1. A man from a white van is trundling and scraping a red plastic grit spreader around the car park, which has been an ice rink these last few days.
2. A pearly sliver has fallen off one of my front teeth. When I call the dentists, their lack of urgency (an appointment is available in a week and a half) is oddly reassuring.
3. There is an icy sort of rain falling and I am very glad to leave the window and step back across the cold floor and into bed, which is still warm.
1. To eat a few fat sweet dates with my coffee.
2. A video showing careful, elegant parallel turns comes home from the dry slope before they do.
3. His interests have turned to the occult and I'm pretty sure I have an esoteric zine with an article that will answer his questions. It only takes a little digging among dusty magazine files to find it, and it also has stickers and a flexidisc.
1. I float in a bath the colour of the deep sea listening to the instructions for a blue-themed writing workshop.
2. Just as Traitors gets exciting, he joins us, wedging and levering his bony limbs between us in our nest of blankets and cushions on the sofa.
3. We fall asleep to the promise of snow.
1. Word have not been easy recently. When they do come, they seem unsettled and easily startled, like wild birds that have lost trust. Nevertheless, I know what I know and I follow the workshop instructions with a good will and a lot of hope.
2. While we wait for the year to spool out, with a generous orange box of pralines between us, we watch a documentary about the election of the pope, described through interviews with a few of the cardinals involved, as well as journalists, observers and a tailor specialising in religious vestments. The cardinals are very human, talking about tears and pizza and projected sizes of cassocks.
3. At last it's 2026 and I can sleep.
1. Red kite with pie-slice tail and wing fingers splayed wheels over aluminium roofs on an industrial estate.
2. Chatting idly across the train aisle with my cousin -- we note that the journey is so much better than we expected.
3. When we arrive home at dusk under the light of a high roundish moon, the shops are still open with cracked open doors, enticing lights and clean new year displays.
1. Walking out of the theatre, I hold his hand so he's not tempted to bolt across the swirly carpet into the forest of legs. We agree that the best bit was the bit where the dame took off her dress to reveal another dress and another and another and then ANOTHER.
2. We don't fancy the noise and the crowds and the scuffling for seats in the pub. So we come home to share part of a bottle of red.
3. It's been busy. Packed with cushions and a thick red blanket, we catch up with The Dark is Rising on the BBC World Service by the soft light of a few days' worth of advent candle and the Christmas tree.
1. An alarm goes off in Nick's pocket to let us know that it's the moment of the winter solstice.
2. The rain is falling in steady columns from a darkening sky, and we are no longer out in it.
3. We throw scraps of dark blue wrapping paper into the stove to see the flames change colour.