Three Beautiful Things

1. When I wake in the night, I have something to look forward to: Kim Stanley Robinson's lyrical descriptions of another planet in Blue Mars . 2. There's a bit of an anxious buzz about in my emails -- a website I'm writing a bit of content for is launching. All good wishes to you,  Bridges Insight . 3. It is disconcerting to stitch a school nametape into a man's suit jacket, but that's how it is with teenagers.

1. The kitchen is smudged with chocolate and there is a bowl of ganache icing cooling in the fridge. After lunch, she will bake the cake. 2. To rub between my fingers the tracing paper moons of honesty seeds. 3. Now that my mind is settled and made up, the tasks I've been putting off tumble over each other as if they are in a rush to be done. 

1. I come down to the smell of rain and the smell of coffee. 2. My son is going away for a few days with my parents. His luggage includes his Madeline pan and some weighty reading matter. My parents both make the same assumption about his chunky hardback -- but it is just Game of Thrones . 3. This summer's sparrows fly low through the garden so close that I can feel the air displaced by their thrumming wing feathers.

1. Bees -- bright bumble and work-a-day honey -- are nosing into the wisteria flowers. 2. The mist of oils that comes off the lemon I am zesting into coleslaw for supper. 3. The flares of orange reflecting off windows on Broadwater Down catch my eye, and not long after the sky to the west is streaked and striated.

1. There is a lot of sensory joy in the veg box -- the thud of radishes bobbing in the washing bowl; ripping scruffy husks from corn cobs; slicing carrots and cucumbers into sticks for the salad box; squeezing cooked baby beetroots out of their skins. 2. Pete brings his own homemade Monopoly set and it's a stunner -- unique, handcrafted and thoughtfully built to a Le Mans theme with the finest artwork early 2000s clipart CDs can offer. It's very nostalgic, and with his own added context, much more interesting than some of the official sets we've been playing. 3. A sky engine noise catches my attention during the game and I'm on my feet to look outside before I know what I'm doing. It's a paraglider, and with the yellow-gold moon rising, it seems reasonable to agree with Tim that it's probably a Jules Verne character off on a lunar adventure.

1. Just as we pour coffee, my brother, newly landed, taps at the door. 2. Rather shy, he appears by my desk in his new school suit.  3. On the top of the crumble, a glossy patch of leaking blackberry juice.