Three Beautiful Things

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.'

1. Nick has put some washing on the line -- looking forward to clothes that smell like the outdoors. 2. The forsythia hedge is dusted with yellow stars, just clearing its throat before its big moment. 3. The full moon has been silvering our left cheeks all the way home, but now I have time to really look, it is nowhere to be found. I have to lean out of the bedroom window to catch it round the roofline, and my varifocals don't work sideways so it is a jellybean-shaped blur.

1. The alarm goes off, and it's light outside. 2. After a run of murky wet days, clear hot sun light rushes into our kitchen and suddenly anything seems possible. 3. I return an edit, and feel like I deserve a glass of wine and some telly with the children.

1. I am definitely procrastinating because I don't want to do my exercises. Then Jenny Eclair pops up on my feed complaining about how hard it is for her to go down the road to her local pool (free for the over sixties); and a lot of other women say they also find it hard to begin.  2. She brings me a tiny blind box she has made out of paper stabilised with stickyback plastic, and requires me to sign a delivery note. 3. The steady dribbling drip of draining stock bones.

1. I toast the year's first hot cross bun, and butter the two halves. 2. The light of birthday cake candles. It was Nick's birthday, and really he should be the beautiful thing for his careful, affectionate work in keeping the house and family running. 3. This takeaway doesn't have an app and it's not attached to a delivery service. I walk in and give our order, then later come back and collect our brown bags.