News, white chocolate and Venice.

1. Instead of the horrible news on my phone, I have a new Fortean Times to read at breakfast.

2. I'm thinking there is no chance we'll keep the white chocolate white, when she comes up with the ingenious idea of mixing it with the red dust from the packet of freeze-dried strawberries to make pink chocolate.

3. My current edit is set in Venice in the height of summer. It's grey and wet here and I'm Januarying as hard as I can with a good activity and writing routine, but this month is such a slog. I find refuge in the uncomfortable heat and the water and the narrow streets and the weight of history.

Listen, justified and fennel.

1. We've put him between us in the centre of the screen, and now we just have to listen while he tells the doc all the things he won't tell us.

2. This new coffee is delicious -- Ethiopian Sidamo with clear citrus notes -- and completely justifies our fussy tastes.

3. There it is, the taste of fennel. Hours earlier, when I was cooking fish in the milk that would go in the white sauce, I dropped a few fennel seeds in the pan.

Winter is passing, toad in the hole and mulled wine.

1. It is cold (although less chill than it has been) and cloudy (although less grey than it has been) and a robin sings loudly from the top of a streetlamp while bulbs push insistent leaves out of the earth and a couple of ladybirds sit out.

2. A well risen batter pudding with sausages floating like barrage balloons.

3. Mulled wine in a heavy stone goblet. 

Book find, red cabbage and evening's entertainment.

1. I know I won't stop thinking about this paper cutting book, so I give in and take it up to the till. 

2. The satisfying crunchy sensation of shredding a red cabbage.

3. After some tense negotiations over sofa territory, cushion rights and blanket division, we settle down for an hour of shouting at the Traitors.

Mist, no charge and well met.

1. Mist the colour of skimmed milk fills the Spa valley, drains and then fills it again. Here, the sky is clear blue all the way to the top.

2. There's no charge for today's visit.

3. A joyful greeting from the massage therapist, who is also a writer friend.

At the gate, invitation and beetroots.

1. I find yet more recycling and squinting in the drizzle, go down to the gate to put it out. Our neighbour is at her gate and we grumble gentle complaints at each other about the weather.

2. There's a party invitation in my email -- something to look forward to in the spring.

3. Slipping cooked beetroots out of their peel. These are small ones -- three to a handful -- so perhaps they will be sweet and go well with apple and some walnuts.

Strawberries, rainy day and bard.

1. She's poorly and wants fresh strawberries, and I get them for her though I wouldn't usually buy out-of-season air freighted fruit. I allow myself a moment of marvelling at the miracle: it's January in England and I'm giving my child ripe strawberries grown with water from the Nile.

2. Reflection of a bird swings across a wet roof.

3. We find a Welsh story-teller Owen Staton, who has a rumbling, resonant voice and a lot of podcast episodes, to soothe our tired selves until we're ready to sleep.