Three Beautiful Things

Katie has posted a picture of the blanket she made for my increasingly spoilt baby . 1. No-one is getting much sleep at the moment -- I can't turn over in my sleep any more, and I can't sleep in one position for very long. I whisper my apologies to Nick as I make another awkward turn to get back into his arms. He says: "You're not being annoying -- you're being snuggly." 2. There are malted milks on the biscuit plate at yoga. 3. My beautician tells me to treasure the night feeds -- "When the moon is shining through the window, and it's just the two of you, and they open their eyes and look up... It's so, so special."

1. A spindle tree with the orange seeds just bursting out of the pink cases cheers me up as I struggle up the hill across the park. 2. "I feel so much better for that," I tell my yoga teacher at the end of the class. 3. By chance I come across an old friend on Radio 4 -- a thriller adapted from Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book . It is beautifully done in terms of sound effects and voice acting. The Empress, in particular, is astonishing  -- refined and restrained and authoritative all at once.

1. To find a spoonful of dulce de leche in the middle of my banana muffin. 2. She sleeps on under hair like dandelion fluff. 3. Some NCT graduates have been invited to bring their babies to our class. We pepper them with questions about hospital bags and nappies. "Did you cry?" challenges one of the dads. "Yes," says the other.

1. I go looking for a writing group -- but it's half term, so they're not meeting. Good -- I can go back to bed. 2. It's such a beautiful day -- and I have plenty to do in the back yard. I plant a few bulbs, and feel pleased at the sight of fresh compost in the pots. I also cut down the tired mint -- it makes the rubbish bag very fresh smelling.   3. A high flock of birds -- each one small as stubble on a man's cheek.

1. There is another 16-week mother at my antenatal yoga group. So I'm not the baby of the class any more. 2. I go down to Oxfam to prepare for Saturday's Bookfest event. The manager shows me their box of interesting items found in books (school photos, ancient letters, yellowed pages fallen from French novels). Then we rifle through the backroom stock in search of 3BTish books for the window display. If you're in TWells tomorrow (Saturday 3 July) between noon and 3pm, please pop in and say hi, and write a beautiful thing on a bookmark to slip inside a random volume. 3. Louise comes round -- she brings news about her new job, and a birthday present. It's a book of tea-time recipes. She says it's because I'm going to be a mother, and mothers need to know all sorts of recipes that no-one else does.

1. I need something funny and comforting and familiar to read on the train. Thank you, Mr Bryson . 2. I go to a class at the School of Life -- How to Stay Calm. The teacher, novelist Naomi Alderman, says that people either come to this class because they have a problem with anxiety (that's me) or with anger (mostly men, she says). I find myself talking to a man who says that social anxiety vanishes once you realise that everyone else is far too worried about themselves to notice you. I tell him how when I first understood that aged 18, it was like a burden being lifted from my shoulders. Then we tell someone else about it. 3. A Japanese man and woman are waiting for the tube. They are flushed, and limp with laughter. It makes me smile to see such open happiness.

1. I discover this wonderful thing here in Tunbridge Wells -- Art at Your Fingertips -- a library of tactile pictures for people with a visual impairment. Each picture comes with audio to help the user understand what is under their fingertips. 2. Overheard: a woman talking to her colleagues about a phone call to her little boy. "He said: 'Just a minute, I have to go and do the stompy happy dinosaur dance.'" 3. I hurry across London in the gathering dusk for a class at the School of Life -- How to Survive Your Family . I like the idea of people gathered in the same room for one purpose.

Two new faces on the Roll of Honour: Jewellery maker Louise has beeng 3BTing at Tooting Squared and Jennifer, who is watching her offspring discover the world at Cultivating Contentment . They both emailed me to let me know about their blogs. 1. He says: "I'm going to cook supper tonight." 2. I emerge from a two-hour training session to find gleaming wet pavements and gentle rain. 3. I like filing my notes because it says: "job done" and I know that I can find them again if I need them.

1. She recognises me by my snail brooch from Sheer Sumptuosity -- it was Ruth who co-owns this company far away in York, who introduced us down here in Tunbridge Wells. She has for me a box containing an electric blue damselfly brooch, which I can't wait to wear. 2. I am learning the bones of the skeleton for my medical secretary course. I like making up mnemonics for each limb. 3. After the show, we sit in the bar. The actor takes the sofa and we shyly pull up chairs all around him. Caroline says: "No-one's sitting next to George, and that's a shame." She sits down on the other half of the sofa to even up the circle. PS: Ruth is a dedicated 3BTer, so take a look at her blog .

1. At the top of the stairs, Anna has a whole wall of her children's drawings. I love the bright red corregated cardboard bus. 2. Putting homegrown salad leaves on the supper table. 3. Michael brings strawberries and cakes to our last art class. I'm going to miss my Thursday night drawing. I really didn't think I could draw when I started; and now I can, so that's a result.

I've woken up my old blog Once Around the Park . 30-word accounts of a daily walk along the same route. 1. I like this time of year, when it is hot, but still green. 2. I am always afraid to put the shading into my pictures -- it's hard with portraits because the directional shading I'm so fond of looks like wrinkles, or sunburn. But when the teacher warns us that profile pictures can end up looking flat, I take a deep breath and give it a go. At the end of the class, he praises the depth of our portraits. 3. Sharing a box of mithai with Nick -- we're lucky enough to have a brilliant exotic supermarket in Tunbridge Wells (The Spice Store on Grosvenor Road), and a bite or two of an Indian sweet make a good change to our usual Jaffacakes.

1. Two guide dog puppies (long legs and big paws) in the shopping centre. The yellow one watches the tip of a furled umbrella carried by a woman walking past. He tries so hard to leave it, but at last can't resist having a chew. The black dog fails by stretching up to grab a shopping bag. 2. We are doing self-portraits in art. I liked drawing a practice eye and suddenly finding that it was looking at me. 3. Nick is not amused when I call him away from his baseball to walk back up the hill and look at the sunset. 'I've been walking down this road for 20 years. I know about the sunsets.' But this one is particularly good -- the edges of the clouds shine as if they have been heated to white hot.

1. At the bus stop he tells me that last summer they had a small swimming pool in their garden, and a waterslide. 'It was full of kids. My children's friends came, and they brought their friends.' He tells me that he's moved to a new street this summer. 'Everyone says it's a bit rough, but it's fine. So long as you say "All right mate" when you see them, don't ignore them as you go past, it's fine. They'll give you a hand with anything, and don't expect nothing for it, either.' 2. I like picking up a couple of books from the bookshop. One is the lovely Homemade: Gorgeous Things to Make with Love . It's clothbound in gorgous aquamarine, and heavy with thick, satisfying pages. 3. Nick comes home, and a great wave of aching tiredness crashes down on me. I can hardly bear to go to art. But as always, when I look at what I've done, I'm glad that I took the risk.

1. In a tray on the ledge outside our bedroom window, lettuce seeds push a crowd of green leaves out of the compost. 2. Using line shading to give shape to a drawing of a rusty key. 3. It's satisfying take off nail polish by dipping each finger into a sponge soaked in acetone.

1. Hit the wrong alarm button and sleep in by accident. 2. The framer hasn't had a chance to use this frame yet ('It's fascinating. It looks like it's been charred') and would like to very much. But we agree with regret that the one of black and coppery sepia goes better. 3. We learn about the places in a picture where things are not. We are asked to draw the bits that aren't chair, and a light clicks on in my head. Drawing a chair that shoots off in all dimensions -- difficult. Copying flat triangles and parallelograms , then (eventually) filling in the bits of chair -- do-able.

1. I take out my week's spending money; and then use some of it to get my hair cut. I take the rest into a few shops; but don't fancy any of the things I thought I wanted. 2. My drawing teacher talks about 'getting information down'. This seems a lot easier to me than 'draw that skull'. It's just like taking some notes -- which I know I can do; rather than doing art -- of which I am less certain. 3. I like using a gritty bar of soap in the shower. PS: Some of my drawing class's work is on display in the adult ed centre in Tunbridge Wells, including my crow .

1. Chocolate brown thicket branches are studded with silver pussy willows. 2. 80 of us sardine into editorial to hear it -- the reporters have come in from the town offices. Those on holiday come in wearing jeans. The drivers have come up from the garage. People I've never seen before are crowded round the sports desk. We hush for the story. Faces drop and pale. Tight voices come up with questions. 'Will there...' 'What about...' 'Does that include...' Finally. 'Any more questions?' Stone silence. And then the IT man's snake charmer mobile phone goes off. Our nervous laughs blow away some of the tension. 3. My mind is racing, and I can't turn my thoughts to drawing. I think about leaving the class early. But I hang on. This picture doesn't have to be great, I tell myself. It's an exercise in directional shading, hardly art at all. Gradually, my head slows down; turns its attention to the shading, becomes fascinated with how that line ...

1. We came across this story and picture of a rescued dormouse dozing on a rose. Katie-at-work said she thought it was awful that they took advantage of a wild animal like that. I said: 'Well you're going to hate the pictures of it dressed in a tiny clown suit, then.' And then she didn't believe anything I told her for the rest of the day -- including that a pack of wild dogs was loose in Canterbury . 2. Going through my art portfolio and seeing that some of the drawings I did in the early days are not that bad -- almost likeable, even. Our teacher explains that because of the time gap, I'm able to step away from them and judge them dispassionately without ideas about what I think I can and can't do getting in the way. 3. Snow flakes kiss down on to my umbrella.

1. It's grey, dark and rainy and the dustmen still have a 'good morning' for a passing commuter. I can't see them without thinking how glad I am that we don't have to deal with our own rubbish. 2. Being driven on a bus through streets running with water. 3. The art teacher tells us: 'I have said "excellent" more times tonight than I've said in a whole week.'

1. End of work. We scatter into the afternoon like startled birds. 2. I wouldn't have run outside to look if the green sky and gilded clouds hadn't been reflected in the windows opposite. 3. Art class: There is a raven hiding in this piece of cartridge paper.