Three Beautiful Things

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.

Erin and Shopgirl (who has the most beautiful white rabbit) have both started new blogs in the last few days -- check out A Blessing A Day and Something Good in Everything . And I've added two people who blog 3BT-style to the Roll of Honour -- Talking to Myself in Public and Musings and Confessions . 1. A muffled boom makes the yoga class jump. "What was that?" We are still on edge here in Tunbridge Wells from the bomb scare that cleared the town centre two weeks ago. "It's the eleventh of November, and 11 o' clock." We fold ourselves into child's pose to think of heroes and sacrifices. 2. Such a relief to get my hair cut short. It sits much better now, and I feel as if I am showing the respect I feel for myself. 3. I was afraid that motherhood would be an isolated business -- but this cafe is full of NCT groups jiggling prams and feeding babies.

1. The first thing Nick says when I wake up is that when I sleep snuggled up behind him, he can feel Baby Badger moving against his back. I'm amazed to discover that BB can kick that strongly and not wake me up, and pleased to think that the two of them get some time alone together. 2. Katie has put a call out for bulb planting assistance -- so I go round and spend a few hours in her sunny back garden -- in return, I get lunch and two slices of chocolate cake. 3. There is a children's party going on in the hall across the hill. Little voices roar out cheesy pop music -- "Hey-ay-ay baby, will you be my girl?" and laugh at the DJ's jokes. A few brave souls get up to sing: "Twinkle twinkle little star" and from one rebel: "Happy birthday to you, stick your head down the loo..."

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.

1. The postman knocks -- he has a large but light parcel. It's a set of baby clothes, handknitted by Heather. So now I have something soft and warm to wrap my baby badger in. The little shoes make me want to cry. 2. I'm working upstairs in the early evening, and the window is open because the attic can be stuffy when the sun has been shining. I can hear the mechanical clack-clack clack-clack of a flamenco class in the TocH Hall. 3. All my biscuits fall through the wire cooling tray. "We need one with smaller holes," I tell Nick (who is proud that he has bought the finest baking equipment money can buy. He points out the bleeding obvious: "Next time, bake bigger biscuits."

1. To spend some time with my mother at the garden centre discussing the relative merits of violas and wallflowers. I love violas for their surprised but neat faces -- I think they are afraid of spoiling their carefully pencilled-in make-up. As soon as the vegetables finish and some pots come free, I'm going back for a couple of boxes. 2. Clients who pay very promptly and electronically. 3. There's been a car alarm yipping and wailing ever since we got into bed. I go to the window muttering that I am really going to give it something to go off about if I can work out which car it is. It falls silent and does not start again.

1. From the window behind my desk, I catch the cyclist I saw riding off yesterday at 5pm locking his bike to the pay and display machine. 2. Shaking an apple to hear the pips (that no-one has ever seen) rattle. 3. Beans on toast: always there when you're working too hard to cook.

1. Nick has baked a loaf of fruit bread overnight. It's very good for breakfast with butter and jam. 2. Tinny mobile phone music behind us on the footpath. Off button. 3. Even half an hour makes a hole in this work.

1. Today, town is looking particularly lovely from the top of Mount Ephraim. Great cumulo nimbus clouds scatter sun and shade across the roofs and parks. 2. Crickets -- someone has wound the hillside up and it is hopping round in circles like a clockwork toy. 3. Nick comes in early and sees my computer face. We go for a walk. When we get home, everything is all right again.

1. "I'll call Nick for you," I tell his mother on the phone. "He's just stuffing clothes into the washing machine." She laughs -- we're both so fortunate to have husbands who pitch in. 2. I like the time of the week when it is not possible to dust or wipe -- all the cleaning cloths are in the wash. 3. All quiet, but for the soft rush of bathwater falling down the overflow.

1. To swim outdoors. 2. Our laburnum tree is out -- this time last year, I was sad that we wouldn't see its pure yellow flowers again. It's one good thing about the flat sale taking so long. 3. We walk down through the woods on the Common. Bird song falls all around us. A robin scatters notes from a blunt dead oak branch

1. As we are leaving, we are startled by a roar. I jump. "What's happened? What's happened?" "Someone's just scored." Nick points to one of the upstairs flats -- our quiet and unassuming neighbour is leaning out of the window jabbing his thumbs at the sky. "10 seconds to go," he calls by way of explanation. 2. I am not above stealing a raspberry from Fenella's plate. 3. Neat arc of new moon. The shadow side is waiting.

Sandra has written a 3BT post at Living in 22 . Have a look at the rest of her blog -- she has some wonderful photos of garden birds. 1. I get a coffee and line up my week's work in my notebook. 2. I like to hear the robin chipping-chipping away -- he sits (small and bellicose) in the conifer outside the window to guard the coconut shell filled with fat and seeds. 3. We have moved the kitchen table round to give more space in the kitchen, and now instead of sitting face-to-face, we sit side-by-side. I wasn't keen because I thought it would make conversation awkward. It doesn't really; and now we tend to turn our chairs at the end of the meal to spend some time cuddling and chatting.

1. My mother scrubs the mould off our kitchen window frame. 2. Stuffing sacks of old clothes into the recycling bin. The hopper closes with a polite clang. 3. A pair of palm-sized portobello mushrooms in our vegetable box. Their dense flesh looks like real food. I imagine how a hunter-gather would have felt to find them on her patch. Perhaps she would have smiled and thought: "That's supper sorted."

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.

1. I interview the director of a play for a feature. It feels good to do some work knowing that I'm going to get paid. 2. I like seeing all the pea-sized spiders this year. There is one on our porch, one in the flowerbed opposite (invisible until it drizzles) and one on a traffic sign that I pass on my way to my secretarial course. I wonder if they are starting to recognise us. 3. I start the washing up. The tinny TV cheering in the sitting room stops abruptly, and Nick comes in to help.

1. I'm waiting to catch the hospital bus home when a patient transport arrives. The driver asks what I'm up to. I tell him. "You've just missed it. Are you staff?" I tell him I'm a volunteer, and he offers me a lift along with his patient. 2. Caroline has managed to rustle us up some tickets to a lecture with Ray Mears -- so we enjoy an evening hearing the great bushman talk about forgotten paddling birch bark canoes across Canada. "There's a completely different smell with birch bark. And the cedar they use. It smells like a cigarbox." Later, with a rather distant expression, he talks about the paddlers "walking differently" -- it feels as if he is still trying to process the experience. 3. I wake in the night and hear geese calling as they fly over.

1. The sky is Tupperware white, but look carefully: there is a layer of mackerel sky below the flat white ceiling. 2. The road is misty Sunday-morning quiet. A cyclist passes me. He's singing in a reedy voice about angels. 3. I'm a bit rubbish with money -- I feel terrible when I spend, and yet always seem to end up with less money than I should have at the end of the month. When Nick says: "I always give myself a set amount to spend. Once it's gone, that's it", I grumble about it not working for me. However, since one of things I really admire about Nick is his head for finance, I take his advice and go to the stitching show with the money that I could afford to spend in my pocket. Strangely, it exactly covered what I wanted to buy.

My story, Vegetative Parenthood, is now up on Flashshot. It'll be on the last ten stories page for the next ten days. 1. I have slightly stiff muscles from the previous day's yoga. 2. A gentle pling, pling, pling outside the window. I think it must be some unseen windchimes moving as the rain disturbs the still cool air. It's not. The rain is falling on to my metal watering can. 3. This potato has been in the oven a very long time. It's properly cooked through: the flesh is fluffy and white, and the skin is crisp, caramelised and specked with black.

1. The sound the basin filling with hot water. 2. I've run out of angostura bitters. I console my soda water with slice of lemon. It's cheerily yellow and citric. 3. After I have got into bed and pulled the covers up around me, Nick goes round and puts the heating on for the first time, a small ritual to mark Autumn. He is not impressed by the dust on the switches. Picture of lemon in glass from Stock.xchng.