Six o'clock, Thursday

It's ten to six on a Tuesday, a few weeks on. You're in. There's a moment, a small one, when your hand knows where the cupboard is, and then the moment passes, because this morning you didn't decide on a treat and so there isn't one, and that's all. You put the pan on, or you put your shoes on, or you ring your sister, and the evening starts without a pour in it. Around seven there's a flat ten minutes, shorter than last week's. It goes. The evening is an evening.

Thursday is different. Thursday you decided on Wednesday night, because Thursday is the day the thing you've been dreading at work gets done, one way or the other, and whatever happens it'll be over. At six on Thursday you pour the glass, and you sit down with it, and the phone is in the other room, and you drink it. It's cold and it's good and you taste all of it, because it's the first since Sunday and because it's Thursday's glass, not the hour's. You say what it's for, out loud, or near enough. That's done. And the glass agrees.

Then Friday comes, and it's a Friday, and you'll decide in the morning.

That's the whole thing. Not a life without treats, and not a rule about wine or chocolate or the rest. A day that was ordinary and ended as an ordinary day, and a day that was something and ended with something, and a sentence that was true when you said it.

One action. Tonight, whatever the hour brings, ask whether you decided this morning. If you didn't, do the hour's other thing, and let tomorrow morning decide tomorrow. That's the daily, gone. The treat is still there, on Thursday, and it'll be better than it's been in a year.