Rising, skiing and winter TV.

1. Watching the thermometer lounging in the marmalade pan creep up to 104C.

2. Fine rain is blowing on a mean wind across the slope, but she's still working away -- putting into practice everything she's observed in videos and considered over the week.

3. We slip in a quick episode of Ghost Story for Christmas -- an adaptation of E. Nesbit's Man-sized in Marble, clinging together in the dark, peering into this strange artificially unseasonable world unable to do anything to help the doomed characters.

Recos, guitar and curls.

1. The time has come to finish up, but we're still swapping podcast recommendations.

2. The call comes -- his guitar has arrived at the shop.

3. The rain has put much sought-after curls in her hair.

Salt, appointment and looking out.

1. A man from a white van is trundling and scraping a red plastic grit spreader around the car park, which has been an ice rink these last few days.

2. A pearly sliver has fallen off one of my front teeth. When I call the dentists, their lack of urgency (an appointment is available in a week and a half) is oddly reassuring.

3. There is an icy sort of rain falling and I am very glad to leave the window and step back across the cold floor and into bed, which is still warm. 

Dates, from the slopes and esoteric zine.

1. To eat a few fat sweet dates with my coffee.

2. A video showing careful, elegant parallel turns comes home from the dry slope before they do.

3. His interests have turned to the occult and I'm pretty sure I have an esoteric zine with an article that will answer his questions. It only takes a little digging among dusty magazine files to find it, and it also has stickers and a flexidisc. 

Blue bath, in between and tomorrow's weather.

1. I float in a bath the colour of the deep sea listening to the instructions for a blue-themed writing workshop.

2. Just as Traitors gets exciting, he joins us, wedging and levering his bony limbs between us in our nest of blankets and cushions on the sofa.

3. We fall asleep to the promise of snow.

Workshop, documentary and end.

1. Word have not been easy recently. When they do come, they seem unsettled and easily startled, like wild birds that have lost trust. Nevertheless, I know what I know and I follow the workshop instructions with a good will and a lot of hope.

2. While we wait for the year to spool out, with a generous orange box of pralines between us, we watch a documentary about the election of the pope, described through interviews with a few of the cardinals involved, as well as journalists, observers and a tailor specialising in religious vestments. The cardinals are very human, talking about tears and pizza and projected sizes of cassocks.

3. At last it's 2026 and I can sleep.

Kite, journey and not quite the end of the day.

1. Red kite with pie-slice tail and wing fingers splayed wheels over aluminium roofs on an industrial estate.

2. Chatting idly across the train aisle with my cousin -- we note that the journey is so much better than we expected.

3. When we arrive home at dusk under the light of a high roundish moon, the shops are still open with  cracked open doors, enticing lights and clean new year displays.