On people with an inherent terror of eating anything they were not raised on.

So, not too long ago I came across a recipe online - I like hunting for recipes online, sue me - for baked lemon pasta.

People of a delicate disposition should probably turn away now.

Apparently, instead of thinking "Sweet, that looks pretty easy to make, I might try something new!", I should have been wondering what kind of person would eat pasta (a disgusting and unpopular ingredient by all accounts) and lemon (which, let's face it, is a horrible and exceedingly rare flavour) in the same dish. This is judging by the reaction to my mentioning it in passing to some people who will remain unnamed. They expressed a range of emotions between shock, trepidation and outright horror at the very idea of pasta and lemon in the same dish.

Now, call me world-weary, impatient, scathing and contemptuous - I am three out of four of those things - but I think that was a pretty stupid bizarre reaction. I'm not sure I properly expressed that sentiment in the moment, because I was too busy being torn between confusion and laughter at the stunned silence, murmured "What?"s and subsequent heartily offended outpouring of "Lemon...pasta bake?" Possibly all I got out was something along the lines of "Yeah. Lemon pasta bake."

Am I missing something here? Is this a normal thing that I wasn't raised to do? Some sort of food-related xenophobia, an utter lack of any sense of culinary adventure? It's not enough that I can't attend bizarre food festivals and actually eat bizarre things, now I have to narrow my meal choices down to Things My Mother Served Me Before I Moved Out Of Home? Because, and I'm sensing a theme here, that also sounds rather boring.

So please, people who are irrationally scared of trying new foods - or clothes, or music, or dances, or sexual positions, or anything for that matter - just give it some thought. I'm just putting it out there. Sarcasm aside, I really do believe that the point of life, insofar as I can tell, is to experience it. I'm not trying to pass judgement on how you live your life, but uhh, it seems like you make the whole 'experience' thing kind of difficult for yourself.

On compulsive curtain-drawing and the surrounding anxiety.

Sometimes I think about my predilection for closing my curtains the second darkness falls, and how it’s driven entirely by one night in my youth when I realized that even with net curtains, when night falls it’s easy to see straight into a lit room from the outside. Coupled with my horror of ever seeing an unfamiliar face peering back at me when I look out the windows, I am driven to obscure the windows altogether.

It occurred to me that perhaps curtain-habits are indicative – to a certain extent – of personality. I’ve known people who never close their curtains at all, lest they miss something interesting happening at their neighbour’s place. Is nosiness symptomatic of boredom in one’s own life? Conversely, is a secretive habit like my own suggestive of a certain amount of vanity? After all, why would anyone be interested in watching me watch TV after dinner?