Three Beautiful Things

1. We're having a rough few days with long sleep and disrupted nights, but 'some of that pasta from yesterday' heated up in the microwave  with a tablespoon of water bumps us over this hour. 2. It was just a quick glance in a busy day, but the sky at sunset, framed cigarette card style by the bathroom window is readily available when I close my eyes. 3. The way spinach wilts into a brownish mess of lentils and vegetables and makes it look like food.

1. Nick standing in the garden lets the roofer know that his enormous radio is very close to my desk window and he moves it over to the other side. 2. He says he can go by himself -- but can I wave him off out of the door. 3. There he is, waiting on the corner with his roof down for the last time this year.

1. I like to see my friend stretching up to catch my attention with a wave. 2. The fern drawn on the surface of my flat white. 3. While no one is looking, I have ice cream and warm chocolate sauce.

1. What will eventually be leek and potato soup simmers gently and comforts the house while I wash up. 2. My daughter is wondering how to go running without looking awkward and feeling cringe, but I am distracted by deer poo, still black and glossy, on the path, and I wonder if the deer are watching us from the shadows among the trees. 3. At teatime, she slips me a chocolate mini roll decorated like a sausage dog. We leave a trail of bone-shaped sprinkles over the kitchen floor.

1. My goddaughter is now grown enough to move out. To bask in her parents' pride at the unfolding story over WhatsApp -- and to admire the way she has cleaned the stickers off her door before leaving. There's something to give parents hope (If you know you know!)  2. There's always something to surprise and delight at an open mic night -- and here comes a youthful folk duo, Drover: beards and bright eyes and big jumpers with original songs telling old, old stories. 3. When asked if I have something for the second half, all I have is 'this old thing, that duologue that you've heard before', but Peppy says it will do nicely. On a lark, I freshen it up by press-ganging a stray actor to sight read the other role, and I am pleased with my boldness, and his gameness. 

1. The neighbours' scaffolding is a lot more in our garden than I was expecting. But there is a certain grim satisfaction in predicting that it will probably be there for longer than the promised fortnight; and that the scaffolders will certainly come and remove it all on a Sunday morning at 8am. 2. It's a day when I'm wanted in two different places at once -- but I get there just as the dentist calls Nick in. 3. The soft mumbling of cricket commentary tells me that Nick is resting as he should.

1. We wake to the sound of gentle, steady rain falling on the roof light and playing in the gutters. 2. For etiquette, we must ask forgiveness for our drenched and unprofessional appearance -- but secretly, I think we're both marvelling at the power of the weather. 3. I come home cold right through to my bones but quickly warm up in a second shower.

1. Flicking through the weekend's photographs -- can still smell the woodsmoke and the grass, and feel the sun on my face. 2. I got into the habit of ruffling my nasturtiums each time I pass to disrupt the flea bugs. This time, none of the iridescent beasties jump up. Now I look properly, the leaves are less lacey, and I'm still hoping for more flowers. 3. The air coming through the open window is definitely a draft and it has a gusty wetness to it that feels like rain later. I close the latch, and enjoy the stillness and the silence.

1. I wake in my sleeping bag just before dawn and crawl out into the cool dry air to admire the eastern sky, where the clouds are gilded on their undersides and all hung about with birdsong. 2. There is on our right an abandoned apple orchard, dark, unpruned and heavy with red-green eaters. We take one each for the continuing journey. 3. Every year, at the tired tail end of summer, I am so pleased to see cyclamen -- clean dolly mixture pink and white -- doing a kindly service  by brightening the dusty leaf litter under hedges. Cyclamen aren't natives, but they often pop up far from gardens, as if someone on a mission has tucked corms into banks and woodlands where they might be needed.

1. It takes me a moment to identify it -- but that's honey in my piece of rocky road, rather than golden syrup. 2. The rain has coaxed a fuzz of green out of the dry baked fields, and everywhere plants are giving it another shot. 3. He returns from the dentist with a packet of antibiotics and a promise that they will start working within 24 hours; and also an extraction appointment for next week.

1. To walk through town cradling a huge bouquet of flowers -- butter-yellow scented stocks and sunflowers and a galaxy of daisy flowers. 2. Following my cousin's recommendation, last week I pushed a few spring onion roots into a pot to see if they would regenerate. I notice now that they are pushing up green stalks, and digging into the soil with new white roots as if they mean to give it a go. 3. She says that the thing that made this evening worth coming out for was my thing.  PS: My thing is on the Word Up Instagram, but it's too early in the morning for me to listen back to my own voice.

1. When I wake in the night, I have something to look forward to: Kim Stanley Robinson's lyrical descriptions of another planet in Blue Mars . 2. There's a bit of an anxious buzz about in my emails -- a website I'm writing a bit of content for is launching. All good wishes to you,  Bridges Insight . 3. It is disconcerting to stitch a school nametape into a man's suit jacket, but that's how it is with teenagers.

1. The kitchen is smudged with chocolate and there is a bowl of ganache icing cooling in the fridge. After lunch, she will bake the cake. 2. To rub between my fingers the tracing paper moons of honesty seeds. 3. Now that my mind is settled and made up, the tasks I've been putting off tumble over each other as if they are in a rush to be done. 

1. I come down to the smell of rain and the smell of coffee. 2. My son is going away for a few days with my parents. His luggage includes his Madeline pan and some weighty reading matter. My parents both make the same assumption about his chunky hardback -- but it is just Game of Thrones . 3. This summer's sparrows fly low through the garden so close that I can feel the air displaced by their thrumming wing feathers.

1. Bees -- bright bumble and work-a-day honey -- are nosing into the wisteria flowers. 2. The mist of oils that comes off the lemon I am zesting into coleslaw for supper. 3. The flares of orange reflecting off windows on Broadwater Down catch my eye, and not long after the sky to the west is streaked and striated.

1. There is a lot of sensory joy in the veg box -- the thud of radishes bobbing in the washing bowl; ripping scruffy husks from corn cobs; slicing carrots and cucumbers into sticks for the salad box; squeezing cooked baby beetroots out of their skins. 2. Pete brings his own homemade Monopoly set and it's a stunner -- unique, handcrafted and thoughtfully built to a Le Mans theme with the finest artwork early 2000s clipart CDs can offer. It's very nostalgic, and with his own added context, much more interesting than some of the official sets we've been playing. 3. A sky engine noise catches my attention during the game and I'm on my feet to look outside before I know what I'm doing. It's a paraglider, and with the yellow-gold moon rising, it seems reasonable to agree with Tim that it's probably a Jules Verne character off on a lunar adventure.

1. Just as we pour coffee, my brother, newly landed, taps at the door. 2. Rather shy, he appears by my desk in his new school suit.  3. On the top of the crumble, a glossy patch of leaking blackberry juice.

1. Slicing corn off a cob is very satisfying. 2. A neighbour asks if I heard the rain last night -- I missed it, but the air and the light are different now. 3. We watch Ann Droid and laugh with no reservations at all, because we think we know these people, and the themes of family duty and usefulness matter to us.

1. A flock of sparrows is having a stand-up row somewhere beyond our back wall. 2. The fridge, I see, is full of chocolate crispy nests, each with a clutch of two or three mini eggs. 3. There is a piece of crackling to snip up and crunch on. Nick is very pleased with the pork shoulder he has roasted for tacos.

1. Her little smile as the hairdresser comes round with the mirror -- that alone is worth the cost of the haircut. 2. Warm evening -- streets and pub gardens are full of A-level students processing results day. 3. I join another gathering to read aloud The Earth Charter -- this time a mix of campaigners and poets in a pub, all with different ideas about how a public event might work. We read it, and then it's time to talk about taking it to a wider audience. They comment self-consciously that they are  mostly middle-aged white men, and the discussion is robust with a fair amount of interrupting and apologising for interrupting. I dive right in, because talking about the charter feels as good as reading it and internalising it. 

1. Of course the eclipse! All day there's the news, and my messaging app is pinging with pictures and plans and hopes. I even love the traffic jam on Ashdown Forest and the difficulty we have parking, and the crowds of people on deckchairs and picnic rugs, laid open to wonder amid the grazed gorse.  2. Affluent and affable in linen, they are leaning on a gate with pinhole in a Glyndebourne programme card saying they thought they'd be the only ones up here. We admire their tiny sun image and give them a lend of our eclipse glasses. 3. Each one of us has seen a meteor falling across the sky this night -- but the long tailed shooting star that we all see together is the most wonderful of all.

1. I feel very pleased this morning to be exercising lit by sunlight and cooled by a draught coming through the open window. 2. Stripping off dark green husks from the year's first fresh sweetcorn. 3. The satisfying sound of a sash window closing against the cooling night air.

1. A few wine red geranium petals blow in through the open window. 2. He has been out and bought all the cake ingredients I forgot to add to the grocery delivery. 3. I look over my Toggl time tracker for the day and compare it with the work I've done. I feel rather astonished and also pleased with myself.

1. We give the coffee machine a try -- it grinds and moans and spits out black and cream -- and then we sit in the dappled sun and shade with our mugs feeling pleased with ourselves. 2. A lot of the floaty white curtains are made from vintage bed sheets still marked with embroidered initials of the women who once brought this linen to their marriage. 3. With chain link fence, I frame my family knocking tennis balls around the court and blaming each other.

1. An adder draws its diamonds through the dust and away into the scrub 2. It is so quiet that we can hear the wind flickering silver/green the leaves of a poplar across the valley.     3. The farm shop has curled cucumbers 'grown here'.

1. We come round the corner on to the cliff tops, and there is an awful lot of sky, much more than we are used to. 2. It suddenly seems like a good idea to order a glass of wine before we walk back for lunch -- so we sit deep in sofas, out of the sun but with a long view of the sea.   3. We smell the pizza long before we can see the van -- and when we get there, Nick has ordered for us and is bringing our drinks to the table.

1. It's been a journey -- took a while to find a taxi, but now we're here, crunching cases and bags down a gravel drive, and there's an arched door in a charcoal grey wall. 2. We trip-trap along walkways in the canopies of sea-stunted oaks and follow narrow gravel paths, open doors and cupboards and peep behind curtains 3. A long view to the sea, sun fat August blackberries in the hedge and on the way back, a bramley apple falls off the tree into my hand.

1. I am unsure about this shirt dress with a cyanotype print -- I'm sure I forgot it in the back of the wardrobe for a reason -- but it is lightweight and undemanding on a hot day. Both husband and son provide spontaneous compliments, anyway. 2. Unboxing a double row of sushi rolls on the supper table. 3. A new melon, soft orange pink inside and very cool and fragrant on this evening when the day's heat is still dissipating. 

1. We have been catching up while we wait for her to get herself out of the house. We suddenly notice that she's now sitting in the car, glaring at us rather fiercely. 2. I read Jeanette Winterson's summer checklist, which includes making a commitment to nature, and I feel a little less alone. Global leadership may be lacking, but there are things I can do, here in my street. 3. He steps outside to recover from being the first one bankrupted, and then calls us out to look at the moon, which is sitting above the horizon as large as an old penny.

1. After a restless night, I get up furious at all the noises and troubles that have chased away all chance of sleep. It's funny how much better things seem after breakfast and even just a little bit of physical activity. 2. I'm decommissioning nasturtiums ruined by caterpillars and tiny iridescent flea beetles when I notice pale shoots uncurling by the roots. Not only that, but a few seeds lie on the surface of the pots. I replant, push the seeds into the soil, water and hope. 3. We've finished The Hound of the Baskervilles. The antagonist really is a rotter who thoroughly deserves such a horrid fate that is foreshadowed to great effect at the start of the story; and greatly enhanced by the lurid description of Holmes, Watson and Lestrade tracking but not finding any trace.

1. The bath bombs we made yesterday in a Lush workshop have cured -- it's satisfying to ease them out of the mould. 2. I look up to the window, and it's raining -- just a shower, but enough to lay the dust, wake the petrichor and raise our hopes. 3. A brown orange spotted moth, so small it could sit on my little fingernail with room to spare, speeds about the garden, never quite stopping long enough for me to get a good look.

1. I walk in the middle of his room, mention that I'm in need of proofreading today and will pay a 10% rush fee. Then I walk out. The thump of feet of floorboards. 2. I get a quick peep at the new website; we talk about picture research and how to style credits and AI use and SEO, and it suddenly feels very real. 3. All these just baked biscuits arrayed across the work surfaces, trays double stacked.

1. After dropping off a donation, we run our eyes along the rails and shelves, wondering if we want to fill the space we've just made. 2. I still marvel to see her casually holding a plank position while watching videos -- she's up to four minutes now. 3. We put our duvet aside weeks ago in the heat. Suddenly this night I want its insulation and weight, so I drag it out and get under it.

1. There's a dad a few rows back telling his toddler that they need to thank the bus driver. He says, 'I'll do it first, shall I, and then you can copy me.' 2. Sling some dice, borrow a cocktail dress from the wife of the governor of Bermuda, get shipwrecked, fight some dinosaurs. 3. Ursa Major tumbles tail over head scattering stars in the sky gap down our street.

1. She has aquilegia seeds, gleaming black like obsidian grains, in a pink striped paper bag. 2. I remember I have a choice, and walk back through the woods. 3. It's been a while. Netflix has changed its layout, and we need to recap the previous episode. Between us, we have enough to get along with.

1. Waking early, see the poplar leaves fluttering green and silver in the unsettled air. 2. There is a lot of patience and persistence going on as Uncle Yog takes Bettany climbing. Her exercise routines have paid back in terms of strength and flexibility and confidence.  3. Black caterpillars the size of em-rules waving and undulating as they free themselves from swathes of webbing on a nettle stem.

1. From the scent of lemons and the questions about flour, I deduce that he's baking madeleines. 2. It's a warm, warm evening; there's dry dust underfoot, and the brambles and bracken are shoulder high and at their summer finest -- but the rowan berries are already less green and more orange. 3. Directly behind me, the sun is falling through the western sky. Its light has bounced off a window on the  far side of the High Street, struck a broken glass in the gutter on Castle Street and then, at the very end of its journey, dazzled me for a moment.

1. I'm writing a huge website -- to see my word count going up hour by hour. 2. He keeps appearing with wire and plasticine and questions. 3. End of term: art is accumulating. While we listen to the Folk Show, I get up a ladder and stick it on the wall.

1. No matter what, there are always a few tomato side shoots that need pinching out. 2. She's on a school trip. From time to time, I check the family app to see where her dot is. 3. We've appreciated the cooler mornings, even with the gusty disruptive breeze pushing at the blinds -- but the afternoon air heavy and still and warm like bathwater is welcome too.

1. Through a gate, a glimpse of 1950s cars in bubblegum colours. 2. Poet Dan Culmer jumps on the bus and of course I wave him over like the shameless fan and ambitious writer that I am. I want to hear about how he supported the even starrier poetry celeb Brian Bilston. 3. One of her friends is moving schools -- to my old school, to be precise. And, I tell her, the school where a whole crocodile of her aunts and uncles (both blood and friendship) went. This is very startling and difficult to compute -- perhaps the first time that she has really understood us, with toddlers on our hips and jobs that keep us from fun days out with her, as year 8s and 9s. PS: Speaking of which, Nennis and Douglas, a bedtime stories YouTube Channel is run by an old school friend, and I would consider it a great personal favour if you would take a look, and listen to a story and like it; and even subscribe.

1. There's a terracotta brick building up town, baked until it shimmers, but somehow, tufts of wild yellow corydalis grow three storeys up, right out of the wall.  2. That was one hot bus ride -- but here's a cold glass of white wine and a shaded spot to drink it in while I wait. 3. 'Which bit that wasn't my bit did you like best?' she wants to know. And so we comb out our memories of the show in search of details we liked. I liked the huge self-satisfied smile on the face of a tiny girl who was thrown in the air; and the pair of dancers in red and white squeezing each other tight at the end The 30th , Billie Eilish's narrative song about a close relative surviving a car accident.

1. I arrive just as they reach the front of the queue, and there's still time to get my coffee order in. 2. In the woods, it's all shade -- a relief after the glaring stretches of shimmering pavement. 3. Nick has cooked, and we've eaten. Now I'm sitting in the warm garden with a drink that is just about still cold, carefully sharing pieces of incense with the dying barbecue.

1. After lunch, we nibble round the cones of Cornettos. 2. With air currents lifting the blinds, scampering through the hall, jostling on the stairs, and playing with the papers on my desk, the heat is doable. 3. At the end of the day, I lie with my legs up the wall, Radio 4's very lightest offering playing on my phone, against feet swollen by the heat and a lot of editing work.

1. At school, there are always people keen to gee him up. He's done well to get up the hill today. 2. A wood pigeon settled comfortably in the shade of a lime tree, wings spread and feathers fluffed for improved ventilation. As we come down the path, it gets up and hurries away. I wish that it had stayed and that I could join it on the cool grass. 3. Nestling boxes and bundles among the paperchains in the party box, which will be going back into the loft very soon.

1. New potatoes -- a fair few of them -- cooked with some mint leaves, ready for salads this week. 2. There's a Polish cultural event on the Pantiles, with red and white flags and flower headbands and folk songs. It's very jolly -- but not really intended for us. I think it must be a relief for expats to find a bit of space and time that is just for them. 3. 'Shall we get the barbecue out this week?' Nick wonders as I am meal planning and setting up a supermarket order ahead of some high temperature days.

1. We've slipped a barcode into the packaging, and the courier has a label. This box will be passed from hand to van to hand to hand, and in due course, there will be a refund for this failed monitor. 2. The work that seemed impossible last week? I'm going to deliver it ahead of the deadline. 3. The pop of thread pulling through fabric tight in the hoop.

1. I can't see them, but I can hear the sparrows spatting and quarrelling on the garden wall. We now have a small family flock, with some juveniles who occasionally squat with tucked necks and wide beaks, begging for a feed. Perhaps the parents will try another brood as the summer turns, and the flock will grow. 2. I have occasion to remember our butterfly, Bob, who never flew because one of his wings didn't inflate properly. But in his fortnight, he got on with sunbathing and sitting among flowers and fruit in our kitchen and in the garden. 3. Open mic -- I'm struck by the poems that open the boxes of memory and bundles of experience that people carry with them, sorting and curating the contents so that they can be decoded and understood by others.

1. As always, our lunch is a whirl. Salad, sandwich, all the gossip, coffee, a couple of photos, a shared cake, a little birthday candle, a funny meme. It's over far too soon, but we must get back to our desks. 2. Stirring bright turquoise plant food into watering cans and sharing it around the garden. 3. I'm trying and trying to learn one of my poems so I can recite it from memory, looking right at the audience; and so that it's mine, no matter what. It's hard -- as hard as writing it; and frustrating because I've got the words how I want them on a page, but some phrases are tricky to speak, or difficult to remember. But each time I go through, it feels less ragged and more like itself.

1. After a fraught school run in the main heat of the day, I can take my huge mug of green tea out of the fridge. 2. The leftover Chiang Mai chicken is just is delicious this evening as it was for supper last night. 3. It's been a bad day, but we're sitting on his bed with him, and he's wondering what an actuary does, and whether a career as an analyst might suit him.

1. This is the weekend when she officially walks over the teenage threshold. She has organised most of the celebrations with lists and sticky notes, using us like extra arms and legs to make things the way she likes.  2. We bring in flowers and alpine strawberries and snips of herbs for the cake plate. 3. One good jump scare gives our nervous systems an airing.

1. 150g of rainbow nonpareils has been delivered, and it looks sufficient for our needs. 2. Every time I see her, she is working with scissors and card, preparing pastel decorations for her party. 3. To my startlement and delight, there is aircon in the footwell of Pete's open-top Saab; and we need it, even riding home under the high half moon well after 10pm.

1. Seeing a familiar face coming up the stairs at the station. 2. There is the promise of nasturtium flowers in furled buds with a snip of red and yellow showing. Maybe tomorrow or maybe the next day. 3. No one feels like eating much -- but there are some bones of cold chicken to pick at, and thin slices of bread and butter.

1. Breakfast in the garden during a heatwave. Down the wall and over, the tidal sounds of next door's bathwater, and someone else, further away, sings softly. 2. Sat deep in the sofa in the draught from the open window, we can hear people going up and down the hill. 3. Peering through binoculars at the moon-by-daylight, viewing the great craters and the shadows in the dust.

1. I make a remark about the edit I've just done -- really just for good manners and to tell the writer that I see the labour that lies beneath, and to acknowledge that this short text will be very good news for the body concerned. The writer reciprocates with context, including a level of drama that very much pleases my nosey self. I love the way measured corporate sentences hold safe a whole world of human beings and their outlandish doings. 2. We get the impression that he is very pleased with his maths work today. And we keep looking at each other saying, 'He's very pleased with his maths.' 3. There's no lemon left for my soda water -- but I remember that some mint has been quietly and competently growing in the garden.

1. To dip-sample my small library of poetry and micro texts to find a quick consolation. 2. Pinks, striped with red like seaside rock, scented, if you care to bend down, of cloves. 3. I have in my stash just the right stickers for her revision notes.

1. A friend once said that my gardening method is a lot to do with editing. I think of this as I pull out this herb bennet, but not that one; and finger through my pot of lawn daisies to pull out herb robert seedlings, but let it grow where its fern leave soften hard edges; and cut back the seedy mildewed alkanet so that it will again in due course give more twinkling blue flowers -- for the bees of course. 2. There is something in the scrub at the side of the path, rustling and fluttering, now before us, now behind. I catch a flash of cream speckles, and then quite suddenly, there it is on a fallen branch, bright eye and tilted head -- a song thrush. 3. Under the front door step -- two buttercup flowers yellow bright as make-believe suns. 

1. I'm rather achy, but Saturday's work shows in the tied in sweetpeas and the tomato plants in their grown-up pots. And my to-do list is a little less weighty. 2. There is something so nice and glowy about seeing my daughter folding backwards into the kneeling camel pose stretch that I cannot manage. 3. At tea time, seeing me drooping over the kitchen table, Nick assures me he has supper in hand and sends me upstairs to lie down.

1. I'm wearing what the children when they were small used to call 'scary tightses', which is any pair of tights with an unusual pattern. This one has red chinoiserie figures up the back, and even the supermarket delivery man is startled enough to comment, when, having waved him into our road, he sees me over the carpark, still holding my phone and turning to walk back to our gate. 2. I'll only be gone for a few hours, but Nick comes to the door and kisses me before I set off out into the early evening. 3. With poems read aloud to a small crowd who are drinking slowly while rain blows past outside and busy people break stride to peer through the window, the pictures of lambs and gardens and bunions and fox cubs chasing magpies for fun are so much better

1. I'm in a little-and-often era -- 15-minute exercises every day. One shelf at a time. Fifty pages in a morning. A novel chapter tucked into a short wait. 2. I'm working again with a client after a break. I'm loving the 'welcome back' emails. 3. My children are helping each other with homework. 'This formula comes up in every test, even if it's nothing to do with respiration and photosynthesis.'

1. It's been a week of rain, and we are now used to the routine of peeling off wet clothing and hanging them to dry. We've taken to warming up in our pyjamas. 2. I finish work a little early, and there is time for a chapter of Bleak House  before supper. It's another chapter in which innocent grifter Harold Skimpole's creates carnage, and I hold in my head how John Jarndyce's inherent goodness and tolerance starts to harm the family he has collected around himself. 3. We lie in bed listening to Shakira's Whenever, Wherever in English and then in Spanish and then in English again and agree that it is just the best.

1. With my coffee, I have a little bun flavoured with elderflowers. 2. The first of my marigolds has come out, like a reliable, robust helper. The pelting rain we're having this week won't hurt her flaming orange petals, and she is welcome as sunshine. 3. There is a spoonful of sharp garnet red stewed raspberries to spoon over our chocolate fondants.

1. The alarm that I set on Monday while I was planning my week reminds me to tune into a professional development call on Thursday. Thanks, Monday Clare. 2. It's a pleasant feeling to overshoot my page count target for the day because I'm immersed in the edit. 3. A song comes on the radio that has a bone-deep familiarity. I realise that it can only be one of the songs from our primary school hymn book.

1. I'm still marvelling at the freshening effects of the rain we're having. The weeds at the edge of the bean field are gleaming and glittering and steaming in half-eight sunlight, and the woods are dripping, cool and restoring as well water.  2. Peeling off clammy wet clothes and climbing into something warm and dry. 3. On my way to a poetry event, a friendly shout. We'll see each other in there.

1. Radishes don't often come with greens, and when they do, the leaves fade rapidly to yellow mush -- so today they feature in every meal. 2. I will never not love pouring hot water over a soup cube and watching the dried veggies and seaweed and tiny shrimps expand. 3. Evening message: do I want to walk tomorrow morning? Yes I do.

1. Thank-you cards crowd the shelf behind our meeting. 2. He comes back triumphantly with a pudding. The children, despite their great ages, are astonished that there could be a pudding on a Monday. 3. We've sat up very late, but I'm glad because it means we heard the promised rain falling steadily in the dark.

1. Really, the climb up on to the common is always the hardest part of the walk. 2. We cut across a housing estate -- busy with car washers and gardeners and hedge snippers and flags -- and dart down a twitten past the playground to find Georgian cottages squatting calm and cool around a spring-fed pond on the edge of the woods. 3. Around the next corner, over the next stile, we find a cool spot by the stream that is not taken. We sit down with a bag of sweets to watch black dragonflies that turn iridescent green when they cross a sunbeam. I think they might be Calopteryx virgo, otherwise known as 'beautiful demoiselle'.

1. Flutter of red -- a field poppy has dropped its petals. 2. Early supper and very quick showers -- we're getting ready for a night at the theatre. 3. Jupiter and Venus are tangled in the spires and fancies on Trinity's clocktower.

1. There is, after all, blackcurrant ice cream in the freezer. 2. Over the back fence, a few golden curls of honeysuckle invite us to a scented evening in a few weeks' time. 3. After carrying watering cans back and forth, the smell of wet dust on an evening when the ground is still warm.

1. The orange that I am peeling emits a spray of oils that glitters in a shaft of morning sunlight. 2. This is a big mug of milky coffee sort of day. Nick is out, and the cafetiere doesn't quite work if you make coffee for one. 3. There's a moment after supper to admire the moon by daylight. I cram myself and my binos against the doorframe so that I am steady enough to inspect the craters.

1. We get one of the taxi drivers who addresses me as ma'am -- like the Queen. 2. I bought a shop sandwich for my lunch, and it has cress in it, which feels retro and gives it rather a lift. 3. I can smell the different stages of Nick's risotto -- the onions caramelising, and later the wine and then the first ladle of stock.

1. She greets us as the couple in the Tunbridge Wells water crisis photo, and then she greets the wire-haired dachshund with the strangely human face and her friend who owns the gift shop.  2. I finish my working day with that pleasing 'everything done' feeling. 3. A bulky grey-pink wood pigeon dozes on the side fence as the light fades.

1. This week, Bach Before Seven on Radio 3 has a theme -- they are playing his fan compositions of other people's music. 2. When I bring the bin bag down the hill, I feel there's more leaving the house than a litter of physical rubbish. 3. I finally settle down with the SCP audio series Alec has been asking me to check out. It's exactly as horrid and as bleak as I expected. Our shared taste for cosmic horror is perhaps our attempt to rehearse for life in world where we must often make choices in which no options align with our values. But despite that, we variously continue studying for our GCSEs, propagating houseplants, stopping for elevenses and learning to recognise birdsong.

1. Weeding the marigolds leaves my hands sticky with resin strongly scented with summer. 2. Lunch is yesterday's noodles with prawns stirred through and snips of green and white spring onion. 3. We learn from Digging For Britain about the vast forest of giant club mosses and horse tails from which the Welsh coal seams are formed. I try to imagine what it would have been like in those swampy forests, without birdsong but noisy with insects.

1. He shimmers past me like a fish heading into the fast water. 2. There is a Medusa mask, very stern and powerful, drying in the kitchen.  3. Nick is leaning out of the bay window and I'm holding the roof light hatch above my head. We are hoping to catch the spark of ISS rising up in the west -- and as the ISS Pass Tool and the Stellarium star map promise, it appears between Procyon and Jupiter. A win for international cooperation, and for predictability.

1. Waiting for us as promised is an orange bag of homegrown rhubarb. 2. We do not go down Bogey Lane. It's not because we're scared. It's because it would shorten our walk unduly. 3. ...and suddenly the bowed green bud is a red poppy.

1. At the top of the bank, between pavement and empty air, a drift of orange poppies. 2. We got the expensive kind of passion fruit substituted into our supermarket order. They were as large as goose eggs -- but she only likes them once they've ripened and dried, collapsing into ridges and hollows. I halve one for her, and the scent crossing the table makes us think they're worth the extra money. 3. I am ridiculously pleased with my nasturtium seedlings -- nine pairs of leaves so far -- which will eventually spill over to cover the compost heap.

1. I do not think that I will ever in my life whip an egg white to soft peaks without marvelling. 2. 'Ohh, great question,' says the lady next to me. 3. I return home triumphant with a cheese boule under my arm.

1. On the way home we stop to test the unlovely scents of hawthorn, horse chestnut and cow parsley. 2. While she works on my teeth, we compare parenting notes -- it turns out we both occasionally gifted with surprise emotional reveals when all we really wanted was to go to bed. 3. To smooth over the fold in my ballot paper and post it into the black plastic box.

1. A flat white in a speckled ceramic beaker, a sit-down and a scribble in my notebook. 2. Two fairly ripe tomatoes and a sharp knife. 3. I've been feeling vaguely anxious about backing up my pictures, so I do an imperfect tidy-up while we listen to the Folk Show and then copy the entire folder to an external hard drive. There are still more pictures to sift through -- but I do feel better for starting. 

1. It's a day when I'm stepping from appointment to task to event to task to event. Two things get cancelled -- and breathe. 2. At the front door, I glance around to find the starling who is dropping electronic blips and bloops and clicks from a high place -- he's on next door's TV aerial, sifting the airwaves for the latest sounds. 3. I bring myself round to sleep -- last thing there's hard science fiction in Rendezvous with Rama  and then in the small hours, a collection of death scenes by Turgenev.

1. Waking in grey light to birdsong through the open window.  2. I look up and catch sight of Nick coming in from the street. 3. The beech leaves, new unfurled and underwater soft, still have fine fair hairs along their edges.

1. The fridge has been dredged for jars and roots, and now a venison stew is bubbling on the stove. 2. I put the last stitches into my little doll's pink felt shoes and hand her over to my daughter with the big scissors. 3. I'm wakeful, but there are two volumes of Turgenev on my e-reader, so I follow him into a lost world of mystic serfs and aspen groves and low mists and cart tracks.

1. We're having technical problems; we get a slightly out-of-breath call from the counsellor, who is also running late, and it occurs to me that she's as nervous as we are. 2. Early evening, I splash a little water about the garden and clear handfuls of fallen wisteria petals off my seedling marigolds. 3. The little doll now has stiff felt limbs stuffed with pipe-cleaners, and a dress -- but her fringe remains pinned flat and untrimmed because we don't quite dare.

1. We drink coffee and take courage from our stories. 2. A little blue butterfly lurches about the garden like a torn corner of sky caught in the wind. 3. In the late dark as I am falling asleep there's the sound of the quiet rain shower promised on the weather radar.

1. A great tit in pinstripes flies into the ivy, flies out again. 2. I catch a speck of red in the garden, assume it's plastic litter from a broken toy. But it's a ladybird, stretching its wings. 3. We've been shifting around each other, in and out of the kitchen all afternoon, and now there is a curry, and for afters, warm cookies with ice cream sandwiched between.

1. Looking out over the view from Mount Ephraim across the town's bowl, I can see that we are a lot greener than we were before Easter. 2. I ask Nick if he wants to come with me -- and he does. 3. After an hour of laughter and joining-in-with-the-chorus presented by two thirds of The Gluten-Free Trio (plus guide dog), we head home across the Pantiles -- which looks particularly charming all lit up. We are cheerily relaxed and really ready to enjoy Friday.

1. The traffic is so bad that we are just meters behind the bus that passed us at the start of our walk. 2. She asks to be allowed to trim the doll's bangs, which are for now pinned against her felt forehead to set flat. I will probably say yes. 3. We go out to see what we can see in the sky -- we're rolling through some dusty space and there are more meteors than usual. We don't see any of the promised Lyrid shooting stars, but we do see plenty of satellites, and Arcturus is shining straight down our street.

1. Ripe blackberries in April -- just a handful, gleaming in a cardboard tray -- brought in by slow boat from the Mediterranean and put at the front of the fridge to be eaten by anyone who fancies one. 2. Slipping the skins off boiled beetroots -- some for Nana, some for us. 3. A few dozen stitches and her little face appears.

1. Oddly, the burnt corner of my toast with chocolate spread is so delicious that I am jolted out of the story I am reading at breakfast. 2. The taxi driver tells us that now his second son has a university place. 3. We decide we do not like this and drop it mid-show, mid-series.

1. Last day of the holidays, and I've woken very early. I summon up George Saunders' Pond in the Rain  and bob around with his Russians and their short stories before sinking back into sleep. 2. Like a bonfire spark and its afterglow, a yellow centipede returns to the darkness at the bottom of the compost heap. 3. In the hour before bed we let David Attenborough's nesting swallows and path laying mice yank our heart strings around. 

1. Overnight soft and persistent rain has fallen and the town is breathing quietly. 2. The difficult purple of honesty flowers keeps catching my eye. 3. Our turn with the psychologist has arrived very suddenly but we're in a position to seize it with both hands.

1. Through the magic of persisting in poor decisions my Baldur's Gate character ends up with a new eye that can see the invisible. 2. Nick comes back from Lidl with a box of Moomin biscuits just for me. 3. I've had to chase and chase round the internet to get the instructions for a charity shop doll kit. I thought I could guess; but I needed the picture and steps in a 2013 magazine to make sense of the felt circles and limbs and dress pieces. 

1. While I wait, I rake a weeding knife along the narrow space behind the railings and raise the scent of springtime soil.  2. Along the path, blue drifts of early forget-me-nots set off the yellow of a few late daffodils. 3. A mug of hot tea and a couple of hours free on a Sunday afternoon.

1. As proud as Cornelia Graccha, I photograph the lawn daisies and dog violets that grow in my garden. 2. I see my son's hands are now larger than mine, and I wonder who stole away my baby. 3. Tipping threads and slivers of felt off the cutting mat and into the bin.

1. Just to stand in the sun and feel warm. 2. I can smell the weight of the wisteria blooms hanging from bare grey branches on the wall round the corner. 3. Three adventurers down, one swaying, and the goblins keep summoning more wargs and now this big blood spattered fella with a beard and plaits has appeared... Oh! That's the druid we were trying to rescue, and the goblins are running away.

1. When I open the window first thing, I hear geese in flight honking to each other. 2. Clear bubbles are rising in my pan of sugar, Neil Martin is chatting with a Dubliners tribute act and Nick is spotting planets through the open back door. 3. After all that careful mixing of boiling sugar and cooling and measuring, yes, I can taste caramel in the finished cake.

1. The shallow sunny part of the pond is now alive alive alive with tadpoles -- so numerous and so wriggly that we can hear them. 2. Out of sight, a woodpecker knocks. 3. After supper, I go down to do the bins in the alley along the bottom of the row. I'm startled to a halt by reflected sunlight bounced by a window that I can't see on to a wall that is normally only lit briefly at sunrise.

1. We are not even 100m from an A-road and birdsong is the main sound -- chipping and cooing and trilling and chiffing and chaffing and the ratchetting call of the magpie. 2. Violets on a woodland bank, blinking in the harsh April sun. 3. We have eaten enough chocolate and now we are cheerfully tired of it.

1. There is a lot of playful April foolery on social media. Some of the brands and organisations seem to be reaching towards a better world where otters trained in water rescue support the emergency services; while others are just looking for chaos (the Macquarie comma and Aldi's law arm, Legaldi).  2. Nick brings me a bag of asparagus, even though no one else likes it. I have some spears, cooked briefly to a bright clear green, with my lunch. 3. Sitting up in bed, tablet between us, to watch NASA's rocket launch. The BBC commentator says it's taller than the Elizabeth Tower that holds Big Ben. That's hard to hold that in mind as Integrity dwindles to a dot in the blue sky.

1. Yes, this movement takes less effort than it did in December. I give up less often, and I'm intrigued by the harder versions. 2. The moon untangles itself from the clouds and presses its face to mine as I climb the hill. 3. As we step out of the door, I reflexively pull my coat around me against the cold -- but there's no need tonight. The air feels softer, and more joyful, carrying voices and the scents of flowering hedges.

1. The auto-till attendant is a nervous speaker -- but nonetheless helps me scan my reward card, which just won't work. She's a bit of a reward programme expert and gives me a useful tip-off. It's funny to see how when I relax to force myself into a more patient state, she relaxes too, and how when she's showing me on her own phone, she achieves fluency.  2. To pot up fresh new geranium plants for the front windowsill. 3. We're pulling treasures out of the freezer this week -- a bag of frozen mango to eat with our yoghurt.

1. We are all a bit resentful about the clocks changing -- but I happen to know that there are a couple of pain au chocolats in the freezer to sweeten the early breakfast deal. 2. Last skiing of the season. We get away just before the cold rain and walk out past banks tumbled with primroses and early bluebells. 3. Jabbing candles through the sugary crust of a lemon drizzle cake.

1. There is a garden on Mount Ephraim where grape hyacinth bulbs have spilled over the wall and forced themselves into gaps in the pavement cobbles. 2. There on the edge of the path, looking breathless, squashed and dusty, some early bluebells. 3. There is satisfaction, I suppose, in threading elastic through a waistband, pulling the rucked cloth flat along the length.

1. He is sitting more or less content among drifts of cheap packaging from China. 2. It's a black sky and gold light afternoon. 3. She wants a refill for this one particular pen from a shop that is only in London. This feels like familiar behaviour.

1. Jackdaws, quick and smart as croupiers, flicker themselves in and out of a playing card sized hole in a sealed chimney. 2. I do consider a cheeky sign-off (almost certainly no one is reading or reviewing) but I haven't yet been paid, and I'm not entirely sure of the comms plan. So I deny myself and bask in the peace of mind. 3. Just yesterday I was thinking that after the run of dry weather I'd need to start watering the garden. Now stormy rain has set in for a few hours.

1. With the sun behind her, my friend comes down the hill towards our gate. 2. We step over a wet place where a rust-coloured chalybeate spring runs over the road. 3. I walk over spring mud and wonder which of my footprints will harden into summer ruts and which will flake away into dust.

1. I find myself deep in a book that makes me laugh and forget where I am. 2. A little hand sanitiser quickly lifts the biro ink stain. 3. Among his photos of the weekend -- the play of lake water light on a swan's breast feathers.

1. The taxi driver and I have been talking on the five-minute journey. As I get out, he thanks me for my story of rocking and jolting over fields in my grandfather's ancient green Land Rover that always smelled of petrol because of a leak in the tank. 2. I catch the gaze of a baby in a backpack and we both smile. 3. The sky is clear and dark enough that I can view the zodiacal light. I'd never heard of this before, but apparently around the equinox, light from the sun below the horizon reflects off space dust to brighten the sky just after dusk and before dawn.

 Today, Satya Robyn has published her interview with me over on Substack.  Do take a look. 1. My cake comes with a dish of whipped cream, just like in the 1980s. 2. Degree by degree, the sunset has moved round until I can't see it from my window -- but I can see it warming the building at the end of the Pantiles. 3. I deliver an edit and pretty much float downstairs when supper is called.

1. Through the trellis between the back yards, a jigsaw piece of our neighbour's face. 2. Two bees looping about the garden glinting in the sun. 3. There she is up ahead on her way home. She will be mortified if I call out in the High Street, though.

1. A yellow dog with a plumed tail runs joyfully across the lower cricket field. Of course it's a retriever. 2. We are discussing a window box plan. He spends a long time describing a particular kind of flower. We have to use an image search to find them. 'Those ones. I don't like them.' 3. We are very excited -- but very quietly because it's late at night -- to see the viscount married.

1. I am allowed a look in the back of his sketchbook. 2. In response to a rumour, I divert our walk, and there is indeed frogspawn in Fir Tree Pond. 3. I turn and look back. There is a hazel tree putting out tiny leaves in a tentative way, as if not quite sure how they will be received.

1. I take the falling path and let the rolling fold of the hill shelter me from the biting March lion wind. 2. There's a woman on a bench by the cherry tree road and she's talking to herself... talking to the magpies... talking on her phone. 3. The washing-up is done to rule and I drop my apron, leave her bath running and hurry out the door to hear poetry in a pub.

1. And now the forsythia is more yellow stars than hedge. 2. Quiet café; bored barista; good coffee; reading task. 3. What I really like is a letter box with a good wide slot.

1. As I'm leaving, I ask for and am indulged, a biscuit for my hand to sustain me in the supermarket. 2. Cold drizzle prickles my face, shakes me awake. 3. At this time of day, another bus will be along very soon.

1. Today, I get to hear the morning birds and see her turn to look back up the hill. 2. I buy the best tangerines squatting fat and bright in their oversized skins. 3. Our youngest bans us from the kitchen and cooks supper. She has done all the little things that we would do if we were not always slightly frazzled -- like hiding the heap of things that gets abandoned on the end of the table, serving lettuce in a bowl instead of the salad spinner and grating a piece of parmesan.

1. In one hand I have Clive Oppenheimer's book about volcanoes; in the other my phone with Google Maps -- this is so much better than following along with an atlas. 2. While dusting, I find the book I was looking for a week and a half ago. 3. Ginger, garlic, onion, chicken and beans lined up behind the pan in a comet tail array.

1. We are swathed in mist this morning, like we've been laid in tissue paper for storage. 2. Already, someone has made webby nests full of tiny black eggs in the tops of the nettles I was growing for the kitchen. 3. I test her on her science and think that she knows a lot more than me -- I never got my head around  the whys and wherefores of waves.

1. It is a relief to see magnolia flowers, and new leaves of nettle and cranesbill. 2. The train after the one we missed arrives early and leaves promptly. 3. '...and,' she snaps, tired and grumpy after parents evening, 'I bet he pulls the chair out for all the mums.' I'd noticed that too, and simultaneously appreciated it and found it awkward. 'It's because he has good old fashioned manners; and he said you were nicely raised, so you probably are.'