Today, I stop.

I lie in bed and listen to the gentle swish of traffic going past. I soak up the feeling of my heavy, aching limbs, like a blessing, like a sacrament.

I sack off my meditation class, deciding at the last minute that I will not even go on Zoom. I imagine myself explaining to them that I just need a day of total rest: no screens, no words. Then I realise I don’t need to explain myself to anyone. (In any case, I have broken both of those self-imposed rules by writing this.)

I do everything slowly.

I make a cup of tea, slowly. I rest my hands on the oak worktop of the kitchen and feel its solidity, the solidity of the floorboards beneath my feet. I breathe.

I make toast, slowly. I sit in the kitchen sipping my tea and waiting for my toast to pop up, enjoying the silence, absorbing it into every pore of my being. I breathe.

I take my tea and toast into the garden, slowly. I sit cradling my bright blue mug, feeling its warmth between my hands for what feels like the first time in a long time. I notice the apricot jam on my toast glistening in the sunlight, feel its softness in my mouth against the crunch of the bread. I breathe.

I luxuriate in the warmth of the sun on my face, knowing it won’t last, that winter is on its way. I watch the breeze shake yellow leaves from next door’s apple tree and my favourite sycamore, the ones I used to sit and gaze at during that long summer-winter two years ago, when everything stopped. When there was nothing else but now, nowhere else but here.

I remember that, as brutal as that time was, it was also a time when I felt held in grace. That it was only when everything stopped that my life could begin anew.

It’s been harder to find that peace lately, that stillness. Now that I have found it again, I sink back into it like a warm bath, like the familiar embrace of an old friend.

I watch the clouds drift across the sky and remember that nothing ever stays still, not really. Nothing is solid, not really. We are all just a process, happening.

I spray the pot plant in the bathroom with a mister, like the nice woman at the garden centre suggested. Apparently it likes humidity. We never used to be able to keep our house plants alive. Now they are thriving. It turns out there is no great mystery to it. You just have to look after them. You just have to pay attention.

At a certain point I notice myself getting a little grim and serious about all this. I berate myself for being insufficiently present, for paying insufficient attention to the snack I’m eating: the roughness of the oatcakes, the smoothness of the cream cheese, the juiciness of the clementine.

It turns out I am extremely adept at filling my life with ‘shoulds’. There is nothing I cannot turn into a project. I smile at myself and try to relax. After all, my wandering mind is part of the present moment, just like anything else.

I go out for a walk, slowly. On a whim, I decide to go round the block instead of heading to the meadow like I usually do. I think about the days when getting to the meadow was a distant dream, when walking a few yards along the road and back was all that I could manage. I remember that there was grace in that, too.

I smile and chat to strangers as they pass, and they smile back, even though I must cut a rather eccentric figure, walking along at snail’s pace in my red checked pyjama trousers, coat and hat. I pick up a bunch of berries that has fallen on the ground and feel it against my palm: the wrinkled brown ones, the firm red ones.

I cross the street to visit the silver birch and run my hands over its bark: the papery-smooth parts, and the rough patches, the splits and ruptures in its flesh that almost look like open wounds, as though it is trying to burst out of its own skin. I watch a ladybird amble across the trunk and into a dead end formed by my splayed fingers. I lift my hand to let it pass.

I look up at the autumn leaves, going out in a blaze of glory, and let their glowing colours burn themselves onto my retinas till I can still see them when I close my eyes. I love this time of year. It’s as though the trees are trying to tell us something.

Back home, I lie in bed for another spell, and I can feel those dry leaves blowing through my heart, that sunshine in my veins. I doze off for a while, and when I wake, I sit in my favourite chair and write, the way I wrote two years ago. Slowly, reverently, one sentence at a time, stopping after each one to rest with my eyes shut and wait for the next one to float to the surface of my mind.

The only sound is the faint crunch of my rabbit nibbling the pellets I’ve just given her, the soft skitter of her toenails on the floor as she goes in search of more. It feels companionable.

Half way through the afternoon, I decide I feel equal to doing some prep for the cottage pie we plan to have that evening. As I start to enter task mode, the urge to speed up is strong, and I can almost feel myself disappearing. I have to keep on reminding myself: slowly, slowly. Smell the herbs. Shake them into the pot. Breathe.

While the pots simmer, I book my trains for the trip to York I hope to take tomorrow. I respond to a text message from a local charity, offering to quote us for some help tidying up our unkempt garden. I glance at the clock: it is 3.30pm. I need to collect my son from art club in an hour.

I settle back in my chair to continue writing, but something has shifted. I am back on clock time, back to “reality” – although I hesitate to use that word, because it feels almost exactly wrong. I am no longer held in suspended animation in the magic of that infinite present. The spell has been broken.