I took rice outside. And a teaspoon.

There was a grain of rice inside the crease of my laptop. I removed it with the corner of an envelope and realised I could not remember eating the lunch that had put it there.

I remembered the spreadsheet. I remembered a message about a meeting room. The rice was evidence that something else had happened while I attended to those things.

I blocked a modest amount of time.

The following day I told my colleague I was taking lunch and agreed when I would be back. Nothing dramatic. I took my container, put the laptop away and went to the bench outside the building.

I had brought a teaspoon. It was the only clean utensil I had noticed that morning. The rice also contained pieces of broccoli much larger than the spoon. This gave the meal a pace I had not personally selected.

A delivery driver sat at the other end of the bench with a sandwich wrapped in foil. We exchanged the brief nod of people who had chosen the same available seat. Neither of us felt obliged to become a community.

I finished the actual lunch.

I watched someone try three times to fold an umbrella that was already mostly dry. A bus went past. I found the last piece of broccoli beneath the rice. These were not remarkable observations, but I had made them myself.

When I returned, the spreadsheet was still there. I had eaten a meal I could remember, somewhere that did not require balancing a container beside a charging cable.

Before leaving work, I put a fork in my bag for tomorrow. Then I added a napkin. I stopped there. A lunch break did not need to become another project with a shopping list.