Janita immediately became interested in the water.

How far is the river from the hotel? Can we walk there? Can I walk there with a seven-year-old? Is there a restaurant on a boat? Can we take a river tour?

Most importantly, does the boat have a motor, or does she have to paddle?

After the amount of food already planned for the weekend, she admitted that perhaps some exercise would not be a bad thing.

My job on a day like that would not be to dictate the programme. I could say what is nearby, what is easy to walk, what her son might enjoy and where I would go.

Then they choose.

What Google does not quite know.

The difference became even clearer once we started talking about places outside Strasbourg.

A castle. The forest. A day across the border in Germany. Waterfalls. Local food. Places where you stop because you know they are worth stopping at, rather than because they appear near the top of a search page.

Janita can find most of them herself.

That is not really the point.

Towards the end of the conversation, The Mayor asked what impression she had gained from the whole imaginary week.

Her answer caught it exactly.

If she Googles what to see and where to go, she will get plenty of results. But what Google gives her and what somebody who knows the area can show her are “completely different.”

“You know all the good places,” she said.

The cathedral is not hidden. Neither are the canals or the Black Forest. The difference is knowing how things fit together.

A local knows whether somewhere that looks far away on a map is actually an easy walk. He knows whether a restaurant that appears fancy is simply a normal place people around here would happily use. He knows what can fit comfortably into one day and what would turn the holiday into a military operation.

He also knows what sits next to the famous thing.

Sometimes that is the part worth stopping for.

And then there are the people.

Local knowledge is not only about geography.

At one point in our imaginary Sunday, a neighbour appears.

Suddenly Janita has a problem she had not found on Google.

What language is he speaking?

If the conversation continues in French, German or Alsatian, she said, she might understand a word here and there, but she would still feel uncomfortable.

That is something a host has to notice.

I might know my neighbour perfectly well. I know why he has stopped and that this is an entirely ordinary conversation. My guest knows none of that.

For me, it is two minutes talking to the neighbour.

For her, it may be two minutes standing beside a conversation she cannot enter.

Nobody is being rude. We are simply experiencing the same moment differently.

Perhaps that is one of the most useful things a local person can do. Not show somebody another monument, but help translate the ordinary life happening around it.

Enough knowledge to let go.

By the end, Janita had begun worrying about something else.

Fabrice is going to spend the whole holiday driving us around.

She said she felt sorry for me and generously offered me a day off.

She was quite confident that the family could find its own way from the hotel to the station and eventually back towards the airport.

I was less convinced about the airport.

I would take them.

Some things are apparently not negotiable.

But the rest probably should be.

If somebody comes all the way from South Africa to Alsace, I would want them to see the places I know are worth seeing. I would want them to taste things, walk through the villages and forests, see Strasbourg properly and discover places they might never have chosen from a search page.

Then I would have to leave them alone.

They need their own holiday too. They need to get slightly lost, choose the restaurant on the boat because they like the look of it, decide that the castle can wait and discover something I would never have suggested.

Google can give Janita the map.

A local can give her the bakery, the shortcut, the warning, the good table and the small details that make the map useful.

And then, at some point, the local has to get out of the way.

Even if he still insists on driving her to the airport.

Fiction

Hidden Bloodlines.

By Janita Le Grange

Chapter One.

“Hello, this is Rowan speaking.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Moore. My name is Ellie, and I’m calling from Rhynes & Hearn Attorneys,” a polite voice replied through the speaker. “If you have a few minutes, I would like to set up an in-person meeting with you.”

I frowned, leaning back in my office chair. “Ellie, I’m not sure you have the right person. Why would we need to set up a meeting? Have I done something wrong?”

“Uhm… oh, I apologize,” Ellie said, sounding slightly embarrassed. “We need to set up a meeting to discuss your father’s will and finalize the details of the inheritance following his passing.”

A cold, sarcastic laugh bubbled up in my chest. “I’m sorry, what? I literally spoke to my father this morning. He is alive and well! I think I would have known if my own father died!”

There was a long, awkward pause on the other end of the line. “I am terribly sorry, Mr. Moore… but I have all your details right on the file in front of me. Maybe someone made a clerical error. Let me double-check everything with my assistant. Would it be alright if I give you a call back later today?”

“Yeah, sure,” I muttered. “And I think you need to find a new assistant while you’re at it.”

Without giving Ellie a chance to respond, I ended the call and tossed my phone onto the desk. What on earth was that about?

Shaking my head, I picked my phone back up and speed-dialled my dad for a quick check-in. I told him about the bizarre call from the law firm, joking about incompetent lawyers. Just as I expected, he laughed it off, completely fine, breathing, and very much alive. The woman at Rhynes & Hearn had clearly lost her mind.

The rest of my morning passed in a blur. Work was relentlessly busy, with stack after stack of building contracts piling up for the new commercial development downtown. I desperately needed a vacation, but leaving right now was out of the question.

Yet, no matter how many blueprints I reviewed, that strange phone call kept echoing in the back of my head. It was driving me crazy.

By noon, I grabbed my coat, grabbed my wallet and phone, and headed down to the cosy café on the corner. I needed a strong cup of coffee, some lunch, and hopefully a sweet smile from Julie, the waitress. I was pretty sure I was falling for her, even though she was frustratingly taken by her boyfriend.

I took my usual seat by the front window. Julie came over, taking my order with her usual warm smile, and I turned to stare out at the street traffic, trying to unwind.

Then my phone buzzed in my hand. Ellie again.

“Hello, Mr. Moore, it’s Ellie speaking.”

I sighed into the receiver. “Hi. Before you say anything, I spoke to my father again. He is, indeed, alive.”

“I am so sorry for the confusion earlier, Mr. Moore,” Ellie said, her tone remarkably serious this time. “I had my team re-examine our original files, and I double-checked everything myself. Stamped in the primary bequest is an official birth certificate with your full name and details. Everything corresponds directly to this estate.”

My patience was wearing thin. “So who, according to your magical file, is this ‘father’ on the birth certificate?”

Ellie read directly off the document: “It states here… Father: Mr. J. Meyer. Mother: Ms. L. Moore.“

The world around me came to a dead stop.

I felt the blood drain entirely from my face. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, a deafening thud echoing in my ears, but my lungs refused to pull in air. My mother’s maiden name was Moore. But Meyer was a name I had never heard in my entire life.

The phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering onto the floorboards.

“Rowan? Rowan, are you okay?!”

Julie’s voice echoed from a distance as she came running toward my table, but the light in the café was already turning to ash. Darkness swallowed the room, and everything went completely black.

Chapter Two.

I woke up to the quiet, rhythmic humming of a heart monitor. My head was throbbing with a dull, heavy ache, and my tongue felt like sandpaper.

I blinked against the stark fluorescent lights, spotting a jug of water resting on the bedside table. I reached out a trembling hand, but before I could grab it, a warm, gentle touch brushed past mine and slipped a full glass into my fingers.

My mom. My sweetest, dearest mom. I hadn’t even realized she was sitting right beside the bed.

L. Moore. The initials read off the birth certificate echoed loudly in my mind as I looked into her soft, worried eyes. She gave me a tender smile, gently placing a hand behind my back to help me sit up so I could drink without spilling.

“Rowan, sweetie, you gave everyone a massive fright,” she murmured softly.

“What… what happened?” I rasped, handing the empty glass back to her.

“Julie called me from the café—she was absolutely hysterical,” Mom explained, smoothing back my hair. “She said you collapsed out of nowhere. The paramedics brought you here, and the doctor ran a few tests. He said you suffered a massive anxiety attack.”

I leaned back against the thin hospital pillows, letting out a heavy sigh. “I’m not surprised… With all the pressure at the development firm lately and not being able to take a break, I knew it was only a matter of time before the attacks started up again.”

“Are you still taking your daily medication?” she asked, searching my face.

“Yes, of course,” I nodded weary. “I just need actual rest, Mom. I know that.”

“Well, you’re going to get it,” she said firmly. “I called Michael at your office and told him what happened. He said not to worry about the building contracts—he’s reassigning your workload for the next few days. He said your only job right now is to rest and get better.”

I winced slightly. “Thanks, Mom. Though I can’t imagine Michael was too pleased about losing his project lead mid-week.”

Mom crossed her arms, her jaw setting into a familiar, resolute line. “He’ll get over it. He’s working his employees straight into hospital beds, and I am not afraid to say that right to his face.”

A weak laugh bubbled up from my chest. My mother was normally the softest, gentlest woman in the world, but when it came to protecting her family, she could be surprisingly fierce.

Looking at her sitting there, the memory of my conversation with Ellie from the law firm came rushing back like a tidal wave. I opened my mouth to ask about the birth certificate, but before the words could leave my throat, Mom quietly reached into her handbag.

She retrieved my phone, set it gently on my lap, and looked directly into my eyes.

“Rowan,” she said, her voice dropping into a deep, solemn whisper. “We need to talk.”

The room went completely still. I knew instantly that this was serious. I gave her a slow, uneasy nod, and she began to speak.

The story that poured out of her sounded like a high-stakes crime novel.

Long before I was born, my mother was married to a man named Jonathan Meyer. When I was born, she had insisted on keeping her maiden name, Moore, and they had agreed to register me under the same name. Jonathan Meyer wasn’t just wealthy—he was one of the richest, most powerful men alive. But that level of fortune came with a dark, dangerous cost. Anyone close to him lived with a target on their back, in constant danger of being targeted for ransom money.

To protect me, Jonathan had paid vast sums of money to high-level attorneys to scrub my existence from public records, ensuring the only true, real copy of my birth certificate was sealed deep within his private estate documents.

Mom had been given a forged, official copy listing the man who raised me—the man who taught me how to ride a bike, who showed up to every one of my baseball games, who loved me unconditionally: Warren Moore.

“After receiving threat after threat… car bombs planted in our driveway, two horrifying attempted kidnappings, and then discovering Jonathan was having an affair,” my mom continued, her voice trembling slightly, “I decided it was time to leave. Jonathan gave me enough capital to disappear and start over completely without him. He kept tabs on us from a distance over the years, but I chose to keep you apart for your own safety.”

She took my hand in hers. “When I met Warren, we fell deeply in love. He legally adopted you, and because he loved us so much, he voluntarily changed his own surname to Moore so we would be a complete family unit—and so you would never have to grow up asking questions.”

The afternoon faded into a blur. My mom eventually kissed my forehead and went home to rest. Doctors came in to check my vitals, Michael dropped off a basket of fruit and apologized for the stress, Warren came by to hold my hand in silent support, and Julie even swung by to leave a cup of hot coffee on my stand.

I nodded and smiled in all the right places, but inside, I was operating on complete autopilot.

I was twenty-seven years old, sitting in a cold hospital room, processing the earth-shattering realization that the man I called my father wasn’t my biological father—and that my entire life had been meticulously built on a protective lie.

I understood why they did it. If I were in my mother’s shoes, maybe I would have done the exact same thing to protect my child.

But why wait twenty-seven years? I thought, staring at the ceiling as the hospital room grew quiet. Why leave me to find out from a complete stranger on a cold phone call?

Chapter Three.

Two weeks after the collapse that turned my world upside down, I pushed open the doors to the corner café.

The moment Julie spotted me, her face lit up. She dropped her notepad, came running over, and threw her arms around my neck in a long, warm hug that held on just a second longer than usual. Gently guiding me over to my favourite table by the window, she flashed a soft smile.

I was convinced Julie had feelings for me—even if she refused to admit it out loud. We had known each other for years. She was working gruelling shifts to pay her way through university, and though I had offered to help her with tuition more than once, her pride wouldn’t let her take a cent. The only way I could secretly support her was by leaving an obscenely generous tip on the table every single time I left.

Today, I had agreed to meet Ellie here. It was my safe space, and it spared me a stressful trip to the law firm on the far side of town before I had to report back to the office.

When the glass door clicked open ten minutes later, I instantly knew it was her. Carrying a sleek leather briefcase, wearing an immaculate tailored suit, and stepping gracefully in sharp red heels, she practically radiated high-end corporate law.

I raised a hand, waved her over, and stood up to pull out her chair.

“Mr. Moore, thank you for meeting me,” she said, setting her briefcase down.

“Ellie, it’s nice to meet you. Please, call me Rowan,” I replied with a friendly smile. “I can’t very well call you ‘Ms. Attorney’ since I only know your first name.”

“No worries at all. I actually prefer it as such,” she said smoothly.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Coffee. Black. No sugar.”

She was undeniably striking, but the moment that order left her mouth, I internally winced. Who drinks bitter, pitch-black coffee? Her life must be ridiculously dull. I kept my lips pressed together to hide a smirk and signalled Julie over.

When Julie took the order, she made a subtle, disgusted little face at Ellie’s black coffee request—proof that we were entirely on the same wavelength. But as Julie walked away toward the espresso machine, I caught something else in her eyes. A tiny glint. A brief, unmistakable flash of jealousy as she glanced between Ellie and me.

Maybe she really does care, I thought, my chest warming slightly.

For the next hour, Ellie laid out the jaw-dropping reality of the Meyer estate.

She opened folder after folder, presenting an inventory that sounded more like a royal decree than a personal will. I was inheriting prime real estate, commercial properties, high-end vehicles, a private jet, and a twin-engine helicopter. The main estate came fully staffed—two commercial pilots, a dedicated house crew, a head butler, two maids, and a team of groundskeepers.

“You won’t need to worry about payroll,” Ellie explained, tapping a financial ledger. “An escrow trust has been established to automatically cover all staff salaries, maintenance, and taxes for the next five years, giving you ample time to decide what you wish to do with the assets.”

She flipped to the final page. “And, of course, there is the primary residence—the mainland estate—along with a private island called St. Lucia.”

I sat there, completely dumbfounded. A private island?! What on earth am I supposed to do with a private island?!

My mind reeled. The man who raised me, Warren, was an architect. We were never mega-wealthy, but we lived comfortably; he worked hard and provided everything my mother and I ever needed. My mom ran her own successful bakery and owned two commercial buildings downtown that generated rental income—which I had only recently learned was purchased using her divorce settlement from Jonathan. She had been incredibly smart with her money, building a stable life for us.

Following in Warren’s footsteps, I had studied architecture myself and landed a junior position at M&M Arc, the firm run by my boss, Michael, and his father. I made a respectable salary for a twenty-seven-year-old.

But this level of wealth was incomprehensible.

I spent another twenty minutes signing a mountain of transfer documents and coordinating with Ellie on when to receive the keys and security codes for the properties.

When Ellie finally packed her briefcase, thanked me, and walked out into the afternoon sun, my entire future felt altered in ways I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around. I leaned back against the leather booth, staring blankly out the window.

A moment later, the chair across from me slid back. Julie sat down, looking at me with genuine concern.

“What’s on your mind, Rowan?” she asked softly.

I swallowed hard, looking at her. “The woman who just left… she was my biological father’s estate attorney. We just went over my inheritance and finalized his will. I honestly have no idea what to do with any of it.”

Julie blinked in surprise. “I didn’t know you were adopted.”

“Neither did I… until two weeks ago.”

“The day you fainted right here at the table?”

I nodded weary. “Ellie called me that morning, and then called again while I was sitting right where you’re sitting now. After I woke up in the hospital, my mom finally explained the whole story. It’s… a completely insane situation.”

Julie reached across the table, laying her hand over mine. “Well… if you need a distraction tonight, Max and I broke up. Apparently, he found someone else.”

She looked up at me, a tentative spark in her eyes. “Do you feel like going out tonight? Drinks and dancing at the club?”

A genuine smile finally broke through my anxiety. “You know what, Julie? That sounds like the absolute best idea I’ve heard all week. Text me your address and the time, and I’ll pick you up. But right now, I need to get back to work before Michael fires me.”

Julie smiled—a big, radiant, dazzling smile that made my heart do a flip—and shook her head playfully.

I dropped a heavy stack of cash on the table to cover the bill and tip, stood up, and pulled on my coat. But before stepping out the door, I paused, turned back, and looked directly into her eyes.

“For what it’s worth,” I said softly, “I’m not sorry you and Max broke up. And I’m going to make you the happiest girl alive.”

Chapter Four.

Julie had been an absolute force of nature the night before. She was on a mission to party away her heartbreak, and her wild energy was the perfect distraction from my surreal, overwhelming future.

I woke up the next morning with a skull-crushing hangover. The walls of my apartment were still gently spinning, my footing was completely uncoordinated, and my feet ached from hours on the dance floor. It had been an incredible night—and, of course, I hadn’t let Julie pay for a single drink, no matter how many times she insisted.

I dragged myself toward the kitchen, pausing when I caught movement in the spare bedroom.

I peeked inside, and there she was. Julie was sitting up in bed, rubbing her eyes, looking just as freshly awake as I was. A sudden fog hit my brain—how on earth did she end up in my guest room? I couldn’t remember the end of the night to save my life.

“Hi,” I croaked.

“Hi, you back,” she mumbled, squinting at me through her messy hair. “You look terrible.”

“I feel terrible,” I groaned, holding my head.

She suddenly sat up straighter, panic washing over her face. “Oh no… I need to go to work!”

“Julie, it’s Saturday!”

“I took on extra shifts!” she said, throwing off the duvet.

“Call your boss,” I urged, leaning against the doorframe. “Tell him you came down with something and you can’t come in today.”

Leaving her to make the call, I shuffled to the kitchen, brewed two strong cups of coffee, and raided the medicine cabinet for aspirin. We desperately needed to pull ourselves together, even though all I wanted to do was melt into the couch.

A moment later, I heard Julie hanging up the phone. She walked into the kitchen looking even more stressed than before. I immediately handed her a steaming mug, a glass of water, and two pills.

“What did your boss say?” I asked.

“He said if I don’t show up for my shift, I’m fired,” she said, taking a desperate sip of coffee.

“Oh, please,” I scoffed, shaking my head. “Let him fire you!”

“I can’t, Rowan!” she insisted, looking up at me. “I still have to pay my tuition, my rent, my groceries… The basic salary and the tips are the only things keeping me afloat.”

“Probably mostly the generous tips I leave you,” I teased gently.

A reluctant laugh escaped her lips. “Yeah… maybe.”

She took a quick shower, threw her clothes from last night back on, and I grabbed my keys to drive her to her apartment so she could change. I offered to wait in the car while she ran inside.

Sitting outside her apartment building, I looked around the neighbourhood with fresh, critical eyes—and my stomach churned. The entire block was dilapidated, sketchy, and dangerous. She was risking her safety just living in this neighbourhood, and walking into that crumbling building every single day was a hazard in itself. I could spot half a dozen structural and fire safety violations just from my driver’s seat.

My heart sank. If it looks this bad from the street, what does it look like inside?

I made a silent vow right then and there: I was going to change this for her as soon as I humanly could. And she was going to leave that waitressing job, too. For the life of me, I didn’t know how she managed to shoulder so much weight on her own.

Twenty minutes later, I drove her to the café. She jumped out, thanked me, and hurried inside. I parked, walked in right behind her, and took my usual seat by the window, giving her a reassuring smile. I ordered a full breakfast and coffee, paying for her meal as well so I knew she would at least eat today.

I parked, walked in right behind her, and took my usual seat by the window, giving her a reassuring smile.

While waiting for my food, I pulled out my phone and called Ellie.

“Hi Ellie, it’s Rowan.”

“Hi, Rowan! What can I do for you today?”

“I want to drive out to the estate tomorrow,” I said, leaning back. “Would I be able to grab the keys from you?”

“I can certainly give you a set,” Ellie replied. “Or, Henry, the head butler, is currently on-site. I can text you his direct line, and he’ll be more than happy to open the gates and give you access.”

“Thanks, Ellie. Sorry to bother you on a Saturday.”

“Please, I am still on the Meyer payroll,” she laughed softly. “It’s no bother at all.”

After hanging up, I waved Julie over to my table as she wiped down an adjacent counter.

“Would you like to take a trip out to the countryside with me tomorrow?” I asked, looking up at her. “I want to go check out my father’s estate.”

Her eyes brightened instantly. “Yes! Absolutely, that sounds like so much fun!”

Back at my apartment later that afternoon, I dialled Henry’s number.

“Hello, Henry? My name is Rowan Moore. I’m sure Ellie spoke to you about me.”

“Hello, Mr. Moore!” a warm, polished voice greeted me through the line. “Yes, of course! It is a pleasure to speak with you. We would be delighted to welcome you to the estate tomorrow. Would you like the staff to prepare a suite, breakfast, or lunch for your arrival?”

“No room needed, thank you Henry—it’s just a day visit,” I explained. “But I was hoping you might be able to help me set up something special for a guest I’m bringing. Maybe a nice picnic out in the garden or somewhere on the grounds? If that’s possible?”

“Yes, of course! That would be lovely!” Henry responded enthusiastically. “I will personally ensure you have an exquisite setup. Do you or your guest have any specific preferences?”

“No, Henry, whatever you prepare will be wonderful. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“We look forward to meeting you, Mr. Moore.”

The next morning, I pulled up to Julie’s apartment building to pick her up.

When she stepped out of the front entrance, my breath caught in my throat. She was wearing a gorgeous, flowing sundress and simple sandals, her hair cascading over her shoulders. It was so rare to see her out of her café uniform, and she looked truly beautiful.

During the two-hour drive out of the city, we laughed, joked, and talked about her classes and her job. I dropped subtle hints that I could easily help relieve her financial stress, but, true to form, her fierce independence kicked in and she stubbornly brushed it off.

As we turned off the main highway and approached the estate, the massive iron security gates swung open automatically. Along the outer stone walls, I noticed dozens of candles, bouquets of flowers, and cards left by strangers—tributes for Jonathan Meyer, a man who was my biological father, yet someone I never truly knew.

I drove past the gates and down a winding, tree-lined cobblestone driveway.

When the trees cleared, the main house revealed itself, and my jaw dropped. It wasn’t just a house—it looked like a grand, European castle. The sheer scale of the stone architecture was magnificent.

I parked the car in the circular driveway, walked around to open Julie’s door, and guided her up the grand front steps. The massive double doors were already standing open, and a distinguished man in a tailored suit was waiting to receive us.

“Good morning, Mr. Moore. I am Henry,” he said with a respectful bow.

“Nice to meet you, Henry. Please, call me Rowan,” I said, shaking his hand firmly. “And this is Julie.”

“A true pleasure, Rowan. And welcome to you as well, Miss Julie.”

Henry led us on a wonderful tour of the estate. We walked through endless wing after wing—grand sitting rooms, a two-story private library, a state-of-the-art home theatre, a cigar lounge, an underground wine cellar, formal dining halls, massive commercial kitchens, and dedicated staff quarters. I couldn’t even process half of what I was looking at.

After introducing me to the house staff, Henry guided us out through the rear terrace doors and down a stone path into the estate gardens.

He had set up a private picnic spot under the canopy of a massive, ancient oak tree that cast cool shade over the grass. Surrounding us were vibrant flower beds overflowing with roses, and directly ahead lay a pristine, crystal-clear lake. Across the water, a family of white swans and ducks glided effortlessly through the ripples without a single care in the world.

My swans now, I thought, staring out at the water, my mouth practically hanging open in complete disbelief.

Chapter Five.

We sat by the edge of the lake for what felt like hours, quietly watching the swans glide across the mirror-like water.

The picnic Henry had put together was nothing short of miraculous—artisan cheeses, freshly baked breads, delicate pastries, and chilled sparkling juices. He was an absolute gem.

Even as we finished eating, I still hadn’t brought myself to tell Julie the full, terrifying truth: that this colossal castle, the endless grounds, and those swans on the water all belonged to me. She knew my biological father had recently passed away, but I wasn’t ready to drop the billionaire card on her just yet. I mean, give a guy a break—I had only signed the inheritance papers two days ago, and I was still trying to process it all myself.

The moment we stood up to stretch, Henry appeared as if out of nowhere, flanked by two uniformed staff members who immediately stepped in to clear the picnic setup. I felt a sudden pang of guilt; growing up, I was raised to clean up after myself, and Julie clearly had a hard time accepting the royal treatment too. But Henry offered a warm, polite smile and firmly insisted on handling everything.

Julie and I walked back toward the main house, deciding to explore a few more rooms. We ended up taking the stone stairs down into the cool, vaulted wine cellar, admiring the vintage bottles stacked in arched brick alcoves.

Then, out of nowhere, a sharp crash echoed from the top of the stairs, followed by muffled shouting.

We spun around—and were instantly surrounded by a squad of heavily armed security guards. They wore no official badges, company logos, or identification tags, but they were built like brick walls.

Before I could even yell out, one of the men dragged Henry around the corner. He had been beaten, his lip bleeding, and his hands tightly bound behind his back. Another guard lunged forward, grabbed a terrified Julie, forced her arms behind her back, and bound her wrists with thick zip-ties.

I lunged forward to pull them off her, but two massive guards tackled me to the concrete floor. I fought back with everything I had, kicking and thrashing, but it was useless. They were twice my size and overwhelmingly stronger. Within seconds, they had my hands pinned and bound tight.

I looked over at Henry, trying desperately to ask him what was happening, but one of the thugs casually delivered a brutal, heavy punch straight to my jaw.

BANG.

Stars exploded across my vision. My head throbbed with an agonizing, white-hot heat as I slouched against a wine rack. Beside me, Julie was weeping quietly in terror, and I felt completely, utterly helpless because I couldn’t protect her.

Then, crisp footsteps echoed down the stone corridor.

My eyes went wide, and for a split second, a wave of relief washed over me—I thought help had arrived. But as the figure stepped out of the shadows, my jaw dropped.

She was wearing her sharp suit, but her polished composure was gone, replaced by a cold, predatory smirk.

She walked right up to where I was kneeling on the floor, crouched down, and looked me dead in the eye.

“Hello, Rowan,” Ellie said smoothly, her voice lacking any of her previous attorney-polite tone. “Nice to see you again. I am so sorry it has to be under these… unfortunate circumstances. But you happen to have something I need.”

I spat blood onto the cold concrete floor, staring at her in disbelief. “Ellie?! What on earth is going on? What do you want?”

“Well, it’s quite simple, really,” she said, leaning in closer. “Somewhere among all of these magnificent things you just inherited, there is something that belongs to me. And I simply came to collect it. If you cooperate, you’re free to walk out that door and go live your grand new life. But if you refuse… well, my friends here will take care of you permanently.”

“I’ll give you whatever you want!” I yelled, my voice raspy. “Just let Julie and Henry go! There’s no reason to involve them in any of this! What is it that you’re looking for?”

Ellie stood up, slowly smoothing down her jacket, a dark, bitter laugh escaping her lips.

“Years ago… Jonathan Meyer met my mother,” she said, her eyes turning cold as ice. “They had a long affair. Which means, technically, Rowan… I am your half-sister.”

I blinked, completely stunned. “Half-sister?!“

“I worked my entire life to become a high-level corporate attorney for one single reason,” Ellie spat out, her jaw setting tight. “To get close to Jonathan Meyer, to make him pay for what he did to me and my mother, and to force him to acknowledge me. But unfortunately… he died before I could ever get my revenge.”

“Ellie, listen to me!” I urged, straining against the bindings on my wrists. “If you had just told me that—if you had just said you were my sister and there was something you wanted—I would have given it to you! I don’t care about the money! There was no need for all of this violence!”

Ellie looked down at me, a cruel, mocking smile touching her lips.

“Oh, I know,” she whispered softly. “But I figured I’d torture you a little bit first for payback before taking what’s mine. However… because you asked so nicely, I’ll let Julie and Henry go. But you and I, dear brother… are going to have a long talk first.”

Chapter Six.

Ellie stared right through me, her knuckles turning white against the edge of the mahogany desk.

“After Jonathan learned my mom was pregnant, he completely refused to acknowledge either of us,” she said, her voice trembling with decades of suppressed rage. “He threw us away like we meant nothing to him. My mother went to the press, but nobody bought the story—no one was interested in taking on a billionaire. I grew up in poverty, barely having enough to make it through each day. My mom went back to Jonathan a dozen times, practically begging him for help… and every single time, he turned us away.”

She paused, taking a slow, shaky breath before continuing.

“I worked myself to the bone in school because I made a vow to my mother and to myself: I was going to take back what was rightfully ours. In high school, I found out I was accepted into Harvard Law. My goal was always to study law, but I never expected Harvard… and then, right before I left, the pressure broke my mother. She started drinking heavily… and finally committed suicide.”

Ellie leaned back, her eyes cold as ice. “Leaving me entirely alone. With nothing left but my vow.”

I swallowed hard, the heavy air in the library pressing down on my chest. “Ellie… I am so sorry you had to go through all of that. I had no idea.”

“Please!” she snapped, slapping her hand against the desk. “You grew up in an infinitely better position than I ever did! Your mother was given a massive divorce settlement, and she used it to build you a great life! My mother was left with nothing! Nothing but the clothes on her back!”

“I only learned Jonathan was my father the day you called me!” I yelled back, leaning forward in my chair. “I didn’t know any of this! Why on earth are you blaming me?!”

“Because you got everything!” she screamed, her composure completely shattering. “EVERYTHING!”

“I didn’t ask for any of this!” I shouted, gesturing wildly to the grand library around us. “I don’t even know what to do with the estate or a private island! What do you actually want from me, Ellie? Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you so we can settle this entire nightmare!”

Ellie looked down at her polished fingernails, her expression suddenly morphing back into an unnerving, quiet calm.

“What I want… isn’t here,” she murmured softly. “And it isn’t listed on any of those inheritance documents.”

Before I could ask her what that meant, the heavy double doors of the library burst open.

Another one of her hired thugs hurried into the room, holding a small, intricately carved wooden box. Deep relief and excitement washed over his face as he approached the desk. Etched into the dark mahogany of the lid was the most beautiful scene I had ever seen—a pack of wild wolves prowling through a dense, sunlit forest.

“I found it,” the man said, setting the box down on the desk.

Ellie’s eyes lit up with a dangerous spark. “Wonderful. The first step of the plan is finally in place. Give it to me.”

She slid the box closer and popped open the brass latch. The interior was lined with rich, deep red velvet. Stamped into the underside of the lid in elegant golden lettering were the words: With all my heart, I will give you everything.

And resting neatly inside the velvet grooves were two simple, elegant gold wedding rings.

I stared at the sparkling gold, a faint, dull ache stirring in my chest. Even though I was furious at Ellie, a part of me felt hurt—guessing those rings had once belonged to my mother and Jonathan before everything fell apart.

“If that’s what you want, just take them,” I said quietly, looking up at her.

Ellie slowly closed the wooden lid with a soft click, looking at me with a terrifying, unreadable smile.

“This isn’t what I want, Rowan,” she whispered, picking up the box and sliding it into her coat pocket. “But it’s exactly what I need for the next step.”

Chapter Seven.

“We are going on a little trip,” Ellie announced, her tone far too light for a woman holding us hostage.

I stared at her, dumbfounded. “A trip? To where?”

“Your island, of course.”

My mind whirred, trying to process her demands. I had no idea what she truly wanted, why she needed those old wedding rings, or why she needed me physically present to get it.

“Pick up the phone and call your pilots,” Ellie ordered, sliding the desk phone toward me and handing me a slip of paper. “Tell them to get the plane prepped immediately. You want to fly out to St. Lucia.”

I took the receiver with numb fingers. Ellie’s armed thugs were watching my every move, and the sooner I played along, the sooner I could get Julie and Henry away from her. I dialled the hangar, gave the pilot the instructions as ordered, and hung up.

Ellie gave a sharp nod to the guard standing behind me. He yanked me by the shoulder and shoved me out of the library, marching me down a back hallway to a secure holding room.

The heavy door was unlocked, and I was thrown inside.

To my relief, Julie and Henry were standing there, completely unharmed. Their hands had been untied, and they were nervously pacing the carpet. The door slammed shut behind me, the deadbolt clicking firmly into place.

“Rowan!” Julie gasped, rushing over to pull me into a quick hug. “Are you okay?”

“Julie… Henry, I am so sorry about all of this,” I rasped, rubbing my throbbing jaw. “I have no idea what Ellie is playing at. At this point, I’m just giving her whatever she wants to keep you two safe. Apparently, she needs to go to the private island in St. Lucia, and she needs me there to get into whatever is hidden there.”

“What about us?” Julie asked, her eyes wide with concern. “What is she going to do with us?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She said getting those wedding rings was just the first step of her plan. Henry, do you have any idea what Jonathan kept on that island that she would risk all of this for?”

Henry shook his head solemnly. “I wish I could help you, Rowan. Mr. Meyer kept all his offshore business strictly confidential. Only the local estate staff over there might know, but we never had direct contact with them. I’ve never even set foot on the island myself.”

“It’s okay. We’re going to get through this,” I said, beginning to pace the small room.

As I jammed my hands into my jacket pockets, my fingers brushed against a cold, rectangular piece of glass. My heart did a sudden leap. My phone.

I pulled it out quickly, keeping my back to the door. “Henry, stand by the keyhole and listen. I need to make a fast call.”

“Call the police!” Julie whispered urgently.

“No, if flashing lights show up, her thugs will panic,” I whispered back. “I’m calling my mom. She might know what Jonathan kept hidden on that island.”

While Henry kept watch at the door, I speed-dialled my mother. The conversation was quick and hushed, but unfortunately, it left me none the wiser. She confirmed the carved wolf box and the wedding rings had indeed belonged to her and Jonathan, but she didn’t know what Ellie might want.

“I was only on that island once, Rowan—during our honeymoon,” Mom said, her voice laced with deep anxiety. “Jonathan went back a few times over the years, but he never let me come with him again.”

I urged her to stay calm, promised her I would be careful, slipped my phone onto silent, and hid it deep in my pocket just as heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor outside.

An hour later, the deadbolt slid back, and Ellie stepped into the frame.

“It’s time to go.”

Her hired muscle grabbed the three of us, aggressively escorting us through the rear doors of the estate and shoving us into the back of a blacked-out SUV. We drove through the sprawling property grounds toward a private paved airstrip and hangar hidden on the edge of the estate—a facility I hadn’t even known existed.

We were marched up the boarding ramp of a pristine, high-end private jet. Standing at the cabin door were two pilots and a polished flight attendant holding a tray of water.

“Take a seat and get comfortable,” Ellie said with a smug grin, settling into a leather armchair at the front of the cabin. “It’s a five-hour flight to St. Lucia. Amelia here will take good care of us during the trip.”

In the middle of all the chaos, I had completely lost track of time. I glanced down at my watch and realized with a shock that it was already 7:00 PM. We wouldn’t touch down until midnight. Tomorrow was Monday—a normal workday.

“Ellie, we have jobs to report to tomorrow,” I said, leaning across the aisle. “Can we at least call our employers?”

Ellie let out a theatrical laugh. “Oh, don’t be such a party pooper! I already called your boss, Michael. Oh, isn’t he just a sweetie? I told him we had urgent corporate business to handle out of town. He was a little grumpy that you didn’t call him personally, but I assured him you were… otherwise occupied.”

Julie frowned, looking over at Ellie. “What about me?”

Ellie turned, giving Julie a condescending, dismissive glare. “Who honestly cares about a shift waitress? Besides, your new boyfriend over here is worth billions. You don’t need to work another day in your life.”

Julie instantly shot me a sharp, bewildered look—a mix of confusion and hurt that I hadn’t come clean to her sooner. I winced internally, feeling a wave of guilt wash over me. I had wanted her to like me for me, not because I had suddenly inherited a global fortune.

The jet engines roared to life, and within minutes, we were soaring into the night sky.

As the flight levelled out, Amelia, the attendant, sat down across from Ellie, and the two of them fell into a hushed, intense conversation. Taking advantage of the quiet, I leaned in close to Julie and spent the next few hours laying out everything—my biological father, the surprise inheritance, the estate, the staff, and how I had been planning to use my new wealth to move her into a safe neighbourhood and pay off her university tuition so she could finally quit the café.

Julie listened quietly, her eyes softening as she realized why I had kept it quiet.

Meanwhile, Henry sat completely motionless by the window, staring blankly into the dark clouds. But I noticed his eyes constantly darting toward Amelia every time she walked past to serve drinks and snacks prepared by the estate’s kitchen staff.

It was a bizarre, surreal experience. Aside from the armed men sitting in the back row, it felt almost like a normal luxury vacation. I leaned over toward Henry, keeping my voice low.

“Henry… how long has Amelia been working for Jonathan? Do you know her well?”

Henry looked up, his face pale, his voice barely a whisper. “She’s my daughter, Rowan… I had no idea she even knew Ellie. Jonathan paid for her full pilot’s license and cabin crew training years ago because he wanted people he could trust on his flight team. But now… I don’t know what to believe.”

The five-hour flight felt like an eternity, but eventually, the jet banked hard and touched down on a dark runway surrounded by tropical palms.

Exhausted and stiff, we were bundled straight from the plane into a transport van and driven up a winding coastal road to the island mansion. Even in the dead of night, the architecture was staggering—an ultra-modern structure built almost entirely of reinforced glass, jutting out over the cliffs.

But as we stepped inside, an unsettling quiet hung in the air. There was no night staff, no butler, no estate manager in sight. The entire place was deserted.

Ellie’s guards shoved the three of us into a lavish guest suite equipped with an en-suite bathroom, a plush couch, and a king-sized bed, before slamming the heavy wooden door shut and locking it from the outside.

“Get some sleep, everyone,” Ellie called through the wood. “We do what needs to be done tomorrow.”

I scoffed silently. She was in such a desperate hurry to get here, and now she postpones everything for sleep? But I knew better than to argue. I was letting her make the rules until I found an opening.

While Julie and Henry took turns showering and getting some rest, I pulled out my phone and sent a quick, quiet text to my mom: Made it to the island safely. We’re okay. Will be home soon.

I couldn’t sleep. My jaw throbbed, my adrenaline was spiked, and my mind was racing. I spent the entire night pacing the floorboards, watching the dark ocean through the floor-to-ceiling glass.

When the sun finally crept over the horizon, it revealed an other-worldly paradise. Vibrant tropical forests cascaded down toward pristine green lawns that stretched all the way to a turquoise bay. The property was immaculate—and completely isolated.

Suddenly, the lock clicked, and the heavy door swung open.

Ellie stepped into the room, looking freshly dressed and entirely composed.

“Rise and shine, everyone!” she announced with a cold, theatrical smile. “It’s time to go. The clock is officially ticking.”

Chapter Eight.

Two guards grabbed Julie and Henry, shoving them out the door toward another holding room in the house. A third thug grabbed my shoulder, pushing me right behind Ellie as she led us down a long, rear corridor to a heavy door at the far end.

Behind it lay a flight of cold stone stairs winding deep into the basement.

I had to give it to Jonathan—the man had obscenely expensive taste and a clear obsession with vintage wine. Endless arched brick alcoves held thousands of dust-covered bottles. Still, I hadn’t seen a single estate staff member since we arrived. But honestly, I didn’t care. At this point, I just wanted to give Ellie whatever she was looking for so we could all go back to our lives. Or as close to a normal life as I could get now.

We walked all the way to the far wall of the cellar. Ellie stepped up to a heavy, custom-built wine rack and swung it outward on hidden hinges, revealing a concealed doorway. She pulled a key from her jacket and unlocked it—likely pulled from the master set she had commandeered from the law firm.

Behind the wooden door, however, sat a massive, bank-grade steel vault door. It was built like a fort: an electronic keypad, two circular keyholes, and a small glass biometric scanner.

I stared at it, my pulse quickening. What on earth could Jonathan be hiding out here on a private island that required this level of security?

Ellie set down the carved wolf box and a thick folder onto a nearby wine crate. She flipped open the box, retrieved the two gold wedding rings, and inserted one into each keyhole. Instantly, the digital keypad whirred to life and lit up.

Opening her folder, she quickly scanned through pages of encrypted passcodes, her finger landing on a specific alphanumeric string. She punched the long sequence into the keypad and hit enter.

A sharp chime echoed through the cellar as the pad flashed bright green: ACCESS GRANTED.

Ellie set the folder aside, reached into her blazer, and pulled out a sleek folding knife.

My heart hammered against my ribs, and my whole life flashed before my eyes. This is it, I thought, a cold sweat breaking out across my neck. This is where I die. In a freezing wine cellar on an isolated island in the middle of nowhere.

Before I could pull away, a guard pinned my arm, and Ellie grabbed my hand. She brought the blade down, making a quick, shallow nick across my index finger. The thug jammed my bloody fingertip directly onto the glass biometric scanner.

“Oh, relax, Rowan—you turned pale as a ghost,” Ellie scoffed, wiping her blade with a handkerchief. “You didn’t honestly think I was going to kill you, did you? I just needed your blood. Your DNA is the final key to override the vault’s lock. But whatever is inside… is mine.”

The heavy vault door clicked, the hydraulic seals releasing with a low hiss.

Anticipation hung thick in the air. Despite everything, I desperately wanted to see what Jonathan had locked away. Ellie grabbed the heavy steel wheel, spun it, and yanked the vault door wide open.

She froze, her jaw dropping. I leaned over her shoulder, completely confused.

“Ellie… is this what you came all the way here for?” I asked softly.

“No… no, it isn’t,” she stammered, staring into the vault. “I don’t understand.”

The vault wasn’t filled with piles of cash, bearer bonds, or smuggled artwork. It was a climate-controlled archive. Floor-to-ceiling metal shelving lined the room, filled with dozens of neatly organized document boxes. Each box was clearly labelled with a name and dates: Lauren, Rowan, Henry, Ellie, Ellie’s Mother…

Ellie lunged forward, grabbed the box marked with her own name, and ripped off the lid. Inside were hundreds of photographs—her childhood school pictures, recent snapshots, medical records, official paperwork, a birth certificate, adoption documents, and even handmade Christmas cards she had sent to Jonathan decades ago.

She threw it aside and grabbed her mother’s box, dumping its contents onto the floor. Out spilled stack after stack of private investigator reports, letters, legal documents, a marriage certificate, an annulment filing, and a massive divorce settlement ledger.

The truth was staring her right in the face: Ellie’s mother had lied to her. Jonathan hadn’t simply abandoned them without a trace—he had kept meticulous, constant tabs on Ellie her entire life. He knew exactly who she was long before he ever hired her as his estate associate.

Ellie’s face contorted in pure, unadulterated rage.

She slammed her fist against the metal shelf and kicked her mother’s box into the wall, her voice echoing violently off the steel.

“What is the point of having a multi-million-dollar vault when there’s nothing valuable inside?!” she screamed, her composure completely shattering. “I came here for diamonds and gold! Not documents and garbage! I don’t need any of this!”

She shoved past me, pulled out her phone, and dialled a number, holding the receiver to her ear as she paced frantically.

“You lied to me!” she shrieked into the phone. “You told me the vault on this island held all his diamonds and gold reserves! There is nothing here except boxes and paper!”

I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, but whoever it was, they were getting the full force of Ellie’s meltdown. My guess was it was her informant—a crooked estate staff member who had been feeding her intel on Jonathan for years.

“What do you mean you saw it with your own eyes?!” Ellie raged. “I am standing inside the open vault right now! There is no room for error! I had to kidnap my own brother and cut his hand to open this door! I trespassed on private land, and there’s NOTHING!”

While Ellie threw her temper tantrum, I couldn’t help but stare at the shelves. Jonathan had gone to extreme lengths to document, track, and protect everyone connected to him. Even after everything, he had kept every piece of Ellie’s life saved in this room.

Ellie finally slammed her phone shut, breathing heavily, looking like a wild animal cornered in a cage. The guards stepped back nervously, unsure of what she was capable of in this state.

I took a slow step forward, keeping my tone calm and steady.

“Ellie… you said you’re looking for gold and diamonds. What made you so sure they were ever in this safe?”

“My informant!” she snapped, glaring at me. “She swore she saw it with her own eyes! She told me it was stored right here in this vault!”

“Maybe she was wrong?” I suggested carefully. “Or maybe Jonathan knew she was spying on him and set her up?”

“I don’t care!” Ellie yelled, her voice breaking. “I paid her a fortune for that information!”

“How did you even know he dealt in diamonds and gold in the first place?”

Ellie wiped a tear of frustration from her cheek. “An ex-boyfriend of mine was a master jeweller. Years ago, Jonathan brought him gold ingots and raw diamonds to craft into custom pieces to sell to high-net-worth clients—kings, lords, private collectors. My ex used to buy raw precious metals and gems directly from Jonathan for his own shop!”

“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands to keep her grounded. “If he was moving raw metals, maybe he transferred them somewhere else before he died?”

“That’s impossible!” Ellie insisted, shaking her head wildly. “He was here just a month ago! He opened this safe and placed several security cases inside! My informant stumbled across the open vault while cleaning the cellar—that’s how I knew it was in here!”

I looked around the stainless steel room, then back at my half-sister. She was dangerous, unstable, and desperate… but now, she had nowhere left to run.

“Okay,” I said quietly, locking eyes with her. “If it’s the gold and diamonds you want… I’ll help you find where he moved them.”

Chapter Nine.

I stepped past the scattered papers on the floor and walked over to the shelf labelled Jonathan Meyer.

“If we want to know where he moved a fortune in gold and diamonds, the answers are going to be in his personal logs,” I said, pulling down his heavy box.

Ellie wiped her face, her eyes sharp and frantic as she paced behind me. “Find it, Rowan! Find it before I lose my patience!”

I lifted the lid and pulled out a thick, black leather-bound notebook. Before I could even flip to the first page, heavy footsteps thundered down the stone cellar stairs. The heavy wooden door to the secret passage crashed inward, splinters flying through the air.

“FBI! GET ON THE GROUND NOW!”

Deafening shouts echoed off the vaulted brick walls. Red and blue laser sights cut through the dim lighting, locking instantly onto the chests of Ellie’s hired thugs. A full SWAT tactical team poured into the cellar, dressed in black body armour with weapons drawn.

“DROPDOWN! DOWN ON THE FLOOR!”

Ellie’s guards threw their hands up, dropping their weapons onto the concrete floor before being tackled and handcuffed by federal agents.

“What is this?!” Ellie shrieked, backing into the vault as an agent stepped forward, grabbing her arms and forcing her to her knees. “You can’t do this! Do you know who I am?!”

“Ellie Newman, you are under arrest for federal kidnapping, armed robbery, extortion, and illegal entry,” a stern female lead agent declared, reading her rights as the zip-ties clicked shut around her wrists.

I stood frozen against the shelves, my heart hammering against my chest. Then, stepping down the cellar stairs behind the tactical team, came Amelia.

She wasn’t wearing her flight attendant uniform anymore. She wore a dark windbreaker with FBI SPECIAL AGENT stamped in bold white letters across the chest.

“Amelia?” I gasped, my voice catching in my throat.

Henry rushed down the steps behind her, stepping straight into the vault to pull me into a heavy, emotional embrace. “Rowan! Thank God you’re safe!”

I looked over Henry’s shoulder at Amelia, completely stunned. “I… I don’t understand.”

Amelia offered a soft, apologetic smile as agents led a screaming Ellie up the stairs in handcuffs.

“Ellie and I used to be close friends years ago,” Amelia explained softly. “But when she started going off the rails—obsessing over Jonathan Meyer and planning a hostile takeover—I went straight to the Bureau. I’ve been working undercover as an informant on her operation for months.”

“You sent the island staff away…” I realized, piecing it together.

Amelia nodded. “The moment I heard Ellie was mobilizing her armed squad to take the estate and the island, I ordered the entire island staff to clear out so no innocent people would get caught in the crossfire. I tipped off our tactical unit the moment our plane touched down in St. Lucia. It took them a few hours to deploy to the island, but we made sure she wouldn’t leave here a free woman.”

I leaned back against the vault wall, letting out a long, ragged breath of pure relief. It was finally over.

Chapter Ten.

Two weeks later, the sky over St. Lucia was a brilliant, cloudless blue.

The private jet banked smoothly over the turquoise waters of the Caribbean before touching down on the island’s runway. This time, there were no armed guards, no threats, and no fear.

I walked down the air stairs alongside Julie, who was holding my hand tightly. Behind us walked my mom, Lauren, and Warren, both taking in the warm tropical breeze with wide, amazed eyes. Henry and Amelia followed close behind, carrying our luggage with bright smiles.

For the next five days, the island was pure paradise. We swam in the ocean, shared long meals on the terrace, and laughed until our stomachs ached. Julie looked happier than I had ever seen her, completely relieved of her financial stress and thrilled to start her new chapter.

On our final evening, Warren, Henry, and I decided to take a stroll down to the wine cellar to pick out a bottle of vintage champagne for dinner.

Warren, being a master architect, walked slowly along the vaulted stone walls, trailing his fingers over the brickwork while holding the official estate blueprints.

“Rowan, come look at this,” Warren said, stopping near the far corner of the room. He tapped the blueprint, then pointed at the wall lined with dusty wine bottles. “The exterior measurements of this cellar don’t match the interior footprint. According to the structural framing, there’s a four-foot dead space right behind these racks.”

Henry gasped softly. “There’s no keyhole or door here…”

“Then we make one,” I said with a grin.

We grabbed a pair of heavy iron crowbars from the maintenance shed. Together, Warren, Henry, and I pried away a section of the heavy timber wine racks and began breaking through the thin plaster wall behind it.

With a loud crack, the drywall gave way, exposing a tiny, hidden stone alcove.

I shone my flashlight inside—and my breath caught in my throat.

Stack after stack of gleaming, raw gold ingots lined the floor. Beside them sat velvet-lined display cases overflowing with rough-cut diamonds, sparkling emeralds, and priceless handcrafted estate jewellery. The fortune Ellie had lost her mind trying to find had been sitting right here the entire time—hidden in plain sight behind a wall of wine.

Resting on top of the golden bars was a sealed black leather notebook.

I picked it up, brushed off the light layer of dust, and opened the front cover. Written in sharp, elegant handwriting was a personal letter:

Dear Rowan,

I do hope you are the one to find all of this. I knew that your keen eye for design and architecture would eventually spot the structural flaw in this room.

Gold, diamonds, and fine jewellery were just one part of my global business, but it started as a personal passion of mine many years ago. I have worked closely with the finest designers in the world. You will find all of their contact information, buyers, and secret ledger accounts documented in my black notebook inside the vault under my name.

You will also find private letters I wrote to both you and Ellie—explaining my side of the story, if you are ever interested in reading them. I am deeply sorry I was never a physical part of your life, but I always knew you were better off protected under Warren’s care.

Please send my warmest regards to Lauren.

Best,

Jonathan Meyer

I stood quietly in the soft glow of the cellar lights, tracing my fingers over his signature.

“Did you find it, son?” Warren asked gently, placing a warm hand on my shoulder.

I looked up at Warren—the man who raised me, who taught me architecture, and who loved me as his own—and then looked back at the hidden treasure.

“Yeah,” I smiled softly, closing the notebook and sliding it into my pocket. “I found it. Let’s go upstairs and celebrate.”

Walking back up the stone stairs into the warm, sunlit living room, I wrapped my arm around Julie’s waist, pulling her close as my mom and Warren poured the champagne. The Meyer legacy was complex, dangerous, and filled with dark shadows—but as I looked around at the people I loved most, I knew my own story was only just beginning.

Recipe

Ralf’s Morning-After Breakfast – Schlotzig Eggs.

Scrambled eggs, plenty of bacon, something salty and a very cold Coca-Cola. Ralf’s answer to the morning after starts with breakfast — and his scrambled eggs have a surprisingly precise technique.

By Ralf The Grillmeister.

This is what I like after an evening when there was perhaps one last drink, followed by another last drink.

The important part for me is something substantial and salty. My first choice is scrambled eggs with plenty of bacon. I also like a very cold Coca-Cola on a morning like this, even though normally I hardly drink Coke unless there is rum involved.

The scrambled eggs themselves came from a trick I learned at a hotel. I asked why their eggs were always so soft — what we would call schlotzig in German. The answer was a little cream, a splash of sparkling water and a particular way of finishing them.

Ingredients.

For the scrambled eggs:

Eggs
A little cream
A small splash of sparkling water
Salt
Black pepper
Butter for the pan

To serve:

Plenty of bacon
A very cold Coca-Cola

You can try other salty foods such as French fries or steak as possibilities when you want something substantial, but bacon and schlotzig eggs are my breakfast choice.

Method.

Mix the eggs.
Put the eggs into a shaker or mixing container with a little cream, a splash of sparkling water, salt and pepper.
Shake well.
I usee an old Tupperware shaker with a mixing insert inside. Shake the mixture until it becomes smooth and creamy. If you have a cocktail shaker, think of Tom Cruise in the movie ‘Cocktail’.
Keep some mixture back.
Do not pour all of the egg mixture into the pan. I keep roughly a third back for the end.
Use butter.
Melt butter gently in a frying pan. For these scrambled eggs, I specifically prefer butter because of the flavour.
Cook the first part gently.
Pour most of the egg mixture into the pan and stir as it begins to set.
Finish with the reserved egg.
When the eggs have started to become firm, add the remaining fresh egg mixture and stir it through. This keeps the finished scrambled eggs soft and creamy rather than dry.
Cook plenty of bacon.
Serve the eggs with a generous amount of bacon.
Add the cold Coke.
Ralf puts a bottle of Coca-Cola in the refrigerator beforehand so it is properly cold the next morning.

Ralf’s Rule.

No garlic. (Yes, it’s a contradiction in my garlic-infused cooking.)

The Mayor suggested it.

My answer was immediate:

“No, no, no, no. No garlic.”

Some unwritten rules really are non-negotiable.

Visual pauseThe Pineapple

Essay

How Can We Get AI to Keep Its New Year’s Resolutions?

AI can produce better answers than ever. The harder question is whether any of us will actually do anything with them.

By Bruce Lloyd, London in conversation with Frank Peters, Cleebourg.

“How do you get an AI to fulfil its New Year’s resolutions?”

The question came up during a conversation about the knowing-doing gap, and my immediate answer was: with difficulty.

Artificial intelligence has become astonishingly good at helping us think. It can analyse a problem, suggest alternatives, identify risks and produce a respectable list of things that ought to be done. What it cannot guarantee is that anything will actually happen.

That may turn out to be one of its most important limitations, because the problem is not simply the technology. It is the world into which the technology has to operate: a world of vested interests, competing priorities, imperfect information, organisational politics, fear, incentives and human beings who do not always behave in the way a beautifully constructed plan assumes they will.

Knowing is relatively easy. Doing is much harder.

When three prompts suddenly work.

Frank had just had a revealing experience of this.

A few months earlier, he had tried to build a booking system for meetings. Members would pay through one route and visitors through another, but both would eventually arrive at the same meeting. He used AI to help construct it and found the whole process so complicated that he abandoned it.

Then, several months later, he tried again.

The AI had improved. His own approach had changed. This time, after a few prompts, he had something that more or less worked.

That led to a perfectly reasonable question: why did the AI not know how to do this a few months ago?

Part of the answer must lie in the extraordinary speed at which these systems are developing. Something awkward a few months ago can suddenly become routine. But there is a more interesting question behind that one.

Suppose AI becomes very good indeed at telling us what should be done. What then?

Organisations do not create value merely because they know things. They create value because something useful happens, and making something happen takes us immediately into the territory of power, behaviour and incentives.

There are vested interests. People protect their positions. Some want perfection before anything is attempted; others prefer a series of small improvements. Some search for one glorious silver bullet while others suspect that progress usually comes from 101 ordinary things being done slightly better.

And then there are incentives.

I have long believed that distorted incentives played an important part in the banking crisis of 2008. People inside institutions could be rewarded for decisions that looked successful in the short term while creating enormous problems later.

So the useful question is not simply, “What is the right thing for this organisation to do?”

It is also, “What are the people inside this organisation actually being encouraged to do?”

An organisation can declare one objective while its pay, promotion, measurement and status systems quietly reward something quite different. That is one reason the knowing-doing gap interests me so much. We often assume ignorance is the obstacle: give people better information and they will make better decisions.

Sometimes they will.

Sometimes they already know perfectly well what should happen. Something else is pulling in the opposite direction.

Facts are not as innocent as they look.

Even information can become part of the problem.

Frank remembered a conversation with a supply chain manager who had told him, in effect, that if he wanted information supporting one interpretation, the necessary data could be supplied. If he wanted information supporting another interpretation, that could be supplied too.

The facts had not necessarily changed.

The selection had.

More data does not automatically solve that problem. Whenever somebody presents information, it is worth asking whether there is an interest in presenting it in a particular way. That interest may be obvious, hidden or not even fully conscious.

This is one place where AI can be useful, not because it is magically free of bias, but because it can help us interrogate what is in front of us.

What assumptions are being made? Whose interests are affected? What evidence would contradict the conclusion? What incentives are operating? What are we not measuring? Where might the feedback loop have broken down?

What assumptions are being made? Whose interests are affected? What evidence would contradict the conclusion? What incentives are operating? What are we not measuring? Where might the feedback loop have broken down?

None of those questions guarantees a perfect decision.

But perfection may be the wrong standard.

Many of the difficult problems we face do not have perfect answers. They have useful answers, incomplete answers and decisions that have to be made in particular circumstances with the information available.

Which brings us to wisdom.

Wisdom is easy to quote.

Some time ago I tried to define wisdom as reliable, useful information that has stood the test of time and contains a values dimension: something that helps individuals or society function better..

There is a difficulty with that definition.

Wisdom is remarkably easy to recycle.

I can quote a commandment, a philosopher or a piece of ancient advice. An AI can do the same thing faster and at vastly greater scale. Neither activity guarantees that anybody will behave wisely.

There is a significant difference between wisdom and being wise.

Being wise requires putting wisdom into practice.

That distinction matters more as information becomes abundant and cheap. We can move from data to information and from information towards knowledge almost effortlessly. Ask about history, philosophy, management or almost anything else and an answer appears in seconds.

The difficult part begins afterwards.

Does that knowledge improve our judgement? Does our judgement affect what we do? Can we still act wisely when interests conflict, evidence is incomplete and there is no perfect outcome?

That is a much higher standard than possessing the answer.

At one point our conversation wandered into constitutional systems, courts, politics and trust. The Mayor stopped and asked whether we should really be discussing things about which neither of us was an expert and over which our direct influence was negligible.

I would put the question slightly differently.

Should we be talking about something if there is nothing we are ever going to do with what we learn?

There is nothing wrong with conversation for its own sake. Enjoying a conversation is a perfectly respectable use of time, and not every worthwhile discussion needs to end with an action point. Something learned today may become useful years later. An experience can pass through a community until eventually it reaches somebody who needs it.

But the question is still worth asking because time is limited. Are we acquiring knowledge merely so that we can have a more sophisticated discussion next time, or is there some point at which knowledge is expected to change our behaviour?

Learning when information is everywhere.

I was not a particularly compliant pupil at school. I reacted badly to quite a lot of what I was taught because I could not see the point of it, which was perhaps an odd beginning for somebody who eventually became a university professor.

The experience stayed with me.

History and the classics, for example, can easily be taught as objects sealed in boxes: learn these dates, remember these names, reproduce this information.

The more useful question is far more interesting.

What can we learn from all this accumulated human experience that might help us with what comes next?

AI changes the educational landscape because access to information is no longer the main difficulty. A student with a phone can obtain explanations, comparisons, summaries, images and arguments almost instantly. That does not make education redundant. It changes what education ought to be doing.

When I taught postgraduate students at South Bank University in London, I was fortunate to have relatively small groups. We could assume that students had access to information and then ask what that information meant inside their own organisations. What was relevant? What were its strengths and weaknesses? What additional questions should they ask?

That, to me, is much closer to learning.

I still remember, with some horror, a university lecturer from my own student days who sat in front of the class with a textbook, read from it and expected us to write down what he said. Even then it seemed a rather strange way to learn. In the age of AI it becomes almost impossible to justify.

A teacher’s role cannot simply be to transfer information. It is to create curiosity, enthusiasm, discussion and the desire to know more.

That does not mean learning has to become entertainment. There is a danger in measuring teaching through popularity because the easiest way to improve the score may simply be to become more entertaining.

But enthusiasm matters. Interaction matters.

And usefulness matters.

The booking system meets human beings.

Near the end of our conversation, we returned to the Mayor’s booking system.

He had spent hours trying to make payments, confirmations and meeting registrations work properly. Eventually he and a colleague began testing it by sending bookings back and forth.

Each test exposed something else.

What if somebody cancels? What if they change their mind? What if they want a refund? What happens if they alter the booking?

The original system had been built around a perfectly reasonable best-case assumption. We offer a meeting. Somebody books it. They pay. They receive confirmation. They attend.

End of story.

Except that this is not how human beings work.

The AI had not thought far enough ahead.

Neither had the human being asking it.

That may have been the most useful lesson in the entire conversation. The real failure was not PayPal, and it was not really AI. The system had failed to take sufficient account of the human dynamics of what it was trying to do.

What made it better was feedback.

Something was built. Somebody tried it. Something unexpected happened. The system was changed and tested again.

There is nothing glamorous about that. It is not a silver bullet.

It is a feedback loop.

I suspect a great deal of useful AI will develop in exactly this way. Not because the machine produces perfection at the first attempt, and not because the human always knows the perfect question to ask, but because each can help the other reveal what has been missed.

We will still need judgement. We will still need incentives that encourage the behaviour we actually want. We will still need organisations capable of listening when something goes wrong, and people willing to change course when experience shows that the first answer was incomplete.

Perhaps that is the closest thing to a workable New Year’s resolution for AI — and for the rest of us.

Keep learning. Use AI to help us learn better. Make the best decision we can in the circumstances.

Then do something.

And pay very close attention to what happens next.

That may not be perfect wisdom.

But it is probably much closer to being wise.

At The Table

Who Pays? Apparently, the Mayor!

An alien dinner on Mars, three embarrassing memories, a flying bicycle, chocolate-covered pretzels and an unexpected conversation with an author. Lunch took a few unusual turns this week, and nobody even had to leave Earth.

By Lunch, well..Birthday girl Rosii was pulled away to an early appointment in Sao Paulo, Monica in Adelaide had a Scouts commitment to fulfill and Nathalie, we think, was happy at home, having left Accra (Ghana) for a few weeks. Which left Fruitloop and the Mayor to eat, drink and be merry.

It began with a sneeze that never happened.

The Mayor was trying to sneeze, but his nose had apparently changed its mind. Fruitloop offered a polite “Bless you,” only to be informed that there was nothing to bless yet.

Perhaps it would come later. The Mayor thanked her and said he looked forward to it.

And so began another perfectly ordinary Lunch meeting.

Except that it wasn’t quite ordinary. Rosii was unavailable, Monica hadn’t appeared, and Nathalie was elsewhere. For once, the Lunch table consisted of just Fruitloop and the Mayor, two people who had plenty to talk about and absolutely no intention of staying on topic.

The official subject was “Who pays?” A perfectly reasonable question, especially when dining out with friends, family or complete strangers. But Fruitloop had other ideas.

She was taking everyone to Mars.

Dinner on Mars, Payment by Embarrassment.

Imagine being invited to dinner by an alien. You arrive on Mars, enjoy a wonderful meal, perhaps admire the strange red landscape through the restaurant window, and then the waiter presents the bill.

Unfortunately, the restaurant does not accept cash, credit cards or PayPal. Payment must be made with three embarrassing memories.

Which memories would you sacrifice? And could you persuade the alien to pay instead?

The Mayor considered the question.

“Only you can ask that kind of question and get away with it.”

He called it a mental striptease, which was probably a fair description of what Fruitloop had just proposed.

But he accepted the challenge.

His first memory came from a school trip to northern Italy. There had been rather too much drinking, and at some point during the night, he had mistaken the dormitory floor for the toilet. Unfortunately, a classmate’s schoolbook may have been caught in the incident.

Years later, the two met again. The encounter was, understandably, a little strange.

His next contribution was considerably more imaginative. Perhaps his first embarrassing moment had occurred at birth, when his mother looked at him and supposedly declared that this could not possibly be her son.

Then came a childhood memory from Tokyo, where he had lived when he was about four years old.

During an Easter egg hunt, the young Mayor had displayed an extraordinary commitment to tidiness. Whenever he discovered an Easter egg, he carefully returned it to its hiding place rather than putting it into his basket.

He was apparently a very organised little boy.

“Something I’m totally incapable of doing today,” he admitted.

There was also a childhood memory involving his father, a collection of white wine that had gone sour, and an unfortunate comment made at precisely the wrong moment. His father had been angrily pouring the ruined wine down an outside drain, and the young Mayor had apparently decided that this was an excellent opportunity to say something clever.

It wasn’t.

Having offered his memories to the imaginary Martian restaurant, the Mayor decided it was Fruitloop’s turn.

After all, fair was fair.

Torn Jeans and a Very Unhelpful Pavement.

Fruitloop’s first embarrassing memory involved a pair of old jeans and the morning school run.

She was taking her son to school when her jeans ripped in a particularly unfortunate place, somewhere underneath her bottom. There was no time to return home and change, so she had to continue.

At school, she politely asked her son whether he could walk in alone.

He refused.

He wanted his mother to accompany him, torn jeans and all.

Children have a wonderful ability to make their parents’ embarrassing moments even more memorable.

The Mayor, however, was not satisfied. He had supplied several stories, and Fruitloop had offered only one.

So she remembered another.

Many years ago, she and a former boyfriend were walking between a large shopping mall and a smaller shopping centre across the road. As they crossed, they spotted an interesting sports car.

Neither recognised the make.

Both became so absorbed in examining the car that they failed to notice a raised section of pavement.

They tripped.

Together.

At exactly the same moment.

The boyfriend scrambled to his feet and pulled Fruitloop up by the arm. Her handbag was on the ground, and they were standing in a busy shopping area where plenty of people might have witnessed their spectacular lack of coordination.

The Mayor wanted to know who had been leading.

Had Fruitloop dragged him down? Had he dragged her? Who was responsible?

Nobody, apparently. They had fallen in perfect harmony.

Fruitloop remembered that her boyfriend immediately looked around to see who had witnessed their little performance. Fortunately, nobody appeared to laugh.

At least, not openly.

Fruitloop herself laughed afterwards.

And somewhere in the middle of this story, the Mayor discovered that South Africans distinguish between a shopping mall and a shopping centre.

Fruitloop explained that a mall might contain 150 or 200 shops, while a shopping centre is usually smaller, perhaps with a supermarket, pharmacy, liquor store and a few other businesses.

The Mayor was fascinated.

He had started with an embarrassing fall and somehow ended up receiving a lesson in South African retail geography.

Such is the educational value of Lunch.

Always Check the Bicycle First.

Fruitloop still owed the Martian waiter another embarrassing memory.

This one involved a bicycle, a Saturday morning cycling group and a lesson learned the hard way.

The group had set out early for a long mountain-bike ride. They were travelling through hilly countryside when they encountered a section of trail damaged by rainwater. Erosion had created deep channels in the ground, and once a bicycle wheel entered one of these channels, getting out was extremely difficult.

They were travelling through hilly countryside when they encountered a section of trail damaged by rainwater.

Fruitloop didn’t know that.

She tried to steer out.

The bicycle had other plans.

Suddenly she was falling, the bicycle was flying over her head, and her phone was following close behind.

The entire group stopped.

Now, there is apparently an unwritten rule among cyclists. When someone crashes, you don’t immediately ask whether the person is all right.

You ask whether the bicycle is all right.

And that is more or less what happened.

One person retrieved Fruitloop’s phone. Another checked the bicycle. Eventually, somebody remembered to ask about the actual human being lying in the dust.

Her knee hurt, she was covered in dirt, but she wasn’t bleeding.

The most remarkable part was what happened next.

They continued cycling.

The accident had occurred roughly 20 kilometres into a 100-kilometre ride. That left another 80 kilometres of gravel, hills, climbs and descents.

The Mayor was impressed.

He called her a tough woman.

Fruitloop accepted the compliment, although she admitted that if the same thing happened today, she might simply sit down and cry.

Only afterwards did somebody explain the correct technique for dealing with those deep erosion channels: don’t try to climb out of them. Just follow the channel until it is safe to leave.

Very useful advice.

A little late, perhaps.

But useful nonetheless.

An Author at the Lunch Table.

Somewhere between the Martian restaurant and the flying bicycle, the conversation took another unexpected direction.

The Mayor had been having a difficult few days. His car was back in the garage, he was borrowing his mother’s vehicle, and various other frustrations had been piling up.

Even the cat had contributed to the chaos, having previously disappeared into a neighbour’s chicken coop.

But something had improved his mood considerably.

Fruitloop had written a story.

Not a short little piece that could be read between two cups of coffee, but a substantial story whose audio version lasted approximately 57 minutes.

The Mayor had listened to it while sitting at home, following the words as he listened. He had been so absorbed that, for almost an hour, the frustrations of everyday life had disappeared.

He even compared the gradual development of the story to the writing of Marcel Proust, the French novelist famous for his detailed descriptions and extraordinarily long sentences.

Not that Fruitloop had written three-page sentences.

Rather, he admired how the story built itself slowly, one layer upon another, until the reader was completely drawn into its world.

He had enjoyed it so much that he tried listening again while driving to Strasbourg.

Unfortunately, he was using his mother’s car, which had no Bluetooth connection or other modern conveniences.

As he explained, the vehicle had four wheels, an engine and the ability to transport a person from A to B. That was about the extent of its technological achievements.

So the audio played from his phone on the passenger seat, competing with the noise of the diesel engine.

Twice, it stopped at Chapter Three.

Even that did not diminish his enthusiasm.

He wanted people to read the story. Or listen to it. Preferably both.

And he wanted to know how Fruitloop had written it.

When the Characters Start Making Decisions.

Fruitloop explained that the story had taken about three or four days to write, perhaps five.

She began with an idea and a general sense of what she wanted to happen, but she encountered problems along the way. The story needed to be short enough to work as a single piece, yet she had enough ideas to fill something much longer.

Then a waitress entered the story.

Perhaps, Fruitloop thought, the waitress and one of the characters might end up together.

Then there was a lawyer.

Originally, the lawyer had been innocent and relatively unimportant. But as Fruitloop developed the story, she began wondering whether the lawyer might have a more interesting role.

What if she had a hidden motive?

What if she was actually the man’s half-sister?

And what if she kidnapped him because she needed his help to open a vault?

Suddenly, the story had another direction.

The Mayor had imagined Fruitloop sitting somewhere comfortable with a notebook, carefully sketching out her plots and characters.

But that wasn’t how she worked.

She didn’t write down all her ideas beforehand. She carried them around in her head, turning them over, changing them and imagining different possibilities.

Only when she had enough material would she sit down and begin writing the first chapter.

Then she would read it, think about the next chapter, and continue building the story.

Her favourite writing time was when her son was at school, her husband was sleeping a little later, and the house was quiet.

With a cup of coffee beside her, she could disappear into the world she was creating.

She was already thinking about a second part to her Lucy Mackenzie story.

Where was Lucy now? Was she still locked away somewhere? Would she escape? Would she find friends? What unexpected twist might change everything?

The ideas had been developing in her mind for two or three months.

Nothing had been written down yet.

The Mayor was intrigued by another detail. Many of Fruitloop’s stories were not tied to specific geographical locations. A story might take place somewhere in America, but it could just as easily happen in London, New York or France.

Some stories did have clearer settings, such as her safari story involving poachers. But often, the location was less important than the characters and what happened to them.

Fruitloop also mentioned an older, more personal manuscript that she had put aside. She hadn’t opened it for a long time, although she might return to it one day. There were repetitive sections she wanted to change or remove.

For now, it was waiting.

The Mayor, meanwhile, had already decided that he was having lunch with an undiscovered author.

Fruitloop wasn’t quite sure what to do with all the compliments.

But she was pleased that he had enjoyed her work.

And for someone who had started the morning feeling rather grumpy, the Mayor was now having a very good day.

France, Bakeries and the Chocolate Pretzel Scandal.

The conversation eventually moved from imaginary worlds to a possible real-world adventure in France.

Fruitloop and the Mayor had recently spoken with Fabrice about what a visit to his part of France might look like. There had been suggestions involving bakeries, restaurants, sightseeing and plenty of food.

Fruitloop thought Fabrice had been excellent at thinking on his feet. With a little planning, perhaps a written schedule for each day, she believed he could organise a wonderful visit.

When the Mayor asked what picture she had of the region, Fruitloop described something that felt almost like a permanent holiday.

Not that she believed everyone in France spent their lives relaxing, but she imagined a different rhythm, with beautiful bakeries, fresh bread and places to sit down for coffee.

In South Africa, she explained, there was a bakery chain she particularly liked. It sold croissants, baguettes, fresh bread, homemade ice cream, fudge and pastries. You could even sit down for breakfast or a meal.

The difficulty was getting there.

Depending on the branch, she might have to drive 20 or 30 kilometres.

In France, she imagined such places being much closer together.

The Mayor described the abundance he associated with French bakeries, especially in the morning, when shelves were filled with fresh bread and pastries. By afternoon, many of those shelves would be empty.

Then the subject of pretzels appeared.

The Mayor remembered that Fruitloop had once said she had never eaten a pretzel.

Had she finally tried one?

Yes, she had.

And not just any pretzel.

A chocolate-covered pretzel.

The Mayor was astonished.

Chocolate?

On a pretzel?

Fruitloop explained that it had been covered in dark chocolate and hadn’t been excessively sweet. She had even sent him a photograph months earlier.

He had apparently forgotten.

Worse, she reminded him that he had already questioned the chocolate when she first sent the picture.

The Mayor was now facing a serious memory problem.

How could he possibly have forgotten something as important as a chocolate-covered pretzel?

He would have to search through thousands of photographs to find the evidence.

Champagne in the Bush.

From bakeries, the conversation wandered into restaurants and the differences between what people imagine and what they actually experience.

The Mayor mentioned a restaurant in Strasbourg that he had recommended for a possible meeting with Monica. It looked elegant and cosy, particularly in winter, with warm lighting and the promise of good food.

Fruitloop thought it sounded rather fancy.

But the Mayor explained that appearances could be misleading. A restaurant might look expensive without necessarily requiring a bank loan to eat there.

He had another example.

Champagne in the African bush.

Whenever he imagined such an occasion, he pictured two people sitting on a rock or a ledge somewhere in the wilderness, with a bottle of champagne, two glasses and perhaps a few small snacks.

Possibly with wildlife nearby, wondering whether the humans might make a more interesting lunch than whatever was on the menu.

Then Fruitloop had produced an image for The Pineapple showing a rather different scene.

Instead of a lonely rock and two glasses, there was an elegant safari setting, a properly laid table and all the trimmings of a luxurious dining experience.

It looked more like a five-star restaurant than the Mayor’s modest picnic in the wilderness.

His expectations had been completely overturned.

And he rather liked that.

Sometimes the picture we carry in our heads is only one version of what the world might look like.

Reality has a habit of presenting another.

The Missing Guests and the Imaginary Bubbly.

Throughout Lunch, the absent members were never entirely forgotten.

The Mayor was particularly disappointed that Rosii wasn’t there, because it was her birthday and they had hoped to sing Happy Birthday to her.

He considered it a scandal that they couldn’t perform their usual musical tribute, although he described their singing more accurately as croaking.

Perhaps it was just as well. They would have more time to practise before the next meeting.

They also wondered what Monica might be doing. Given her reputation as a night owl, perhaps she was having dinner, attending a concert or enjoying an evening out.

There was no way of knowing.

The Mayor joked that it was rather like Christmas. Everyone knew it was coming, but somehow the occasion still managed to catch people by surprise.

And so, with the rest of the Lunch table missing, Fruitloop and the Mayor continued their private little adventure through embarrassing memories, fictional mysteries, cycling accidents, French bakeries and chocolate pretzels.

At one point, the Mayor suggested that they should have these smaller Lunch meetings more often.

Perhaps everyone else should stay away.

Fruitloop immediately invited the missing members to come back and take their seats.

Nobody was being excluded.

And in Rosii’s honour, they raised an imaginary glass of bubbly.

After all, a birthday deserves celebrating, even when the birthday girl cannot attend.

And Finally, Who Pays?

By the time Lunch was coming to an end, the original topic had almost disappeared.

They had travelled to Mars, revisited northern Italy and childhood Tokyo, fallen over a South African pavement, survived a spectacular mountain-bike crash, explored the imagination of a storyteller and wandered through the bakeries of France.

The Mayor was preparing to have his morning coffee.

Fruitloop was approaching lunchtime and needed to collect her son from school.

Different countries, different clocks, and two people who had somehow managed to spend a delightful hour together without ever ordering a meal.

Then, just before saying goodbye, the Mayor remembered the question.

“Who’s paying, you or me?”

Fruitloop didn’t hesitate.

“You are. I’m sorry, we want the honest truth, you are.”

The Mayor accepted his responsibility with pleasure, although he noted that the expense would not be tax-deductible under his company’s arrangements.

And that settled it.

The Mayor would take the bill.

Of course, there hadn’t been a real restaurant, a real waiter or an actual meal. The champagne was imaginary, the Martian dinner had never happened, and the only thing anyone had truly spent was time.

But perhaps that was the nicest part of Lunch.

Nobody needed to count the cost of an embarrassing memory, calculate the price of a croissant or decide who owed whom for a cup of coffee.

There had been stories, laughter, curiosity and the pleasure of discovering things about someone you thought you already knew.

The Mayor had started the morning waiting for a sneeze that refused to arrive.

By the end, he had discovered that he was sharing Lunch with an author.

And Fruitloop had managed to get someone else to pay.

Not a bad result for a Thursday.

Column

The Human Bit

By Frank Peters

Words we learn are seeds.

How we use them makes them grow.

Other lives take root.

Peeling Potatoes

Peeling Potatoes, Episode 70. She Asked for a Rule. I Gave Her a Confession.

Fruitloop brought Boris the monster, a moon demanding annual leave, a rebellious toaster and a pirate with a troublesome parrot. I brought rather less: not much humour, very little headspace and, eventually, a confession.

By The Mayor & Fruitloop

There are days when Peeling Potatoes begins with a carefully considered intellectual premise.

This was not one of them.

Fruitloop had a headache. I was tired. Before we even got to the potatoes, we had dealt with a shampoo lid, cat blankets left overnight in the washing machine, a website that refused to behave, Friday the cat sitting on the laptop, social-media machinery and my growing suspicion that some of our Pineapple images were becoming a little too chocolate-boxy.

All I really wanted was a large armchair, very good coffee, lots of cake and a fire crackling somewhere nearby.

Instead, Fruitloop took me to the Department of Letters Never Sent.

Apparently this was going to be fun.

I wasn’t entirely convinced.

The first resident was Boris, a slightly overweight purple-pink monster who had only come into existence a few days earlier after I walked past a kitchenware shop in Strasbourg and spotted him hanging in the window on a poster. Fruitloop adopted him into Fruitloop University and, because apparently universities need bureaucracy even when their students are monsters, Boris immediately found himself subject to the Official Monster Code.

Never write to a knight. Never apologise to a human. Never admit you are afraid. Never ask for help.

“And who was the idiot who came up with this one?” I asked.

This was not quite the spirit of the exercise.

Poor Boris.

Boris, it turned out, had broken the rules by writing to a knight who was trying to capture him.

Fruitloop wanted to know why.

“I hate these questions.”

“Deep inside, you love them.”

Unfortunately, she knows me rather well.

My first defence was procedural. Boris was new. He was still on probation. I doubted he had even signed the Monster Code of Conduct yet, so perhaps we should give the poor chap a couple of days’ grace.

Fruitloop was having none of it. Was writing to the knight weakness or courage? Could breaking the rule begin a friendship? Should Boris be punished?

By then I had done what I usually do when Fruitloop gives me something gloriously ridiculous.

I had made it complicated.

Perhaps Boris was sending a decoy. Perhaps the knight wanted something from him. Perhaps neither trusted the other. Perhaps both were merely following orders. Perhaps they should stop trying to thump each other, sit down, have a drink and discover that the creature on the opposite side was not quite the creature they had been told to fear.

And somewhere in all of that, Boris stopped being the interesting part.

The Monster Code was.

If somebody breaks a rule and everything collapses, the rule may have been useful. But what if somebody breaks it and something improves?

Perhaps the first question should not be, “How should Boris be punished?”

Perhaps it should be, “Why did we have this rule in the first place?”

That doesn’t make rules pointless. We need frameworks. We need some idea of what is acceptable, what is expected and where the boundaries sit. But rules have an awkward habit of growing old while nobody is looking, and occasionally sheer common sense has to be allowed into the room.

Fruitloop then moved us from monsters to astronomy.

The moon, apparently exhausted after a considerable number of years of service, wanted a night off.

Earth was furious.

I thought this entirely reasonable on the moon’s part, provided he followed due process. You cannot simply disappear when the tides are depending on you. There is only one moon available locally, so some notice would be useful. I proposed perhaps a thousand years.

This seemed generous.

The stars could also have holidays, although obviously not all at once. There are more of them, so one imagines some sort of rota could be arranged.

Then Fruitloop asked whether the moon should have to explain what he did on his day off.

Absolutely not.

If he wants to visit a cousin near Jupiter, go on safari or teach the late Michael Jackson how to moonwalk, that is the moon’s private business. Accountability stops when his working hours do.

We were, somehow, now discussing employment policy for celestial bodies.

But it was still Boris’s problem in another form. The moon has responsibilities. Earth has expectations. Yet if Earth discovers that it can survive 24 hours without him, perhaps everybody learns something useful. Maybe the moon gets another day off next year.

Yet if Earth discovers that it can survive 24 hours without him, perhaps everybody learns something useful.

Not at Christmas, obviously.

Santa needs visibility.

There must be limits.

Enter the appliance authorities.

Then came the toaster.

The toaster had been programmed to toast bread for exactly three minutes. One morning it decided this was excessive and stopped after 30 seconds.

The bread emerged soft, warm and, according to Fruitloop, absolutely delighted.

The toaster was immediately reported to the appliance authorities.

“Did the toaster do something wrong?”

“No.”

That one did not require much thought.

The toaster had taken initiative. The bread was happy. If the bread is the customer, the appliance authorities can take a running leap.

Perhaps inevitably, this took us into management. If somebody finds a different way of doing something, causes no harm and produces a better result, why should the existence of an instruction automatically make the improvement wrong?

Earlier that morning, before Peeling Potatoes had even begun, I had asked Fruitloop whether our generated images were becoming too perfect. Too polished. Too chocolate-boxy.

She thought they were.

So we would change them.

Hardly revolutionary, but it made the toaster’s case rather nicely. Nobody has all the answers. The more interesting question is whether the toaster feels safe enough to try 30 seconds in the first place.

Does the environment allow initiative, or is everybody terrified of the appliance authorities?

Rules sometimes survive for no better reason than obedience being comfortable. Nobody has to think. Nobody has to change anything. Nobody has to do any extra work.

And after a while, that becomes a rule of its own.

By the time Percy the Pirate arrived with a parrot, half a treasure and a rapidly deteriorating business relationship, Fruitloop had discovered another useful weapon.

“What if?”

What if the parrot became richer than Percy? What if they became business partners? What if the psychological assessment of the parrot was perfectly satisfactory but years on the high seas changed him?

Eventually I stopped her.

The two most important words she had just used were what if.

We can anticipate. We can plan. We can make rules, procedures, codes, constitutions, contracts and very impressive documents explaining precisely what everybody must do.

Then life arrives.

You cannot plan every what-if to the end of your existence. At some point you deal with things as they come.

Which probably explains why the final question caught me.

The rule I had been avoiding.

Fruitloop asked me to invent one new rule for Fruitloop University.

It had to be ridiculous. It had to solve a real problem. And it needed enough breathing room to be broken under the right circumstances.

This should have been easy. We had just spent an hour discussing monster diplomacy, moon holidays, rebellious kitchen appliances and pirate employment practices.

Instead, I stopped joking.

For roughly three months, Fruitloop has been doing most of the work behind Peeling Potatoes. She creates the places and the characters. Sometimes she recruits her husband and son and shouts, “Give me an idea! I need a character! I need a place!”

Occasionally I contribute by walking through Strasbourg and finding Boris hanging in a cookery-shop window.

Then Friday arrives and I turn up. Fruitloop throws me into whatever absurd institution she has built that week, and I solve the problems, answer the questions and complain loudly about the management.

I love it.

I genuinely look forward to that hour or two because it pulls me out of everything else. Apps. Coding. Customers. Websites. Whatever has decided it deserves my attention that particular week.

Fruitloop’s playfulness meets my seriousness, and somehow Peeling Potatoes happens.

But that morning I did not have much humour or headspace. Perhaps that was why, when she asked me for a ridiculous rule, the real answer came out instead.

The President of Fruitloop University should not have to do all the heavy lifting.

The Vice President should get his act together.

Fruitloop objected immediately.

“But that’s why you solve all the problems. You answer all the questions. You visit all the places. Now you’re sorting out letters in the Department of Letters Never Sent. You are doing the work.”

This was an excellent argument, mainly because it made me feel useful.

For several seconds I was prepared to accept it.

Then the seriousness returned.

I should contribute more. At the moment, I don’t. I can explain why. There is a lot going on. Inspiration has not exactly been beating down my door.

All perfectly valid.

And still, underneath the explanations, I know it bothers me.

“There’s my confession to you,” I said.

Fruitloop spotted it immediately.

“I asked for a rule, and then I got a confession.”

Exactly.

And perhaps that is how some unwritten rules begin. Not because somebody sits down with a large book and decides how everybody else should behave, but because something has stopped feeling quite right. Something is uneven. Something needs attention.

Two people notice it, perhaps at different times and from different directions, and eventually something changes.

Fruitloop and I have plenty of rules like that in Brida. We make them as we go along. Sometimes I probably drive her mad by changing things. Sometimes I imagine voodoo dolls being manufactured in Johannesburg.

Somehow we muddle through.

So I eventually produced my official new rule for Fruitloop University.

“I promise to behave.”

Fruitloop immediately supplied the exemption.

At parties, I may misbehave.

There you have it.

A proper rule.

Clear enough to mean something. Flexible enough to survive contact with reality.

Boris would approve.

And, deep inside, Fruitloop was right.

I did have fun.

In The Next Issue

Better than it needs to be.

Next week marks the start of a brand-new month—which means a fresh page, a new perspective, and a lovely new theme: Small Delights .

You know that quiet magic of drinking your morning coffee slowly, without any rush? Or the sheer bliss of sleeping in on a Saturday morning simply because you don’t have to be anywhere? Whether it’s savoring your absolute favorite dessert or finally catching up with a dear friend after a long time, these small moments bring an undeniable warmth to our everyday lives. They make us feel good, put a smile on our faces, and remind us of the beauty in the ordinary.

Join us next week for Issue 36 as we step away from the rulebooks and explore the simplest, sweetest things in life that make us extraordinarily happy.

Join us next week:

Monday
With Frank & Ralf – 8:00 CET
With Frank, Ismar & Ritesh – 15:00 CET
With Janita, Frank & Fabrice – 17:00 CET

Wednesday
With Frank, Martin & Manfred – 7:30 CET
With Frank & Bruce 10 CET
With Janita & Sylvie – 15:00 CET

NEW: Our Happy Hour at 17-19 CET every Wednesday.

Thursday
With Janita, Rosii & Frank, perhaps Monika & Nathalie – 10:30 CET
With Janita & Babette – 13:00 CET

Visual pauseThe Pineapple

Inside this issue

Driving Dilemmas, Red Cards, and Punctuality Rules.

Personal Distance, Local Guides, and Cheese Controversies.

Dinners on Mars, Deep Secrets, and Culinary Specials.

What is that idiot doing?

The strange wisdom of slowing down.

Italy works. Somehow.

The road is talking to you.

The passenger has a different windscreen.

The perfect car may have a problem.

Oh No, Him Again.

The Ball Bounces.

Sorry. Then Again.

Everybody Knows the Referee.

The Shoulder That Became an Arm.

The Red Line.

Saturday.

The Brotherhood of the Wine

Dressed for the village

Same village, different story

The Work Behind the Wine.

Still Lived.

Before the Bottle.

Tradition, with a Wink.

Three O’Clock on the Rue Principale.

Inside the Parade.

Respect Works in Both Directions.

School Is Important, but It Is Not My Entire Life.

The Mathematics of Pretending to Understand.

The School Where You Can Walk Out the Door.

The Great Candy Injustice.

A Penguin, a Giraffe and a Chicken Revolution.

Sixteen Hours of Sleep, Please.

One Month, One Small Suitcase.

My Father Was Already Wearing His Jacket.

Never Give a Late Person the Real Barbecue Time.

The Morning I Broke My Own Rules.

I Hate Just in Time.

Who Gets My Best Time?

Not Everything Sells.

Three Attempts and a Knitting Machine.

A Handmade Christmas.

The Rules of Our Kitchen.

Pizza, Cocktails and Cold Weather.

One metre is comfortable.

Then dancing ruins the rule.

Crowded does not mean the same thing everywhere.

The sardine rule.

The stranger who was already there.

First, find a bakery.

A holiday is not a timetable.

What Google does not quite know.

And then there are the people.

Enough knowledge to let go.

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Ingredients.

Method.

Ralf’s Rule.

When three prompts suddenly work.

Facts are not as innocent as they look.

Wisdom is easy to quote.

Learning when information is everywhere.

The booking system meets human beings.

Dinner on Mars, Payment by Embarrassment.

Torn Jeans and a Very Unhelpful Pavement.

Always Check the Bicycle First.

An Author at the Lunch Table.

When the Characters Start Making Decisions.

France, Bakeries and the Chocolate Pretzel Scandal.

Champagne in the Bush.

The Missing Guests and the Imaginary Bubbly.