Everything has felt a bit all over the place lately both literally and figuratively.

Cleaning, electricians being in my flat all day, dust all over the things I’ve cleaned, cluster headaches, and trying to find small pockets of calm where I can.

Somehow this has also turned into a full coffee hyperfixation, a debate about why shoes should never be on a bed, and building a moon in Minecraft for entirely valid calcite related reasons.

Coffi Biscoffi

After VERY EXCITEDLY discovering that Tate and Lyle now sold Caramelised Biscuit syrup, which I wrote about in my last post, things got predictably chaotic. I fell straight into a full blown coffee making rabbit hole thanks to a Marks & Spencer cold brew I picked up.

The cold brew I added to make my iced biscuit latte was so much better than using espresso that I immediately needed to understand why. Naturally, this led to 2am research, an Amazon spiral, and a full hyperfixation. Honestly, this has kept me going for the last few weeks.

I originally bought the Marks & Spencer cold brew out of pure convenience. I use delicate glass for my iced biscuit lattes, and we’ve already had a few casualties from iced coffee chaos. Making them with espresso meant pulling two shots and then waiting for them to cool down like some kind of patient person, which I am absolutely not.

That day I’d been to town with a cluster headache and just wanted to make dinner and my latte as easy as possible when I got home. I struggle badly with PEM, and if I don’t make things easier ahead of time, I’ll often just skip dinner entirely because I’m too exhausted. So I grabbed something quick to eat and this £2 cold brew that happened to be on offer.

No espresso. No waiting. Just straight into the glass – carefully, so I could still get the layers I love.

Then I ran out which meant I had to go back to using espresso. It was nowhere near as good. That was the moment it became a GIANT problem. So I did what I always do. I Googled it.

Up until this point, I genuinely thought cold brew was just… coffee someone had kindly let cool down in advance for people like me who refuse to wait for espresso to turn from Minecraft lava into obsidian temperature. Turns out, it’s brewed in cold water over hours, which lowers the acidity and brings out the coffee’s natural sweetness.

Which explains everything. It didn’t just replace the espresso – it made the entire drink better. It added sweetness without extra sugar and somehow amplified the biscuit flavour in the syrup. So obviously, I had to make my own.

After an entirely reasonable amount of 2am research, I ended up buying a cold brew jug and coarse coffee grounds with chocolate and caramel notes (very important for cold brew, apparently). As soon as it arrived, I set it up, waited 14 hours, which felt like an ETERNITY, and it was even nicer than the Marks & Spencer one.

It did NOT stop there. I’ve been hovering on the edge of buying my own beans and a grinder, but so far I’ve managed to show some restraint. Instead, I’ve been cycling through different coffees, experimenting with brew times, and fully committing to this coffee flavoured hyperfixation.

I even made one for my son, and he paused mid-sip and went,
“OH… okay. I get the cold brew thing now.”
Which, honestly, felt like validation and only encouraged my hyperfixation even more.

At this point, my flat genuinely feels like a coffee shop. I’ve somehow become a barista overnight, entirely thanks to Tate and Lyle and that syrup. Add in freshly made Welsh cakes (not burnt this time, which feels like growth), and sitting there with a proper cold brew… It really does feel like I’ve built my own little café at home which I have named, Coffi Biscoffi. Dw i’n hoffi Coffi Biscoffi.

The Electricians Came Back

Ever since I got back from Cardiff, I’ve been slowly spring cleaning while preparing for the electricians to come back and change the lights and fuse box. It’s been a bit of a disaster, caused more cluster headaches than I’d like, but also completely necessary.

My flat was long overdue. At the point where if you open anything – drawers, cupboards – stuff spills out, and closing it requires full body weight commitment.

There is no motivation quite like the looming threat of people being in your flat all day. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Last time they were here for an hour. This time? ALL DAY. I get really uncomfortable with people being in my space that long. Cleaning at least gave me something to focus on instead of the anxiety.

Then yesterday arrived. My son and I were up at 7:30am because they said they’d be here around 8. I’d had cluster headaches all night from cleaning the day before, so I’d had about three hours of sleep. “Tired” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Thankfully, it was the same guy as last time – Elden Ring guy – and a trainee who was genuinely brilliant, especially considering he was about my son’s age (maybe younger, still in college). Also thankfully, my son didn’t have uni until 2pm, him being here helped more than I can put into words.

There were… moments. To fit the new fuse boxes, Elden Ring guy had to empty my entire shoe/past-hyperfixation cupboard. He put all the shoes on my bed. ALL of them. Outside shoes. On my bed. WHAT? Why not the floor? Why not ask me? Why the bed?

My OCD was NOT HAPPY. I have a whole system – outside clothes come off immediately, nothing from outside touches inside things, plushies go into quarantine for 24 hours, hand washing to the point my knuckles are currently protesting, inside clothes only.

And this man just… bed = shoe storage.

Later, he asked for a brush to clean up the dust that was now covering EVERYTHING I had cleaned the day before. I told him,
“I don’t like brushes, I have a squeegee. Brushes just throw dust into the air.”

He used it. “Wow, this IS better”.

“See? Squeegee is life.”

Then he said, “You can tell I don’t do the cleaning at home!”

After he left, my son said,
“I KNOW he doesn’t do the cleaning. He thinks it’s okay to put shoes on a bed.”

Hilarity ensued. We then fully spiralled imagining his wife like,
“That husband of mine has put his DUSTY WORK BOOTS on the BED again.”

My son, “Do you reckon he’s going to buy her a squeegee now? Like ‘I don’t clean, but here’s a tool to deal with the mess I make’”.

My son also found it hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing at my “spreading the squeegee agenda”.

After they left, I washed all the bedding because – unsurprisingly – there was shoe rubble everywhere. Every shoe we own had been on there. My OCD cares TOO MUCH but I actually don’t.

I get that dust and rubble happen, and they always offer to put things back, but I’d rather they go home and I sort it properly. It was more funny than anything. Just… why is a bed ever the place for shoes?

In the end, we now have new lights.

They are aggressively bright. Like LED high beams on an SUV. And there are too many of them for my tiny space. My kitchen is literally one wall and somehow has FOUR. The TINY bathroom has two and it’s like getting flashbanged in the middle of the night. And I can’t change them.

HOWEVER My bedroom light was upgraded to take normal bulbs instead of that weird 4-pin one, which means I could FINALLY put in a smart bulb. I have been wanting one for AGES. I can control it from my phone, change colours, dim it – honestly, it’s been amazing. Especially for middle of the night cluster nonsense, where bright light ruins your chances of getting back to sleep but you still need to see what you’re doing (usually caffeine or post-attack snacks).

I have had an unreasonable amount of fun with this light over the past 24 hours in between getting flashbanged by the other ones.

The Republic of Biscoff

I’ve still been playing a bit of Minecraft on my forever world – The Republic of Biscoff – whenever I’m not cleaning, or too exhausted from cleaning, or stuck between cluster headaches.

It’s been helping more than I expected.

There’s a lot of terraforming to do, so while the electricians were here, I just sat there quietly removing and replacing dirt like it was my job. I was exhausted, so the mindless repetition was perfect. No thinking, no pressure – just dirt goes here now.

I’ve ended up creating this kind of lunar alpine aesthetic. It’s basically the Minecraft world I’ve always wanted, built out of bits of real life that stuck with me. My house has a multilevel garden, inspired by the ones you see in Wales where everything is built into hills. I used to stare at them from the bus thinking how cool they looked, all those levels stacked into each other.

The moon came later. I found calcite and immediately thought, this would be perfect for a moon. So naturally, my alpine retreat now has a giant moon in it. Entirely logical calcite reasons.

Minecraft is weirdly one of the most relaxing things I can do, especially with something on in the background. We’ve rewatched Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul, which feels very on brand for quietly moving blocks around while morally complex things happen elsewhere.

The Long Dark has released a new story episode, but I’ve just been happy staying in my little world for now.

Next plan is to build my own village – which is why there’s still an overwhelming amount of terraforming left to do.

I am… not even halfway.

At the End of a Minecraft Day There Are Creepers

It’s all a bit chaotic, a bit exhausting, and somehow also a bit comforting at the same time.

But there’s good coffee, things are slowly getting sorted, and I’ve built myself a little peaceful world to disappear into when I need to. So long as I avoid the lava and the exploding creepers.

Gaming continues to be a bit too close to real life.

For the song, the thing I keep saying whenever one of us turns the lights on :-

“No light, no light in your bright blue eyes
I never knew daylight could be so violent”