The job, remembering the song and getting paid.

1. It strikes me that my job these days is to investigate things of interest, and then write about them. That puts a smile on my face.

2. I couldn't get the name of the song mentioned in yesterday's post -- my hearing of the words is a mis-spelling, so I couldn't find it anywhere on-line. But somebody knew -- somebody who we all laughed at when he bought a CD of Nepali folk music. Thanks Daddy.

3. Putting a paycheque into the bank.

Milk, tomatoes and Dear Writer.

1. This milk (which has not been homogenised) from Able and Cole is the colour of late afternoon sunshine on a winter day, and tastes the way milk tasted when I was at nursery school.

2. I find two tiny green tomatoes on my plants. They are the size of peas and pearls.

3. Dear Writer, an Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4 challenges me and harrows me and enlightens me. I feel a bit as if I've been on a roller coaster, or just climbed a mountain.

The first moments, covered and a stolen child.

1. I step outside to pick up the milk and check my pots of seeds. The air is so still and cool and the day so full of possibilities.

2. A flowering shrub in the middle of this front garden has an old curtain thrown over it to keep the cold off.

3. We find frogspawn in the nature reserve pond. She tells me that when she was at junior school, she stole a single jellied egg from the class's tank and took it home in her drink bottle. Her mother was very cross and said: 'Well you'd better look after it.' So she raised a little frog.

Adornment, the past and Noel Coward.

1. Taking all my everyday jewellery out of its painted wooden box and sorting it into a new turquoise silk box. I haven't worn earrings for a long time, and I'd forgotten I had so many.

2. On Facebook coming across a set of photos from a past job. It's strange to see faces and places that I had forgotten.

3. We watch Brief Encounter -- another of Nick's wonderful favourite films.

Delayed pleasure, a changed cat and homegrown.

Today I am hosting a tourist: Fiona Robyn, who drops a Small Stone into my inbox each day. She is celebrating her book of the same title with a blog tour.

1. Enjoying my 'thank-you-for-having-me' gifts a week after Alex has gone: a wine glass of sparkling pear juice, hot pink gerberas on the window-sill, a square of Green and Black's dark ginger chocolate.

2. The warm weight of a curled-up purring cat as after seven years of choosing the sofa Silver develops a sudden preference for laps.

3. Sitting outside and craving fruit and knowing there's none in the house, before I remember to take four steps to my blueberry bushes where I pluck eighteen plump fruits and pop them into my mouth where they set off tart-sweet explosions.

And these are my beautiful things.

1. As we potter around the house, Granny sings 'Some Enchanted Evening' from South Pacific. 'People don't write romantic songs any more,' she comments sadly. I try to explain to her about Hey There Delilah, but she's more interested in 'We Joined the Navy to See the World' from Follow the Fleet.

2. There is now scaffolding outside my window and I can look straight down one of the cross-bars to see a circular picture of the trees beyond.

3. Nick tells me that he was just thinking about what he would say when he comes home from work when I move in.

The rain, a homonym and how summers used to be.

1. I am shaking the water off my umbrella when the sun comes out.

2. 'What's time?' asks Jules.
'About ten to seven,' I reply, without stopping typing.
I don't understand why he's laughing, until Katie calls: 'Get some sage and fennel, too.'

3. I smell honeysuckle before I see it. It reminds me of a day in the summer I finished my GCSEs -- James and Glen and PaulV and I were walking in the woods. It was hot -- a proper June day -- and the world smelt of dust and honeysuckle. Someone picked a vine of it to twist round my straw hat.

Deep blue, journey, petrol and part of the moon.

1. I come to the end of the bay. The sea bed drops away suddenly into darkness and I have a feeling of things unseen below me. I turn to swim back to the beach and in a cleft see a rich orange starfish lying languidly in the blue gloom.

2. Every car journey this week has involved bouncing and jolting in clouds of red dust. It is a relief to speed along a smooth highway. The journey is punctuated by cries of 'Tortoise' and speculations about what people are harvesting and growing.

3. We stop for petrol and Katie and I recall the days when our friends were just starting to drive. 'Do you remember getting £2.17 worth of petrol and paying in pennies?'

4. While we wait to take off, Pauline tells me to look out at the full moon coming over the hills.