1. After lunch, when the children have stopped arguing about going upstairs for quiet time, we drink a shot each of the mint liqueur I made last summer by way of a digestif. It feels very civilised.
2. There is a faint mist of yellow-green on a birch in The Grove and one of the horse chestnuts is hung with damp little leaves.
3. We eat a couple of those savoiardi biscuits for tea -- the Italian cafe on the corner has turned into a food shop, so now we're eating Italian versions of several staples. We had these biscuits when my siblings were babies in the eighties. They are a nice shape for small hands, and they melt in the mouth, so they're just right for people who are learning to eat. But they were called sponge fingers then.
