Three Beautiful Things

1. I take the extra fifteen minutes of sleep after the alarm. 2. I give up on forcing my feet into pairs of boots that look like my old boots, and ask for a completely different pair -- biker-style boots with solid soles and buckles on the ankles. I slip in like I've been wearing them for weeks. 3. The instructions suggest gluing seed beads into place -- but I can't be doing with the mess of glue, and there's a beading needle with a tiny eye right there in my sewing box. 

1. We realise that he had an umbrella all along. 2. An author comes back with her edits after 48 hours -- she's already moved on to the next book and doesn't want to leave that world for too long.  3. French revision: her pleasure in realising that the verb in the question is the verb she needs to use in the answer.

1. The nasturtiums have put on a brave show to finish the year. Even after the summer heat dried them bone white, they tried again. And now there are hexagonal leaves protecting the compost bin's modesty, and a few bright flowers. 2. Pulling down the tired sweetpea vines and tidying them away to let October light flood into the garden. 3. When I next come into the kitchen, there's a batch of cinnamon buns on the table, still warm and freshly iced.

1. Winter coat: still fits, is still warm. 2. In the shuffling calm before Pearl and Dean fanfare, the man in the row in front of us is quietly sketching the man in the row in front of him. 3. We are full of talk about the film -- a presentation of an art exhibition that we didn't get to. From Whistler's fascination with the Thames, to the sulky face on Miss Cecily Alexander (100% justified, I felt) to the absurd peacock room and the artist's feud with the banker who commissioned it.

1. A fog bank rolls across the other side of town and then burns off in the space of twenty minutes. 2. For lunch there is a mound of pearl barley and tender pieces of the slow roast venison left over from Sunday supper. 3. To stand enclosed by garden walls and stare up at a darkening sky that is both blue and orange.

1. This time I remember to wear my gardening gloves, and avoid the worst of the sticky sap. The jasmine is looking smaller and tidier; and the compost bin is much fuller. 2. The little flames of my new autumn pinecone candles reflected in the mirror. 3. It is hard to tell, at the end of Ann Droid , the exact nature of these tears.