Bubbles, knee and across the Racecourse.

1. Quite suddenly, with no fanfare at all, Alec blows bubbles into the watering can that his swimming teacher has been handing to us each week for over a year. He is pleased by the noise, and delighted by my reaction.

2. "Mummy knee?" But I'm eating my baked potato and I don't want any help with it. So he sidles round to Godfather Timothy's side of the table and "Tibby knee?"

3. I never tire of the view across Tonbridge Racecourse, particularly on a wet day. White gulls and gleaming black rooks leap off the sodden turf and whirl overhead like the flakes in a snow globe. The bare willows shine gold in the wet sun and pencil grey clouds roil and writhe along above the horizon -- it looks as if the shower will miss us, though.