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.