Footprints, through the snow and feeding on fruit.

1. Lines of paddy paw prints over the snowy carpark clue me in on the night life.

2. The doorbell rings. The triumphant Abel and Cole man hands over our veggie box.

3. Each cluster of pale orange rowan berries is weighed down by snow. The high branches are weighed down by feasting wood pigeons.

Winter window, not going out and in capable hands.

1. The florists who did our wedding have the most fantastic winter window display -- glass round-bottomed flasks, each containing a single white exotic flower, suspended on fishing line and surrounded by fake snow and silver glitter.

2. Using the internet to cut a swathe through the Christmas shopping.

3. Nick takes over supper, turning sausages and mashing potatoes and carrots while I catch up with my emails.

Recipe for sir, curtain up and fried fish.

1. At the farmer's market, the fishmonger's assistant has transformed from a sullen teenager to a brisk, cheerful stallholder. He says to Nick: "This is a recipe for you, Sir -- beer batter. The beer needs to be very cold and fizzy."

2. The windows in Hoopers department store are now hidden behind red curtains. A notice announces that all will be revealed on November 6. Every year, they borrow ballet costumes for a magical Christmas display. We run into Katie on the way down the hill, and she speculates on this year's theme -- Peter Pan, she reckons.

3. A rapid web search reveals that beer batter should be the consistency of emulsion paint. I tell Nick, and point him towards a bowl, a whisk and a large pan. The fish is delicious -- crisp and golden brown.

Retrieval, ripe and first concert.

1. These plums are disappointing. I bake them into Delia's oat and plum slices, which are not.

2. I have my doubts about the replacement plums, too. They are deep aubergine purple -- some of them -- but streaked and shaded with green as if they might not be quite ripe. I pull one out of my shopping bag on the way home. Very sweet, very juicy and very plummy.

3. This piece is pushing the boundaries of music. It's pushing the boundaries of what a clarinet can do, with haunting polyphonics and hysterical screeches. Baby Badger reacts with some hefty kicks that are visible through my dress. "Your first concert," whispers Dad proudly.

Spice Store, battle and the solar system.

I added three new 3BTers to the Roll of Honour -- all in Spanish. Estando en Babia, El w.c. de Eric, and Despiertos. I've been using Google Translate to get an idea of what they're saying. Muchas gracias por los tres cosas agradables.

1. To hear the shopkeeper discussing ingredients with the family ahead of me in the queue. He is opening a bag of fresh herbs and saying: "I've got some black vinegar downstairs, but it's very expensive."

2. While I work, I can hear Nick and his friend Nigel battling their forces up and down the kitchen table. At the end of the afternoon, they say rather ruefully that they spent most of the day stealing chickens from each other, rather actually engaging.

3. We watch the lovely, lovely Professor Brian Cox revealing the wonders of the solar system. I'm sort of aware of space and moons and eclipses and doesn't the sky look cool through binoculars. But as a result of a disturbing incident with a science book when I was five, I've never really bothered to understand it beyond what I needed to follow an episode of Star Trek. But when the Professor explains it, I really, really want to learn, even the numbers and the distances. He makes it seem like something wonderful he's found, but he's a bit shy about showing you.

Over the wall, volunteer and fried apples.

1. On our way down to the charity shop, we pass two men talking over a garden wall. The man in the garden sees the crates of books in our arms, and his eyes widen. His gaze follows us as we pass.

2. To look through into the back of the shop and see a cheerful volunteer steam cleaning donated clothes.

3. Frying slices of red apple to go with pork chops -- the white flesh turns caramel brown.

Cabbages, prime ministers and rocky roads.

1. There are green and purple cabbages in our veggie box -- almost too beautiful to cook. The bases of the leaves are spring green. Gradually they shade into a deep midnight purple.

2. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named sometimes shares things in Google Reader. This week, a radio phone-in prank about Gordon Brown made me laugh.

3. Nick brings home a pair of rocky roads from the Hummingbird Bakery. They are more like rocky mountains, actually -- we finish up like a pair of toddlers with chocolate all over our faces.

Steaks, cake and sweeping.

I've got a post at Encounters With Remarkable Biscuits. While you're there, can I direct you to this piece about a recipe collection? I enjoyed it very much, and I hope you will, too.

1. The butcher holds up two steaks. "These OK?"

1.5. We pass two men talking: "The thing is mate, when you're working, you're doing what the rest of us want to do when we're not working, and we all think you live the life of Riley."
"I know, but I'm still working and it really gets me when..."
"I know, but we still think you're living the life of Riley."
And they pass out of earshot.
"What was his job, Nick? What does he do?"

2. Nick has been having an afternoon nap. I wake him to show him his birthday cake -- chocolate with red jam inside, dusted with icing sugar and lit with gold and silver candles.


3. The sound of my husband using a dustpan and brush to sweep dust from the spot on the hall carpet where the bookshelf used to be.

Snow, not fish sauce and sleeping.

1. There is a dusting of snow this morning -- as if the world has been lightly sugared.

2. As I am paying, my bottle of soy sauce falls over -- but no harm is done. "At least it's not fish sauce," says the shopkeeper. "When a bottle of that breaks, it takes a month to get rid of the smell."

3. I read until I can't keep my eyes open. It feels so good to put my book down and drift off to sleep.

Found, patience and noodle soup.

1. I have held up the queue scrabbling through my bag and my pockets, but the lady behind me (she is wearing a scarlet coat and a diamante dragonfly brooch) shares my relief with kind words when I find my purse.

2. A little girl sits in a supermarket trolley. She is waiting patiently for the pink iced donut in a plastic bag on the seat next to her.

3. A dish of clear chicken soup with finely chopped vegetables (dots of carrot, threads of greens) and glutinous rice noodles.

More snow, no trains and an odd pair.

1. New snow has fallen in the night. It looks curiously like mould.

2. Just before 10am, my Twitter screen is full of sad lines about trains stuck just outside Tunbridge Wells. I really feel for Nick, who I reckon is stuck on one of them. Then, I hear the door go, and his "Hallo!"

3. When we go to see the butcher about supper, he says: "Am I feeding two nuns, or two navies?" We decide on one of each. What a strange dinner party that would be.

4. Chatting to my mother on the phone, she says: "Your father has just come in saying that the icicles have fallen off the gutter on to the bench, right where he would have been sitting had it been a warm summer evening. He could have been skewered right through his gin and tonic."

Hanging, new notebooks and the snow is still fresh.

1. Icicles (some bowed, some double-tipped) are arrayed like exotic weapons.

2. I buy two new shorthand notebooks -- a very cheap pleasure at 98p.

3. Even after six days, the snow on our road still says "crump crump crump" as I walk across it.

Guilty pleasure, birch again and the homecoming.

This week I've been astonished to see the hit counter on the 3BT podcast creeping up -- thanks for listening, everyone.

I've added Outré and It's a Long Way Home to the Roll of Honour -- thank you James and Cathy.

Becoming Human and Whitney at Glimpses of Grace and Louisa Parry have all been enjoying the company of small people -- I just hope Whitney's little'un managed to get herself out of the hatbox. Plutarch has seen daffodils braving the frost. Raymond Pert has put away a burger 'the size of a buffalo's head'. Merope discovers Marks and Sparks and salt 'n' vinegar crisps. And Eyebee is taking pleasure in Shredded Wheat.

1. My aunt says: "Do you want to go to Hobbycraft?" as if she is suggesting a guilty pleasure to us.

2. More birch trees -- their top branches have been smeared by an artist's finger covered in burgundy pastel across a landscape of fawn and khaki.

3. I come home to Nick, and we hug each other so tightly. It was our first night apart since the wedding.

First snow, hot potato and Christmas show.

1. I come out of the bookshop and fragments of snow are falling. At first I think it must be fake, blown from a display somewhere, because no-one else is reacting. But then two women pass me and I overhear: "Is it snowing? It's snowing, isn't it." I walk home on light feet with a huge smile on my face.

2. Taking a hot baked potato out of the oven.

3. I go to see A Christmas Carol at Trinity. It's a very spare production with a cast of eight playing multiple parts, but it's very cleverly done. A lot of the 'scenery' is created using a Greek-style chorus. The words are all Dickens', too, which is wonderful, particularly if you've recently read the book. Afterwards, I tell Caroline (who saw it the day before for reviewing purposes) that I wouldn't have minded seeing it all over again. She agrees.

Brick, the finding and marble.

1. Treading on a loose brick in the pavement and hearing it go "collop".

2. I lose Nick while shopping -- a combination of my dreaminess and the crowds. I like to catch sight of his head behind a book display.

3. Ladelling mulled wine into a pair of goblets made from purbeck marble. Purbeck marble is really polished limestone, not marble at all. It's packed full of fossils. Every time I use these goblets I spot something new -- this time, two translucent spots on my goblet distinguishes it from Nick's. The wine was good, too.

Early delivery, in the mist and sketch.

1. Days when the Abel and Cole man arrives super early, because he knocks on the door and hands me the boxes with a big smile.

2. On a misty day, walking along Mount Ephraim looking over an unfamiliar town. It's a view that never gets tired. Every change in the vault of sky above renews the tiny moving town below.

3. I'm really enjoying Laura Solon's Talking and Not Talking sketch show on Radio 4. One of the characters is a deposed dictator who has moved to England and horrifies those who try to be kind to her. Another is an exotic, spoilt lady who lives in houseful of 'women', apparently servants at her beck and call, but at the end of each story, they lock her in her room.

Doughball, can't wake up and my evening.

1. Dough bumbles round the breadmaker pan like a stout creature in an exercise ball.

2. The butcher is alarmed and bemused by his slowness. "I just want to put my head down and have a 10-minute kip." I tell him that I think that's a reasonable response to this sort of greyish day, when it doesn't really get light. He smiles and says he supposes it is.

3. I'd forgotten football night -- that means for me a hot bath and a good book (Whitechapel, a novel about a Victorian thug forced to play detective against Jack the Ripper).

The visitor, out of the rain and spreadsheet.

On our wedding day, one of my favourite bloggers Mr London Street wrote a 3BT post, which is so full of love and pleasure that I hope everyone will give it a read.

1. Katie comes by after breakfast (by which I mean about noon) to drop off a card and have a catch-up. As always, she looks very glam in a smart coat that is the perfect length to show off her beautiful conker-brown boots. I am still in my pyjamas.

2. While waiting in a bookshop for the rain to stop: "That'll teach me to leave my coat in the car. Shall we go across the road and have a cup of coffee in BHS?"

3. We have so many people to thank that we need a spreadsheet to keep track. It's getting more and more heavily pencilled as we remember the kindnesses.

Web, niche and possibly a bit broody.

1. The delicate web of connections that has led Clare (my former housemate; introduced to me by an ex-girlfriend of mine) and Nick (one of my oldest friends; we sat next to each other in school and discovered a shared interest in science-fiction, roleplaying games and wargames) to meet at my wedding in 2007, fall in love and get married.

2. Small companies on the Internet that say ‘thank you’ when you enquire about their niche products and enjoy sharing their enthusiasm for them with fellow geeks.

3. I eat my chocolate mousse with one hand because the other arm is cradling a sleeping baby. After the meal we retire to the lounge and the baby awakens. Holding her with my hands clasped around her tummy, I bounce her up and down. She smiles and it’s the most amazing sight I have ever seen.

Text by Tim Knight of Heropress.net

The choice, soup and game on.

1. In the bakery, listening to the girls behind me deciding which cake they would like to take back to the office. "I couldn't eat a whole one of those. I'd have to cut it in half." "I'll have one, but for later."

2. A pan of orange vegetables (pumpkin and carrot) cooking for a wintery soup.

3. Nick is very pleased with himself because has bought a new game. When I get home, he has spread all the maps out out on the floor. On one of them, the British Empire is still pink. "There are more than a thousand counters," he says. He's anticipating a happy evening of pressing them out and neatening the rough edges.