1. A chaotic chocolate-brown spaniel with ears undulating soaks its belly running through a puddle among the rocks then races across the rough grass to the cricket pitch before making a circle back to the rocks..
2. Getting a mocha on my way home was the right thing to do.
3. The boys are hanging out of the window to photograph a distant verdegris roof dome, and a gull nesting on a chimney stack.
1. Nick calls upstairs. He has come home much earlier than expected, and he brings me a book -- Richard Ayoade's The Unfinished Harauld Hughes.
2. The surgeon reckons they can schedule it within the month, which is a lot sooner than we expected.
3. From half past eight to nine o'clock on most evenings we lie almost nose to nose just taking some time. She says of her day, 'It was boring when I was living through it; I don't know why you want to hear about it now.'
1. During my walk, I find an intriguing buff-coloured spongy mass on a pile of wood chippings. I guess it's a fungus -- maybe a slime mould -- and I can see older dried out ones, splatted like cow pats. I make a note and look forward to finding out what it is when I have time to tumble down a rabbit hole.
2. In an unkempt garden, a lawn thick with violets.
3. We're down to two players passing £500s back and forth over the board. With my property portfolio there's a chance I could hold my own until the good luck (or bad luck) I need to win turns up -- but it's very late, and I'm all right to concede into a comfortable second.
1. The wisteria on the back wall has done particularly well this year -- the mauve flowers hang heavy and so does the sweetcorn scent in the brick cell of our back yard. When I brag about it, I am repaid with pictures of apple trees and rhododendrons and all other things in bloom.
2. This might be the last time she wants me to push her on the swing.
3. To pull down a branch bearing apple blossom to catch the shy pink and white scent.
1. I stir the tea in the canister to get the right mix of black tea leaves and flower petals and orange peel and lift a spoonful into the infuser.
2. There is a general marvelling at the batter pudding Nick pulls out of the oven. He is grumbling quietly that the new oven runs at a cooler temperature than the old one because he has become a person with some expertise at cooking.
3. I start to pack. It feels rather like dressing a doll; imagining myself away and thinking what I might like to do and what I might wear to do it.
1. I hear a cry like a child's -- but from the top of a tree. A jay with a beak full of grass wisps and blue flashes on her wings looks back at me.
2. The physio asks gently about absolutely everything from dreams to diet to doorframes to trouser cuffs. Sitting on the bench, size 9 trainers dangling, he unfurls a little.
3. The lamb stew was made by me -- but Nick made the dumplings floating on the top.
1. A single pink primrose flower among the pale yellows lighting up the under hedge.
2. We eat brownie in tiny pieces soaked with juice from defrosted raspberries.
3. With my binoculars, between the washing line and trellis, I stumble on the tiny pan-shape of the Pleiades.