1. While I catch up with the advent candle I begin to clean the sitting room ready for the tree.
2. A smaller embroidery hoop came in the post. That's better.
3. I have to admit that this is not a joke I understand -- but hearing that is just as useful to her as the explanations of the references I do get but she does not.
1. Soft voice from under his hoodie, telling me about Yahtzee strategies and tactics.
2. Lunch with coffee and editorial chatter -- we lay out our hopes and wants and needs for 2026.
3. She is very insistent that she's going to wrap my purchase in royal purple tissue -- even though I say there's no need as I'm not going far.
1. Much that I would like to sit and visit for longer packed in with red and crimson cushions and blankets, lit by a bright window and drinking good coffee, eating snacks and hearing news and wise council, I have to go back to work. But I am delayed in the hall (as usual) by a print of the garden of Eden. It's a rare one, I discover, because the set was lost in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
2. I drop fistfuls of dice into my pockets, ready for this evening's game -- we've had a long health break to overcome sickness and injury, but as soon as we could, we got back to the table.
3. Like hobbits, even though we are comfortably full, we are taking just one last taste of our favourites.
1. In the small hours, I finish the e-book I've borrowed from the library and change it for the next one in the series.
2. We finish the persimmons, which are almost glowing they are so ripe and juicy.
3. The sound of my children squabbling gently over a game.
1. We wake to the sound of heavy rain -- just right for a simple Sunday.
2. I put my dough in a bowl to rest, and take a quiet half-hour myself, sitting in bed listening to a radio show.
3. Needle goes in, needle comes out. Re-doing everything I unpicked last night.
1. We've got water of some kind -- the sound of the loo cistern filling is pretty good to hear this morning.
2. Susan has invited to us a concert in her London club. It's glorious, with high ceilings, a vast marble staircase and ornate tiling and stately, lumbering old-fashioned furniture. Past members look down on us from larger-than-life formal portraits -- some do seem to be challenging our presence, but others seem more benign.
3. A passing French man tells us that we should walk past the no entry sign and look at the pictures if that's what we want to do.
1. I flee Tunbridge Wells and its water woes for a day of wandering London with my aunt. A bit of Turner, a bit of Constable and some miscellaneous pre-Raphaelites. Turner's gift to the nation truly does give me a break from the treadmill cares of carrying bottled water and kettles and permanently feeling slightly grubby.
2. We come past the Isle of Effra with its bronze loo sculptures, which we're told mark the nearby Royal Doulton ceramics works, but could just as well nod to the River Effra's time as a sewer.
3. There are concerns about the whiteness and the quantity of butter icing. I walk away and leave the pastry chef to her work. When I come back, things are much more cheerful.