1. While the lady in the paint shop mixes sample pots for us to add to the bathroom, we look through her wallpaper books. There are cries of 'Turquoise crocodile effect!' and 'I could stand there stroking this all day' and 'Toile de jouy' and 'National Geographic do a range of wallpapers'. When she brings us our tins, even though it's five minutes before closing, she shows us a whole range of ideas for our unformed plan to cover the chimney breast with the most exciting wallpaper we can afford.
2. Picking a few apples from a tree that overhangs the road from an office carpark. We are on our way to pick early blackberries for a crumble. The blackberries are rare, but they are nearly all the extra special ones that grow on the end of the bramble.
3. Nick has been unusually reticent about the educational video he plans to show me tonight -- normally I am offered a choice of three or four. He has picked a Play for Today from 1980, which he saw and loved when he was 13. He says that 'in the 80s, all television was like this'. The Flipside of Dominick Hide (spoilers) is a charming story of a time-travelling observer from 2130 who breaks the rules to land in London and look for his great-great grandfather. It's fascinating to see one-off plays for the TV -- television execs these days are convinced that they Do Not Work and Are Not Wanted by Viewers. You can deride my fear of committing to a series, and you can mock my lack of intellectual staying-power because story arcs leave me cold, but I really like one-off plays. If this policy means we don't get programmes as beautiful and as well-made as Dominick Hide, we've lost something.
