raspberry coconut cupcakes

I feel like everyone is pregnant these days.

I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. I’m just saying that there seem to be a lot of little babies and baby bumps around the place. Facebook, Instagram, twitter – social media is going nuts with the baby photos and pregnancy updates.

Maybe it’s just that I had one friend who was pregnant, and then I started noticing every other pregnant person in my stratosphere. Maybe it’s that I’m at an age where all my friends are pregnant. (Not really. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that I’m only twenty-one, and that while this age is fine for some people to be getting married and having babies, it is far from the norm and also, I’m fine the way I am.) Or, maybe it’s that with the social media saturation the culture we live in, everything is everywhere and I am just noticing pregnant people and babies. 

coconut bread

You’ve got to know where your towel is.

Towels are important, in life.

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

The most ridiculous thing happened to me last week, which is why I now need a towel around my neck at all times. My alarm went off at 6.30 am (yes, it’s a ridiculous hour of the morning. I’m experimenting with running. It was going well, until) I went to turn it off and somehow injured my neck.

chocolate coconut almond biscuits

So. It has come to this.

Presents are a thing that happens at Christmas time. I like presents the same way I like cupcakes. They’re awesome, but they’re even more awesome to give to other people.