Three Beautiful Things

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.