Three Beautiful Things

1. The espresso for our affogato comes in a little cup with a pouring spout. 2. We discover a barge that is also a bookshop: a tidy, swaying space lined with books of every genre, to suit all tastes. The bookseller sits by the door, welcoming and observing his customers from a tangle of blankets, beard and hair. 3. Walking along a canal; the smell of woodsmoke from the stoves on the narrowboats.

1. We get up at around dawn in these short days, and so I catch the sky turning pink. 2. The beaten path that goes up the bank and round the muddy place on the track. 3. Caraway seeds in my coleslaw.

1. Early session: one woman has the ice to herself. 2. My package includes a sticker and free sample of wrapping paper. 3. There are fat white bao buns for supper.

1. Digging into the Christmas boxes, I'm finding all sorts of things that I bought in the January sales last year and hid away. 2. What I really like is half-listening to an obscure piece of music on Radio 3, with the knowledge that later today I can check the schedule to find out what it is and then -- if I feel like it -- seek it out on a streaming music service. 3. In my bowl of soup this evening there are pieces of chicken from the roast we had at the weekend.  

1. Bettany jumping up and down to see her reflection in the mirror -- she's dressed as an elf so she can help at Santa's grotto. 2. Our room at the school Christmas Village fills with people eager to knock the elf off the shelf with Nerf guns. In a quiet moment, I flip through the notes in the cash box and feel satisfied with our contribution. 3. Alec has been reading My Family and Other Animals  and wonders if we could possibly move to Corfu so he can have a tutor.

1. Bringing donations to the charity shop with Nick to carry the awkward things.  2. Sending an edit back when I have very little to say, except that I enjoyed and had fun working on it. 3. It's a wet night, and I have so much to do before I go away, but Bettany wants to practise skating ahead of her class treat to the ice rink later this week. So we join the crazy folks who can't stay off the ice, even when their gloves are soaked and they leave a wake in the puddles lying on the rink.

1. The clatter of a tin on the oven shelf. 2. I am a little early to collect Bettany from the show she's watching. From the café, I can hear the finale and the applause, and feel it, too. 3. I leave Alec with his dough: he seems to know what he's doing, adding milk and flour and complaining by turns that it's too wet and too dry. Half an hour later, we're eating pizza scones for supper.

1. There is leftover curry for lunch, and Nick even finds a bit of meat that the children did not gobble up last night. 2. Just before bed, there is a flurry of excitement as the children open the parcels containing the advent biscuits sent over by Bettany's godfather. 3. Half listening half drifting off to sleep to an ethereal industrial track by The Unthanks.