My word: When it's time to start again

Sometimes, good things come to an abrupt end and the person or people who enjoyed them are left in shock. This is what happens when loved ones die suddenly in road accidents or from health complications like heart attacks and strokes.

But some good things don’t end suddenly but turn bad slowly. And some things start wrong and they only appear right. After a few years, you realise that a certain good thing was not sitting in a pot by the fire with a sweet aroma wafting from it as people salivated around it, hoping they would get a taste.

You realise that you actually forgot to push the burning embers aside and the ‘good thing’ has been bubbling under the lid. When all the water was gone, your ‘good thing’ started to burn and you are now left with a smoking pot.

But is your good thing too charred to rescue? Can you scrape the unburned good parts from the top and put it on a plate, garnish it and still serve it on a plate for someone to enjoy without noticing?

Or is the good thing burned through to the top? Or is it cooked long enough that the smoke from the charred bottom seeped through the good thing, and rendered it unpalatable?

Perhaps, in your rushed effort to rescue your good thing, you took a cup of water and poured it in the pot. Now all you have is a dark stew with bits of charred ‘good things’ floating around it.

Sometimes it’s not too late to rescue the pot. Sometimes it’s even possible to simply get a fresh pot and put new ingredients together and see if a second attempt will produce something even sweeter.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure your good thing doesn’t end up being a ‘good thing’.