Three Beautiful Things

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. 

1. And today our supper is a food tech pie.  2. We watch Traitors and tangle our legs on the sofa, each filling in the other's knowledge gaps about the contestants. 3. I fall asleep to the sound of his bath running.

1. I retrieve my dusty weights and yoga bricks and start again with my exercise routine after a week of being unwell. I've definitely lost ground, but I've improved my strength before, so presumably I can do it again. 2. I mute most notifications on my phone -- but one gets through to say I've filled my stamp card and am entitled to a free coffee. 3. A half-hour video call catch-up with a few writers and editors is a great brightener before the afternoon.

1. It's warm enough today that I put on a summer dress and forget where I've left my slippers. 2. My hand strays to the smooth planes of the worked flint that I keep on my desk. Connected again. 3. We eat for supper what she has made in food tech -- Thai green curry, bright and fresh and wakes-you-up -- and are very impressed. We hope that she will make another one for us soon. She thinks it's too spicy, but isn't that almost always the way with a Thai green curry.

1. A break with coffee and buttered toast with golden syrup. 2. I send a few photos to a friend, remembering a fun weekend at the Isle of Wight Festival when we were all much younger and smoother. It is rather pleasing to see she's shared them on her Insta that very afternoon. 3. I test a new webcam before a meeting tomorrow and wonder at the clear picture.

1. I do my watering and at teatime the sky squeezes out a few scattered raindrops as a sulky response. 2. We escape for half an hour into the pale low-stakes world of the anime  Frieren. 3. He is astonished by my shoebox of prints in their bright photo lab envelopes. 'Should we be touching them?' he wants to know. I explain that they're nothing special; just a memory prompt for me with no meaning for anyone else. 'You'll put them all in the bin when I die,' I tell him.