Three Beautiful Things

1. To arrive home just as my aunt and cousin come to the gate. 2. Granny Pat says: "I love you, Clare and I love the baby." She is delighted over and over again by the news that I am her grand-daughter, married and carrying her great-grandchild. 3. Cyclamen in dolly-mixture colours, and pale autumn crocuses planted around trees. It's good to see some gentle colours among the deep greens and hot reds and yellows.

I'm very proud today because I'm in a real lit'ry magazine, complete with sound file of me reading it -- check me out on qarrtsiluni. 1. In my lunch box, pieces of deep red tomato and emerald coriander. Katie says that for a moment she thought I was eating handfuls of sweets. 2. In the middle of tea, at 5.25pm, I tell Caroline about the lady who was supposed to come at five and pick up some boxes. 'I wonder where she is?' And the doorbell rings. 3. I am planning to whisk Nick off for a weekend away, and I am offered some editing work, which should pretty much cover the costs.

I am up to date with the posts over Christmas; and also there are posts at Once Around the Park . 1. When I was young Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister, and she made me think that a woman could do anything, even if there were lots of things that a little girl was not supposed to do or want or hope for. But along the way, it seemed to me, Mrs Thatcher had given up a few of the things I looked forward to being as a woman -- you'd never think of her as beautiful or feminine. And then I would see Benazir Bhutto on the news, and it seemed to me that it might be possible to have it all. 2. I never did get a kitchen timer for Christmas, so I take myself off to Trevor Mottram's cavern of delights. They have all sorts of kitchen timers; including a single red model of the sort I have been particularly hankering after . It is unboxed, and unpriced, so I ask how much it is. The assistant disappears into the back of the shop and comes back sometime later (I have been admiring copper sauc...

1. Lying in bed with my pink Nintendo DS Lite playing Zelda: Phantom Hour Glass. 2. At Etchingham station, the newspapers are laid out and labelled with the names of their commuters. The station is somehow very cheerful, and I always expect to turn round and see a fire in the grate. 3. While we wait for the pizza, Nick and Tim are going through the papers for old roleplaying campaigns. I am not really listening, but hear a reference to pirates and an animal husbandry: parrots skill. I wonder aloud if my character in the present game could have a parrot. Later that evening, as if by magic, a mechanical bird enters the game. The Professor immediately wants to take it apart, but Sister Justinia is convinced it's alive and has named it 'Birdie'.

1. I am on the phone so I miss out on the calls for the tea round. But a mug of redbush-with-no-milk is brought to my desk anyway. 2. In the pub is a short man wearing low slung jeans -- the back pockets must be somewhere about his knees and the waistband looped around his bum -- a pornstar moustache and a trilby hat. 3. Looking up at the clock and seeing that it is exactly midnight.

1. Towards the end of a journey, spotting 'Tunbridge Wells' on a roadsign. 2. Getting back to the office moments before Oli, who usually gives me a lift to and from work, leaves for the day. This mean that I didn't have to make anyone go out of their way. 3. Katie calls and she sounds as tired as I do. We chat for a while discover that we are both about to curl up with comforting DVDs -- Nanny McPhee for Katie and Kiki's Delivery Service for me.

1. The estate agents sent us to the wrong address, but in many ways (sweet little garden, cool door handles, huge living room, lots of storage) it turned out to more right than the right address (backs on to school playing field, evidence of weird neighbours, scruffy outside and too-high ceilings). 2. The queue steadily building up at the fishman's while he carefully explains how to cook the fish you are buying. While I waited, I learnt how to clean a lobster, and how to make a dressing for lobster salad. 3. Meeting interesting people -- a man whose car runs on liquid propane gas; a man who is going to cycle round the world and a sculpture restorer.

1. We didn't have long in Central Park, so we picked and choosed -- the statues of Alice in Wonderland and Hans Christian Andersen. Children were climbing all over Alice, and she seemed to have been designed with them in mind, because there were cunning footholds in the bronze. Hans Christian Andersen's ugly duckling was rubbed shiny. 2. We saw some Mennonite-type people preaching fire and brimstone in a park. The women all wore little muslim caps, and the men wore high trouser and braces. Later, I saw a little huddle of them standing in the middle of Times Square gawping at the lights. 3. During supper, I remembered that I hadn't seen any Andy Warhol sights. 'Oh we can go see where the Factory was,' said Bob. 'It's only a couple of blocks from here.' So we did. There's a Petco there now.

1. When you are talking about someone and they phone. 2. Our designer works from Capetown, so I haven't met her yet. She has come to England for a holiday, so we took her out to dinner in London. It's good to finally put a face to the e-mails. 3. We went out to Trafalgar Square to see the sculpture on the Fourth Plinth. It's made of white stone and it's called Alison Lapper Pregnant. Alison Lapper is an artist who was born with no arms and very small legs. The statue really does challenge ideas of what ought to be put on plinths in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Heavily pregnant disabled women aren't your usual subject, so this statue has really thumbed its nose at the parade of dead war heroes on horses. And a guest contributor Douglas Findlay adds his own Beautiful Thing: 'When you're in the bath and you put your head underwater and move it from side to side so water goes in your ears.'

1. I dreamed about walnut bread, and when I got to the Flour Power stall, there was one loaf left, so I bought it. 2. Selling a few old books and spending all my profits at the deli. 3. It's about time I had some new pens, so I go into the stationer's and spend a happy half hour deliberating over the merits of roller balls and gel in pens - fine and broad - in a selection of colours, before leaving with the same brand I have always used.

1. All I wanted was bread and milk. I couldn't face stressing round the supermarket on a Saturday so I raced down the hill to the farmshop. They had one bottle of milk left. 2. Jay telling me that my little press release about his mind, body and spirit fair has been popping up all over the place. 3. We gathered at Laura and Andy's to paint masks. It was a good evening of paint and mess. The masks are papier mache moulded on balloons. The varied designs were amazing - trees, a dragon, a snowy owl, a firey creature, an alien with a lascivious mouth, a dangerous mole and a silver and black Janus. The workshop was an idea I'd had early this winter, so it was good to see it happening at last. I was impressed by everyone's willingness to join in - I get a real kick out of encouraging people to