Three Beautiful Things

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.