1. Our bank has given every customer £100, which is a pleasant thing to find in our accounts.
2. This edit of a sweet romantic novel is flying along -- and it's a Christmas book so the descriptions of cold weather are very welcome on a day when I've shuttered the west side of the house against the determined sun.
3. Three of us squashed on the sofa in the front room -- coolest spot in the house -- listening to the radio.
1. I thought I caught lime blossom last week while sitting out drinking coffee on the Pantiles, but it is early yet, and it was such a subtle scent coming and going on the air currents, so I put it down to a general feeling of happiness. But now I've definitely and unmistakably I've caught the faint fresh smell up on the common.
2. A glass of wine, a game and some talk and the day is rounded off.
3. The scent of jasmine has slipped through the back windows and rests in the dark rooms.
1. It's Palestrina week on Radio 3, and I'm very much showing up for hours and hours and hours of polyphony.
2. Through the trees, a glimpse of the mauve orchid spires among the grass on the other path.
3. I find the wide belt I have been looking for all day. I put it on. It isn't comfortable.
1. Folding and bruising herbs from the garden for snipping into the soup.
2. Cracking the top off a beer bottle -- refreshment to help with cooking supper.
3. The Early Music Show bases its playlist on the diary John Courtney, who lived in Yorkshire in the second half of the 18th century. With a cry of ‘musick is better than cards by far’, he leapt joyfully and with both feet into the local scene, both as a participant and a listener. He sounds like the sort of person whose enthusiasm encourages and cheers the creators, performers and artists around them, and it's a pleasure to see such a one remembered.
1. I've been sneaking off to read Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree. It is very pleasant to disappear for a short time into a skilfully drawn seaside world.
2. Confirmation messages -- your parcel will arrive today; your taxi is on its way; it's outside; is that you trying to log in; we've got your order; your food is being prepared; it's been dispatched; it's at the door. It's a lot, but I value the constant background noise of reassurance; and I like to delete the lot at the end of the day.
3. Was braced for a bad news phone call; but it's only a small change, and nothing we can't deal with.
1. I stop for a moment to watch the wind shaking the grass heads in all their variety. I should, I suppose, try to learn them now I've noticed this array.
2. The fleshy colour and reddish cap of a jay on an oak branch over my head catches my eye. In the undergrowth, another bird is protesting with a call that sounds like knocking pebbles together.
3. Six black dots to the right of the path. Noses and wet shining eyes of two deer looking up from their grazing.
1. The shadow of a ladybird larva on a leaf above my head -- clinging on despite the wind's shaking.
2. Turn my head, at a blackbird's alarm. Catch sight of a buzzard launching itself out of the scrub.
3. Soothing lists of names and places in The Cattle Raid of Cooley as I am reading myself off to sleep.
1. Half-awake, half asleep, I can smell the heat on her curling wand.
2. The new prescription in my glasses is a large jump, and it's taking a bit of getting used to. Even a short walk or an hour of work leaves me feeling seasick. Luckily I've got six episodes of Letters from a Long Marriage lined up so I don't mind taking half-hour breaks as needed.
3. We are talking about communicating better as parents, and the youth workers admit that they love hearing teen gossip and drama.
1. I'm here at the table distracting myself with my phone so that she can teach herself to cook in peace and security.
2. I grew these herbs and cut the stems and hung them up in the kitchen to dry. Now I'm breaking them into storage jars for tea and for cooking, and I'm thinking you don't get much volume of dried herb for that work. Meanwhile, in the garden, the mint has put up new growth, ready for cutting again.
3. Our red brick garden path is scattered with white daisy petals.
1. Rough night, slow start. Drinking tea and sitting quietly until I'm ready to begin.
2. Through the cracked open window, the soft persistent sound of summer rain.
3. As promised, once the table is cleared, we spend some of the evening bent over tiny sticker scenes, using tweezers to place minute cushions and little pandas in a library and a coffee shop.
1. From the path I spot a head-sized bright orange bracket fungus on a dead tree. I try to get in for a closer look, but the way is blocked by brambles and holly and rough ground.
2. We bury our noses in the pots of pinks, for their clove scent.
3. Deep in the night -- I can't sleep, but through the open window I can hear owls on the common.
1. A short-notice visit from an official causes a flurry of tidying. He almost certainly doesn't notice (which is good, because you'd want him to think we were always well-kempt and not paddling a sinking boat) but it is very pleasant for us after he has finished and gone to luxuriate in our ordered space.
2. While gossiping with a neighbour, I notice that a sweet pea vine, almost certainly related to the ones that I train up and over our fence, is twining itself around the litter bin across the road.
3. I join an hour-long online writing session and feel like I'm doing my real work (even though these early drafts feel a lot like play). Check out Tania Hershman's events and join us on the next one.
1. We walk and talk through dusty sunshine and dappled shade.
2. I did wash my hands before coming out, but they still smell of saffron from the dough I've been kneading.
3. A mysterious vinegary smell is more interesting than French vocab. We chase it down through the house to where Nick is treating a pan in the kitchen.
1. We make time to stare at art in the library -- the glow of red velvet caught in brushstrokes; the original cut up for patchwork a hundred years ago.
2. I stand up to straighten my back and rub at my wrists where the bristly leaves of green alkanet have irritated my skin, feeling unsure about my choice to let such a rampant weed have a little space in my garden for the sake of its twinkling blue flowers and early foliage. A bee with a bright red behind noses into one of the plants, finding value in even a tiny taste of nectar.
3. Look up, see swifts.
1. Teenagers' emotions are labile, and it's possible that when I look in again on my way back up to my desk, the storm will have passed.
2. Selecting broken stars of anise to go in the rhubarb. There aren't many whole stars, but I'm saving them for when looks matter.
3. My hair still smells of the banana bread I've been baking.
1. A moth, in a green so pale it glows, is drying its wings on the grass.
2. It wasn't so long ago that this field was soggy and yellowish. Now the grass stands tall as my thighs.
3. The children come home, and we realise that this is what we've been waiting for all afternoon.
1. After my call is finished, I find myself searching a silent house: the children have gone away with Granny.
2. Nick comes up the hill to the hairdressers with an umbrella to shelter my blow-dry from the rain.
3. I do not think I will ever get over the pleasure of easily and accurately fast-forwarding past boring bits on telly.
1. I wake very early, read for a bit and then sleep again, deep and dreamful, before waking very late.
2. The children breakfasted late and don't want to eat with us at 1pm. We have a private lunch, sharing everything between our bowls of rice. Afterwards, keeping our voices low, we eat secret pieces of chocolate.
3. My tea is made -- a good quality blend that promises much, a mass of petals and scented green stuff floating in the diffuser -- and I start to take it to my desk. But I get called away to help with this and then that needs carrying upstairs, but also another thing that I must to go back down and up for, and then the phone rings. The tea waits on the stairs, and its smell draws me back through the house to where I was going in the first place.
1. Glancing sideways so that it doesn't seem as if I am looking, I see that she has an app on her phone with pages of notes and lists and plans and clippings -- just like me.
2. We stray into what must be a fairy glade -- the grass is starred with pignut flowers and overhead rooks mob a buzzard -- and while we weren't watching our way, the reliable path that led us in has faded among the trees.
3. Aquilegias (descended from seed packets we got at a wedding when then children were small) mostly come up dark blue between the paving slabs in my garden -- but this year, there is one pink and white, smiling shyly at us.
1. To scrub away at the oddly regular iodine stain and the arrow the surgeon drew on my forearm.
2. The leaf green cover of Emily Wild's Map of the Otherlands is good match for our current bedding, among which I am sitting enjoying a late morning.
3. In the afternoon, PaulV comes by with red and yellow tulips and we sit in the kitchen drinking tea and processing.
1. I peep round the corner at the flagstones that I swept yesterday and the cosmos I planted out.
2. Hour-long meeting, camera off: one very useful piece of information carefully stashed; a large quantity of context to reflect on; and a lot of admin quietly done.
3. Sometimes there is not much else to do but pick up the pillows and shake out the cover.
1. I notice a poster advertising coffees in the village's church hall, and we let the satnav and our noses lead us past stone cottages with full gardens, through a ford to a stone chapel with a plain modern door. The hall has a long view across the valley to the fields where they are setting up Glastonbury Festival; we have a good talk with the women running it; and the coffee and cake are very good indeed.
2. We pass Stone Henge again -- the crowd it draws to bleak Salisbury Plain is as much a marvel as the engineering and the weight of history.
3. My two tiny bottles of water from the wells at Glastonbury are intact. I put them on the shelf in the kitchen to remind me of the people in quiet reflection in the Chalice Well's gardens and the White Well's shady roadside spot decked with flowers and ribbons, with a man swinging a thurrible and families filling their bottles and Japanese tourists washing their gemstones.
1. As if the fall of night has prompted a sudden decision, a downpour begins after days of dry, hot weather. I contort myself around my desk so I can put my face near the open window and catch the rush of cool air.
2. Her window was open and now her room smells of petrichor, mixing with the scent of line-dried bedding.
3. A large ticking thing flies through the window, bounces off the wall and thucks to the ground under my desk. It's a maybug on its back, large and rather lost and helpless. It makes me think of a drunken man I saw one midsummer afternoon in East Grinstead town centre, bothering school girls about the way to Wych Cross. People pushed and encouraged him on to a bus and told the driver where to drop him. Everyone was relieved to see the bus lumbering away into the countryside. I catch the maybug in a glass and send it off into the night, turning out the light so it won't come back.
1. A nice chatty gossip with the hygienist who is, it turns out, a mum from the children's primary school. I see the dentist straight after and get extra points for clean teeth.
2. '...and don't let any strangers in.'
'But why?'
'It's for their own safety.'
I leave them arguing about which of them I should pay for babysitting the other.
3. To live in the sort of town where you can go to a literary festival show and have people you know sitting nearby, and a writer you know warming up the audience (Andrew Wallace — always entertaining, always thought provoking). And I think we all feel pretty lucky to live in the sort of town that Richard Ayoade feels is worth promoting his book to.
1. The doorbell chime signalling the arrival of a child home from school.
2. It strikes me how frequently the seconded coppers I am editing for mention their dogs, and the pleasure of their company.
3. For a planning call, there's a lot of laughter -- but we're all of us looking forward to taking a road trip west and a few days away from our routines and worries.
1. His hair today is glossy and clean. It smells faintly of oak moss, and is exactly the same colour as my own.
2. Nick has come home with an idea for supper and is searching through the spices.
3. I realise with only a little push I can finish this job today, rather than on Friday.
1. As the train gets closer to Hastings, more and more details develop -- a woman in white carrying a drum; a crown of flowers; a conversation about recording folk traditions; green dabbed noses; a hat with horns; a jingle of bells.
2. Green painted women -- later I learn they call themselves crones -- with twigs and flowers in their hair ululate and call like foxes in the night.
3. Watching colours flicker across the water -- from sea glass green to indigo to slate grey.
1. The may blossom has been hanging heavy on the hawthorns for a few days, but I have been too polite to mention it before the actual month. It has a strong smell that is faintly fishy: not something I'd like indoors; but out on my walk I love to see the tiny rose-like blossoms and the tight white dots of the flowers to come.
2. There are a lot of deer droppings on the paths -- strange to think of so large an animal stepping between the parked cars, grazing on the cricket pitch then melting away into the woods when people start their commutes.
3. The man cleaning the glass between the sanctuary and the church café pauses to point us up the stairs to the polling station in the hall.
1. In the back of the fridge, on this hot day, I have a huge mug of green tea.
2. Remembering that I have a USB fan tucked away.
3. There was a science fair today. I catch her mixing slime on her dressing table, but don't say a thing.
1. It's difficult to dislike waking in the small hours when I can read myself back to sleep by sliding into the soothing, well-worn grooves of genre fiction. This week's favourite is Julia Huni's Triana Moore, Space Janitor.
2. I do love the soft fern leaves and pink flowers of herb robert; and the sparky blue flowers of alkanet; and the way wall toadflax softens edges -- even if the RHS says they are all pernicious weeds. I only pull them out when they seem to be congesting the garden, or once they start looking leggy, mildewed and seedy.
3. We disappear into the misty deserted world of the Russian classic Stalker (1979). It was made seven years before the Chernobyl disaster, and I'm struck by its prescience -- although it's pretty easy to guess how people might behave when presented with a forbidden zone that contains invisible danger; and it's not too much of a leap to use those guesses to fire up a narrative.
1. A windowsill full of glossy houseplants.
2. I've had to wait for my lunch while we unload a grocery delivery. The shepherd's pie tastes even better reheated.
3. Just before sleeping, I go wandering on the edges of fairyland with the second Emily Wilde book.
1. The scent of bluebells rolls down the hill to meet us.
2. From where we're eating our lunch in the holly scrub on top of the crags, we can see passers-by -- including a loud thumper on the railway -- but they can't see us.
3. To realise that now would be an okay time to introduce our eldest to a Werner Herzog documentary. We lie on the sofa watching Into the Inferno on Netflix.
1. A chaotic chocolate-brown spaniel with ears undulating soaks its belly running through a puddle among the rocks then races across the rough grass to the cricket pitch before making a circle back to the rocks..
2. Getting a mocha on my way home was the right thing to do.
3. The boys are hanging out of the window to photograph a distant verdegris roof dome, and a gull nesting on a chimney stack.
1. Nick calls upstairs. He has come home much earlier than expected, and he brings me a book -- Richard Ayoade's The Unfinished Harauld Hughes.
2. The surgeon reckons they can schedule it within the month, which is a lot sooner than we expected.
3. From half past eight to nine o'clock on most evenings we lie almost nose to nose just taking some time. She says of her day, 'It was boring when I was living through it; I don't know why you want to hear about it now.'
1. During my walk, I find an intriguing buff-coloured spongy mass on a pile of wood chippings. I guess it's a fungus -- maybe a slime mould -- and I can see older dried out ones, splatted like cow pats. I make a note and look forward to finding out what it is when I have time to tumble down a rabbit hole.
2. In an unkempt garden, a lawn thick with violets.
3. We're down to two players passing £500s back and forth over the board. With my property portfolio there's a chance I could hold my own until the good luck (or bad luck) I need to win turns up -- but it's very late, and I'm all right to concede into a comfortable second.
1. The wisteria on the back wall has done particularly well this year -- the mauve flowers hang heavy and so does the sweetcorn scent in the brick cell of our back yard. When I brag about it, I am repaid with pictures of apple trees and rhododendrons and all other things in bloom.
2. This might be the last time she wants me to push her on the swing.
3. To pull down a branch bearing apple blossom to catch the shy pink and white scent.
1. I stir the tea in the canister to get the right mix of black tea leaves and flower petals and orange peel and lift a spoonful into the infuser.
2. There is a general marvelling at the batter pudding Nick pulls out of the oven. He is grumbling quietly that the new oven runs at a cooler temperature than the old one because he has become a person with some expertise at cooking.
3. I start to pack. It feels rather like dressing a doll; imagining myself away and thinking what I might like to do and what I might wear to do it.
1. I hear a cry like a child's -- but from the top of a tree. A jay with a beak full of grass wisps and blue flashes on her wings looks back at me.
2. The physio asks gently about absolutely everything from dreams to diet to doorframes to trouser cuffs. Sitting on the bench, size 9 trainers dangling, he unfurls a little.
3. The lamb stew was made by me -- but Nick made the dumplings floating on the top.
1. A single pink primrose flower among the pale yellows lighting up the under hedge.
2. We eat brownie in tiny pieces soaked with juice from defrosted raspberries.
3. With my binoculars, between the washing line and trellis, I stumble on the tiny pan-shape of the Pleiades.
1. The Common has dried out a lot since I was last out. There is a dusty path beaten smooth across the spot that is still rutted and ridged from when it was winter mud.
2. It's pretty late, but I'm going to sit outside and match the goings on in the sky to my star map. We've wheeled round since I last looked and there's an entirely different view. I'm only really out here because I'm responding to a prompt from Amy Bowers' Poetry Jam.
3. Even in the dark, I can tell the wisteria is about to bloom on its bare stems.
1. The drifts of pink and white petals drying in the gutters and flattened on to the pavement suggest that the magnolia on the corner of Belgrove in bloom.
2. It is warm enough that I forget my coat and have to go back and buzz myself in again.
3. Putting my fingers among soft leaves and soil and guessing which are weeds and which came from the packet of wildflower seeds.
1. The little rags of budding acer leaves, each one pencilled round in red.
2. We go through a maths revision worksheet about areas of shapes. I still marvel at how the area of a trapezium could be a+b divided by two and then multiplied by the height. I think I missed the lesson where we covered the proof, because I remember being allowed to 'discover' pi with a piece of string at the start of circle theory; and cutting up paper to show how the square of the hypotenuse can be made to fit into the squares of the other two sides.
3. The warm sunset colours on the horizon fade up to night, and in between you'd be hard pressed to say whether you were looking at orange sky or blue sky.
1. Jackdaws are nesting in a capped chimney that I can see from my desk. They hang on the brickwork and fold their blue-grey bodies into an opening the size of a playing card.
2. The tiny variations in the basic range hot cross buns from different supermarkets.
3. Turn and turn about, waiting for bedtime, we listen to each other's songs, and end up with Lightning Seeds Pure on a loop.
1. To start the day by finishing a book.
2. I'm sure we knew that the emergency kettle is a whistling one; but we'd forgotten since we last had it out, and it's a pleasant surprise to hear it calling from the stove top.
3. Sunday afternoon pause: no pressure to browse and buy.
1. Decongestants are a modern-day miracle.
2. As I wave her off, two things happen: our neighbour's daughter comes out of their front door; and a blue tit stops to investigate the tree in our front garden.
3. Watching a lot of builders in orange hi-vis and plumbers in matching T-shirts and a truck driver in green hi-vis negotiating the wheres and hows of a large delivery of boards and insulation.
1. Coffee with a few editor friends in the bright and airy auction house. The hour vanishes among a good brew and useful talk.
2. Suddenly, there are dog violets growing under the door step and between my herbs.
3. From among the washing up, the scent of the green tea I drank earlier.
1. Setting off on a train with some things to read and a bit of an adventure ahead.
2. I meet film editors, and script editors and all sorts of different people who tell me about their world, which as it turns out, has some similarities to mine. Occasionally trays of sushi and glasses of fizz appear at our elbows.
3. Stepping out of a hot room into the cool night, when a light rain is falling. Time to process what I've heard.
1. Gorse is always in flower, as everyone who lives near heathland knows, but this week, on the sunny side at least, it's changing from green spiny thickets with the odd blossom to a grand show of solid yellow.
2. The way the dust and flick disappear into the vacuum cleaner.
3. On a whim, I drop bright coloured hundreds and thousands into his bowl of custard.
1. I've had half an eye on the forsythia bush over the car park -- and now it's got yellow stars all over, with more to come no doubt.
2. I'm trying to explain why I thought of using a mirror to bounce the view from the window into a more convenient spot in the room. 'Like in The Lady of Shallot. She lives in a tower doing weaving and she's not allowed to look out of the window, except through a mirror. Only she sees Sir Lancelot and looks out of the window anyway and then she dies. It's very sad.' I slip him a copy of Tennyson's poem, with Charles Keeping's evocative pencil washy illos. The view from the window is forgotten.
3. I teach her how to knead her pizza dough, and explain that it helped me to manage my angry feelings during lockdown.
'But who were you angry with? You were just with us all the time!'
1. I'm mostly at my desk today -- but with the window cracked open, I can see the springtime light, and smell the sunlit air.
2. We slip out for a coffee and nosey in the bookshop -- I'm just pleased to have Nick all to myself.
3. A friend and I go along to a showcase for a comedy course we couldn't attend, and it's glorious -- a couple of hours of funny stories, word play and personal revelations.
1. This morning, she's wearing a borrowed merino wool cardigan for a dress-up day. It's warmer and softer than her usual jumper.
2. The sound of birdsong through my open window.
3. I hit save on the last of many, many web pages.
1. I let myself stray for a short while into the book I'm reading, and it resets my equilibrium.
2. 'I'll miss my goat curry,' says Nick cleaning out the pan, 'even though I've been eating it solidly for three days.'
3. The aim of role playing games is not to beat anyone, or to outwit them; but there are those moments when the games master hears your choice of action and says something like, 'Right... Well that's not a bad thing to do... But that's it for tonight.' And you feel as a player that you've maybe surprised them, and led them somewhere unexpected, which creatively, is sort of a win.
1. These really are the last of the blood oranges -- they are not as sharp and tasty, and the skins don't come away easily. I cut it into boats and strip the flesh with my teeth.
2. There's a purple dog violet coming up among the rags of the snowdrop bells.
3. While doing some of the bins, I look up. After a day of clouds, there are stars all in their allotted places. Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Saiph and Rigel. Sirius, Procyon and Mars in Gemini. Then Jupiter in Taurus and Capella straight above.
1. I'm up before everyone else and eating pancakes.
2. My brother, with hair clipped short, comes to take his nephew out to lunch.
3. The meat Nick has in marinade for tonight's curry scents the whole kitchen every time we open the fridge.
1. Where there was a window, there is now a door. Where there was a door, there is now a window. Today the builder is cleaning up, darkening his new brickwork with a wet brush.
2. At coffee time -- the smell of hot cross buns.
3. Under the icy rain, crocuses have fallen to purple mush. When I lift them, there's the scent of saffron.
1. Coming down the cobbles, I step over a black and yellow striped snail. I take it with me up to the common where there should be more soft green plants, and more decaying leaves for it to live among.
2. Alkanet plants on the common -- under the bristly leaves a single eye-blue flower.
3. We've had some days of soft, mild weather. But at lunchtime, the light changed as the sky clouded over. Now I look up to the window in response to a soft rushing sound -- icy pellets of sleet are rolling down the slates. March weather is never quite what you expected.
1. Plant catalogue -- imagining a parcel of earthy roots and how container-sized dahlias would fit in my garden.
2. The scent of the children's macaroni cheese, and just a little taste from the pan on the side.
3. The squeak of a Russian doll opening, which makes us both shudder, but we do it again and again until all the glossy dolls are out; and then again and again until they are in.
1. In the small hours, oppressed by the dark and by thoughts of what is to come, I am profoundly grateful to all authors of lightweight fiction.
2. She comes home from school with a little food tech pie -- summer fruit gleaming like jewels through a window in her handmade pastry.
3. The bottle of milk is leaking where the lid has failed, but I'm loath to hand it back as we need it for breakfast. 'Give it here,' says the delivery driver. 'I'll scan it and then you can have it for free. There's been a lot of leaks with this type of bottle.'
1. In the second part of Sunday afternoon, when the shop assistants are telling us to have a good evening, the sun is low and dusty and the upper floor of the coffee shop is so quiet that it feels like just the two of us.
2. I have been pleading for input into the week's meal plan, and at last she says casually that she would like a Caesar salad. Does she know what that is? Not sure, but a Caesar salad kit goes into my shopping order.
3. Nick has braised some pork and vegetables, following a recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop's Every Grain of Rice. It's delicious and popular with the children. 'How did you cook these potatoes? They are the ultimate comfort food,' our son marvels. After the children have left the table, Nick and I agree that it's rather like an Irish stew. We are pleased to have some leftovers for next day lunch.
1. As I'm sitting up in bed waiting to wake up and doing my morning puzzles, someone with a lot of answers joins me.
2. Two blue tits chasing each other round the branches of a bare oak tree in the early spring sunshine.
3. Nick and I make time for fun, and finish our game of Deadline.
1. The taxi driver zigs up back ways and zags down side streets and jinks into traffic queues to get us across town in time for our appointment.
2. Warm paper cups and crinkly paper bags.
3. Standing in my slippers at the top of the car pack, I get eyes on Mercury hanging under Venus to the west.
1. This morning, all four of us lie in bed, crammed straight like sardines laid out in a tin.
2. I can't see it today, but thanks to my star map, I know that a specific piece of space junk, Cosmos 928 r, which is a Russian rocket body launched a couple of weeks after I was born, is going by, and that it will be back again tomorrow night.
3. Bettany turns up a gentle joke about my parenting that makes me cringe and then laugh until I'm breathless out of sheer embarrassment and recognition.
1. I'm dipping in and out of foggy pockets. One moment, the world is grey and secretive between layers of mist; the next it's sunshine and blue sky.
2. Two icy sheets of cobweb hang aglow in the darkest part of the woods.
3. A dried umbel fuzzed with frost.
1. We take time to walk round and check out the crocuses at the bottom of the park, and they are spectacular, transforming the drab winter ground with their clean pale colours.
2. On the fourth try -- now I'm sitting quietly, properly fed and secluded away from interruptions -- I complete the Sunday puzzle.
3. The first-batch Welsh cakes are a cindery mess, and I can only be grateful they didn't set off the smoke alarm. The second batch is much better.
1. Our neighbour sees the mud spatters drying on my over trousers and says, 'You've been on the common, haven't you.'
2. Snipping parsley into my soup.
3. We find that we are enjoying our stories so much that we need a third round of drinks.
1. Through the rain over the road outside the florist, a posy of bright blue and pink flowers.
2. With our supper, pale pink wine in crystal glasses. Sound of the rain outside.
3. Since sunset, we've been glancing outside between tasks and messaging back and forth up and down the house because we hope to see the parade of planets. Mercury and Saturn, in our sky for just a short while after sunset, are hidden behind a bank of cloud; and Neptune is too distant and mysterious for anyone to see with their own eyes; but Jupiter, Mars and Venus are there for us.
1. I slide birthday presents for Nick into the children's desk drawers.
2. The tulips I gave her last week are still giving joy. At home, the last lot of supermarket daffodils are still bright and yellow and cheerfully brave.
3. Tim and I have a nice little Monopoly ecosystem: he has eaten the other players and owns everything except for six well developed properties of mine. He lands on them just often enough that I can survive another turn around the board. I feel constantly off balance, though, and I'm only really coping because of some lucky rolls, a few turns in jail so I don't have to land on his properties, and some helpful chance cards. We end with a draw, because it's getting very late.
1. While looking for something else in the back of the garden, I finally see that a pot of crocuses has put purple spikes through the compost.
2. When I come down, the sitting room is transformed to shut out the world, with candle light and rolled towels and a spa crate so we can sit wearing face masks and watch relaxing television.
3. New notebook.
1. Love to catch sight of our children running in and out of the soft play frame.
2. He falls to his knees in a slide across the floor to express his displeasure at the wrong kind of sweet. Once his mum has calmed him down, I tell him he did a cool footballer skid, and he smiles slyly.
3. Peppercorns fall and bounce as I fill the grinder. I think there must be a better sort of mill that is easier to fill, but then I remember this one was a wedding present, and that from his highchair Alec used to call it Bub and imagine it on adventures with a jar of Maldon crystals, named Salt.
1. Apparently, the disappointing biscuits are not disappointing to the menfolk.
2. The shadows of children in the night park. A late run-out that might make bed and sleep more enticing.
3. The cold air of the whole dark street is perfumed by that winter flowering thing a few doors down from us.
1. There is still some homemade cake in the tin.
2. He is very tall, with a voice that sometimes makes me think a visitor has come to the house, but he is still quite pleased to be given a cold collation plate.
3. During the course of our game, I zap a neo-nazi with my emotion control power to make him feel embarrassed. He starts crying, gives us plenty of information, and then walks off to start a new life with better choices.
1. I've already been in a taxi and had an MRI, and it is still so early that no-one is up at home, so I stop in the park cafe to drink coffee, eat a shortbread and read an Edith Wharton ghost story.
2. Nick wonders about the little white flowers outside the back door. They're snowdrops, and they mean spring will soon be here. Earlier I saw a planting of giant snowdrops, cyclamen and hellebores at the gates of Dunorlan -- all good friends when the rest of the park looks like it has been left outside all winter and then sat on.
3. Bettany has been asking about Outnumbered, which originally broadcast before she was born. We watch an episode (me through my fingers because well observed sitcoms about family life are just a bit too close to home; and her round her phone, occasionally laughing or asking a question).
1. At the station, a friendly face waiting beyond the ticket barriers.
2. I walk on to the platform in time to see the destination on the front of the train just arriving: it's on its way to Tunbridge Wells.
3. Our lovely child -- just a little bad tempered -- is home for half term.
1. I come down to a fruit bowl full of bright new oranges and apples -- veg box arrived while I was sleeping.
2. She asks for a hug so she can lie next to me and tell me all about her plans for own clothes day.
3. The Folk Show is particularly good this evening. Most of the tracks seem to speak right to us, and for an hour then show holds our attention so that we listen, rather than seeking other things to do while it plays.
1. My mother brings us two jars of blackcurrant jam -- perfect timing, because it's hot cross bun season.
2. When I look up, it's an hour later and I'm 1,000 words in.
3. To marvel at the set before the production starts. This is Dracula -- so of course there are ruins and high windows and disconcerting stairways.
1. Brushing mud off my waterproofs -- much easier to clean them dry than wet.
2. We've been throwing out some old school books. I find Nick sitting on the floor among the recycling reminiscing over photos the teacher has stuck in among the worksheets.
3. I win at chess against my son -- but only because he helps me.
1. As we make pudding for the evening, she is still asking questions about The Sound of Music. I've found a playlist and the songs are streaming straight into the kitchen.
2. Dipping spoons through the bubbly surfaces of our chocolate mousses.
3. Out there in the dark, the sound of steady rain. This is my best kind of rain: steady, and not happening where I am.
1. The satisfaction of finding a nice obscure news story that not many other people are talking about.
2. The little glint in Nick's eye as he talks about the young men behind the names on the honours boards at Alec's school.
3. From the empty containers in the sink, we can see that the children have done as we asked and got their own suppers out of the freezer.
1. I hand over three broken laptops for recycling and walk home with nothing in my bag.
2. In our street somewhere, there is a winter-flowering thing that keeps catching my attention with its scent.
3. An embroidery project -- a pair of gloves -- has been waiting resentfully in the corner for more than a month. I take it up from where I left off. But I can't love the way it looks, and don't think I can replicate it on the second glove. I unpick what I've just done. I try a different approach that should be easier to replicate. Still not happy. I unpick the lot, put the threads in the bin and begin again with a new colour and a new design.
1. As we get closer to the school, we find ourselves walking into a stream of bigger boys heading out to buy their break snack. I feel him shift beside me like a fish twisting out of my hands, and I tell him to have a good morning and he swims away into the dark cool water.
3. When he gets home, he joins me resting in bed for the afternoon. Both of us waiting to recover.
1. Some magazines, and a quiet hour in which to read them.
2. Following the sunlight around the house -- looking for the brightest, warmest spots.
3. We finally get to eat the pork that's been cooking slowly for most of day in a broth with star anise, ginger and cinnamon. It is very tender and delicious.
1. My heart cracks a little when something he says suggests the reason he understands our situation is because he's experienced something similar himself.
2. Across the street, Nick catches the eye of the man in the cheese shop, and within seconds we're crossing through the traffic.
3. The words, 'I just want to pop into Waterstones for three minutes.'
1. Blood oranges and satsumas -- bright citrus colours leading us through the year's darkest days.
2. In the corner on the field, even on this wet morning, a drift of frosted leaves.
3. At supper, someone wonders if prawn crackers actually include prawns. I say that I've seen Lizqi making them in one of her many videos, and she definitely chopped prawns finely and mixed them with the dough that eventually became prawn crackers. Nick says we should watch her later to mark the lunar new year. He selects one that seems appropriate -- Lizqi marking Year of the Ox with crafts and tasty food made from her own produce. It's the one with prawn crackers.
1. To wake of my own accord in the dark not long before the alarm.
2. Nick's potato cake today is a thing of beauty -- warm inside, with a crisp brown crust, ready and waiting to be eaten with a plateful of mince and kale.
3. I really like meeting my deadline well before the end of the day.
1. With my mug of tea, a couple of plain coconut biscuits stamped with NICE and sparkled with sugar grains.
2. I try to explain it by saying that if Daddy declared he was the chosen one and surrounded himself with an unstable cult, I'd probably be very cross because our values had become so different. But also, if Daddy then married a princess who was not me, I would still be deeply hurt. My child is not convinced, as usual -- but I'm sure all will become clear in due course.
3. It was probably fine to have a third cup of coffee, as I'm very much ready to sleep.
1. While reorganising, I find a tent, a magazine I have not yet read, a puzzle book, a space on the floor.
2. I brought the geraniums indoors too late and had to prune the frost scorched stems. Today, when I glance at their corner in the kitchen, I see they've put out some small bright green leaves.
3. A tense moment far away in space and time on the planet Arrakis -- in front of the TV right here, our fingers linked tight.
1. Shoots of wild arum, glossy and stiff as patent leather, force their way through the beige drifts of last year's leaves.
2. It's a particularly good kiwi fruit, and the pieces disappear as fast as I can cut them.
3. Towards the end of the afternoon, a mug of tea and a biscuit appear at my elbow.
1. Both children are off sick, so we all have a lie-in, warm in the dark, and don't get up until full daylight.
2. I work to a writing prompt -- first time in ages.
3. On my lunch tray, blood orange slices and chocolate biscuits.
1. Gorse blooms all year round, so to see the blossoms is nothing special -- but the thing is, the yellow pea-pod flowers are a welcome dot of brightness amid the dripping greys and muddy browns of a wet week in January.
3. To sit around a table making characters and back stories for a new game. I drift in and out of the conversations, thinking and chasing information rabbits in search of the perfect narrative details to match my random stats.
1. After the morning rush, I settle in with a book, aiming for a quick reset.
2. My son comes looking for a chat and some reassurance. Then my daughter joins us, sucking on a box of pineapple juice.
3. To add a few jazzies to a little rosette of whipped cream.
1. We don't have much on, and I am very tired after a day with friends. I spend the time drifting between books and podcasts.
2. The best thing to do for pre-food-tech nerves is to give her space to practise cutting apples and kiwi fruit.
3. The repair in our bedroom is done and we can finally tidy. The meter square of clear floor seems so luxurious. Hedonic adaptation will soon smooth it into ordinary, so we'll enjoy it while we can.
1. While I wait in line for the post office counter, the customers at the head of the queue for the shop fill a bag with vapes and vodka and chocolate, commiserating all the while with the assistant about bad wisdom teeth and the long wait for an NHS dentist.
2. It costs almost £4 in postage, but I am very pleased to dispatch a large parcel of well worn tights back to the manufacturer for recycling.
3. Cold at the open back door, I peer into the blue-green sky trying to see what Nick can see -- a fingertip width from Venus, Saturn should be visible. It takes a while and I have to be patient, but eventually the distant planet resolves.
1. A milky fog covers the town, tastefully draping the buildings that block our view of the horizon.
2. The little daisy in the awkward spot by the table has put out a defiant January flower.
3. Slipping boiled beetroots out of their skins.
1. Here, the ground is frozen into earthy ridges that crumble under my boots; there, I crunch across leftover snow; here again my steps break a crust of ice over a slurry of mud.
2. I roll sausages on to a baking tray while Nick checks the figures I have given HMRC.
3. Saving a copy of my completed tax return, and setting a reminder to pay the bill on Friday. I'm always very happy to get that job done for the year.
1. My eyes haven't woken up yet, but Bettany needs help putting in her earrings. The moment (times two) when the post slips through.
2. She's rather too pleased that her lip balm tube might easily be mistaken for a forbidden lip gloss.
3. I realise that my library book is brand new.
1. I've had a good lie in, done an hour of work, and now it's time for coffee.
2. Grating lemon rind into a pan of warming golden syrup -- the perfume fills the kitchen.
3. I find myself reading 'just one more chapter' until there is no book left.
1. One of those January treats -- making a lunch of the last of the Christmas cheese (although it's not the last as we didn't finish it, so we'll have another cheese lunch soon).
2. Up the stairs comes the smell of the veg chilli Nick is making for our supper.
3. Waiting for me at bedtime is Rosen's Almanac, which each day offers a brief consideration of the words and phrases people use in their private lives.
1. As I walk in, four librarians startle like a flock of crows, all hoping they can help.
2. We turn into a coffee shop for comforting milky drinks and teaspoons of cake. Despite the sleet and the dark, we are still a little overheated by the time we get home.
3. After supper, we make a quick loop of the neighbourhood, with wet flakes striking our faces, to see the snow's best effort at settling.
1. Our last few gingerbread stars are still crisp and good; still tasting of the butter we measured and melted and mixed.
2. I read aloud from his book until my voice cracks, my mind partly on what makes this narrative unwelcoming and hard work, and partly on the story of rats swarming a post-apoc Moscow subway in which ailing, fearful survivors form and break alliances across the dark between the stations.
3. We argue back and forth about important matters such as whether an omnipotent god could create a stone too heavy for him to lift; and whether by repeatedly halving the distance between two object you can ensure they never touch. Another twenty minutes of distraction.
1. The boringness of January: the markless calendar; the undecorated spaces in our house; the protein-themed special offers in the supermarket flyer.
2. Quickly setting a room to rights -- putting rubbish in the bin, folding a hoody, stacking books. Easy win.
3. In a room lit only by the glowing television, we cling to each other, anticipating Green Noah walking.
1. We woke up so late that we don't bother with breakfast tea, but go straight to coffee.
2. We return from our rain walk with feet wet from puddles that we could not walk around.
3. My daughter hands me a pair of thank-you letters written on her new notepaper.