When you reached the bottom again

It'll happen. A bad day, the bag already open, the programme already on, and your hand will find the bottom before you've thought of the bowl. Then the surprise, and then the verdict.

One bag isn't the week. The list will show a week of bowls with one bottom in it, and last month it was three bottoms a week with no bowls. What happened is that the arrangement wasn't there, the bag was on the sofa and the bowl was in the cupboard, and the run did what it does when nothing's in its way. It isn't willpower. It never was.

No write-off. Chapter 13 is about the resolution at the bottom of the bag, and the answer to a run is not a promise about tomorrow. It's a clip on the next bag, tonight, and the bowl left on the counter where you'll see it. Tomorrow's snack is a bowl because the bowl is out, not because you've vowed anything.

Work out which packet got through. Was it a sharing bag that was still in the cupboard from before? Then the cupboard gets cleared of big bags this week. Was it a bag that came into the room before the bowl did? Then the bowl lives on the counter, not in the cupboard, so that it's the first thing you see. Was the screen already on when you opened it? Then the bag doesn't get opened in the sitting room. It gets opened in the kitchen, where the bowls are.

One more thing about the bottom. It's information, not a verdict. It tells you exactly which part of the arrangement was missing, and each of the three parts has a fix that takes a minute. A run with a lesson in it is worth more than a bowl that happened by luck.

No streaks. Don't count bottom-free nights. Count bowls. One bottom in a fortnight of bowls is a fortnight that went differently from every fortnight before it, and the run, if it's keeping score, has lost.