Beads, kindness and redress.

1. Blackbird's alarm call. Newton's cradle.

2. Nick finds me gasping and retching in the kitchen, breakfast half set out. He rubs my back and says: "My brave girl." Later, he takes the fish pan that I can't bear to look at out and scrapes it into the compost bin outside.

3. Dog let off the lead chases after a magpie. The bird launches into the air, making the same ratchetting alarm call that disturbed me this morning. Ha ha.

Absorbed, get out and home cooking.

James Alexander-Sinclair from Blackpitts Garden (and Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits) has written a 3BT post (with pictures).

And the 3BT podcast is up.

1. To get absorbed in my work so that time slips away. It's very satisfying to string together words and know that I am being paid for it.

2. Getting out of the flat for half an hour after lunch. The cold air and the vast blue sky are the wake-up I need.

3. I grab a ready meal because I don't want to think about supper tonight. Oven crisped rice, dull curry, no vegetables. I fall in love with my own cooking again.

Bamboozled, proof-reading and the end of the day.

1. Disaster -- the normally reliable milkman hasn't been. Then as I am waving Nick off, I find the bottle on the other side of the doorstep. I can't believe I missed it.

2. To hurry through town on crisp clear day to an office where I can make a large pile of proofreading disappear.

3. To finish work, sit down on the sofa next to my husband and eat a chocolate.

Last day, front pages and planting on.

1. I'm so tired and bored of my walk to work and today is the last day I have to do it.

2. At lunch, we pass round the front pages that we have -- in secret -- been making for all the leavers. I think the one made for me is the funniest: the lead is about Clar Grunt, 12, walking to Essex to smash up the Sub-O-Matic 5000 with 'a small hammer'.

3. My tomato seedlings resemble children on their first day at school. They look very little -- but so grown up -- transplanted into their trough.

It's raining, good post and reading in the bath.

Hallo to all the Hungarians visiting. Thanks for your interest.

1. If it's raining, I take the bus into work instead of walking. Sometimes, it looks like it's going to rain and then doesn't -- and I feel bad for spending money I could have saved, and guilty for not taking the exercise. Today there were definite rain drops, and I felt I'd made the right choice.

2. In my pile of mail is a card from the postman saying I have a parcel waiting; and a snail badge from Sheer Sumptuosity.

3. I lie back in a violet-scented bubble bath and start reading Twisted Wing -- it's a gory university murder mystery set in a fictional Cambridge College. I'm not normally a serial killer story fan; but I do like a good university novel. It's a real gore-spattered page-turner, full of solid characters that you love and hate by turns. One of the view-point characters is a forensic psychologist, and it's fascinating (and educational) to see the world through his eyes, too.

Two shawls, red dots and regrouping.

1. Outside a basement flat, two shawls are airing -- pure turquoise and pure orange.


2. The beautician says: 'Oh you've got some lovely erythema forming.' I don't know what erythema are -- turns out, they're the red dots that appear after a leg wax. She explains that they are where blood rushes to heal the hair follicles; and they are a sign of healthy skin.


3. The subs go out to dinner to regroup and talk over our situation -- it's good to see people relaxing after so many weeks of worry.

Irises, aeronauts and a walk.

1. This garden is flying irises -- the blue of deep sea and the yellow of suns drawn in wax crayon.

2. The swifts are louder than the engine of the bus.

3. In the middle of the day, to walk under warm air ticking with crickets in a tangled field starred with buttercups.

Red and white, the morning after and an alternative.

Vote for this blog over at Dorset Cereals. Who will be the first?

1. Stacking slices of cheese and tomato (pips scraped out) in a sandwich.

2. I am glad I walked to work on a sunny morning after a night of rain.

3. The BBC i-player is runs on my work computer once again, so I can spend my lunch break listening to a play instead of mooching round DIY shops.

Applause, boy's own and gale.

1. I am still watching the lettuce raising its pairs of seed leaves to the sky. I have almost convinced myself to hear them clapping to cheer each other on.

2. He's carrying his skateboard under one arm. The other arm is wrapped around his girlfriend's waist.

3. The coolant circulating in the new fridge sounds like a gale blowing beyond thick stone walls.

Not snow, observed and that's not my fiance -- his chin is too smooth.

It'll be Three Beautiful Things' fifth birthday on Monday May 18. I'm thinking about an evening drinks celebration somewhere in TWells, to which everyone is welcome. It would be good to have an idea of numbers, though -- any takers?

I'd like to re-post a few favourite things -- suggestions always welcome.

Drop me a line: i am five at three beautiful things dot co dot uk (take out the spaces and replace ats and dots with symbols to make the address work).

1. Cherry blossom in the grass. A fall of pink snow.

2. Her ginger-gold hair is short and still baby-feathery. From the top of the wall she watches me coming up the street, shaking out my umbrella. We both smile. She has such tiny teeth.

3. Nick comes out of the bathroom with no beard. His chin is so soft that I keep wanting to touch it; and his unfamiliar face surprises me.

What's going on, evening match and in our box.

1. The questioning sound of a car reversing quickly.

2. In the park, a dozen small fry play football with four or five dads. The goalie has to keep stopping to redirect his crawling baby off the pitch.

3. These are new season carrots, so slender and sweet and crunchy.

Pottering, a stranger and small voice.

1. I like picking a few deadheads off the flowers growing outside the front door.

2. A woman walking towards me extends her arms as if she plans to embrace me. Then I realise she is carrying weights to tone her arms.

3. The day has not gone to plan and I am tearing my hair out, racing from work to home, from supper to a coaching appointment -- but amid the chaos, the small voice says 'Simplify and ask for help,' and I listen.

Lift, draining away and on the bus.

The book mentioned in Thursday's post is I can do it by Louise L. Hay.

1. A colleague hoots his horn and leaps out of the traffic to pull up on the other side of the road.

2. I want to say 'no, I'm not all right,' but I don't. We talk of other things, and the feeling subsides.

3. Two young mums are giggling at a flirtacious old boy chatting to the geordie lass who is driving our bus. She asks him if he is going anywhere nice. 'No. Just a bowls meeting.'
'A bowels meeting?'
The young mums (and I) almost explode as he goes on to describe all the different places he likes to play bowls.

It's time, coming through and all the good things.

1. The giant hornbeam tree that shades the street says -- and the saplings in the hedge agree -- that it's time to start putting out pleated leaves.

2. The whole two miles home is out of the sun -- except where a street heading west lets the red-gold light through to warm the baptist chapel.

3. A parcel comes, a book which one of you readers thinks I would like. It's about affirmations, and it reminds me (as do all your comments, and the growing list of followers) of all the good things I get from writing three beautiful things each day.

Tidied, what happened next and gifts of the magi.

1. The town under a spring mist looks like a pile of junk in the corner of the room covered by a piece of voile.

2. A couple of winters ago I was temping in an office. A week into my stint the guy at the desk next to mine came back from his holiday looking as if he had discovered some wonderful truth. He kept telling us: 'I'd never have done it before, but now I can only say, if there's something you want, go for it. Do it.' He had fallen in love over the internet with a girl from Cape Town, and he had taken a three-week holiday to meet her for the first time. Yesterday on my way to work, I saw him -- and a girl -- on the other side of the crossing. I couldn't catch her voice over the traffic -- I hope she had a South African accent.

3. They bring some wine, and a chocolate tart, which are both really needed by me.

Mist, important and another way of doing it.

1. A little rain is mixed up in the fog, and people walk behind umbrellas and sour expressions.

2. My mother comes in her car to pick me up from work because we have something important to do.

3. Making mash with a couple of baked potatoes because the flavour is better.

On track, bricks and justification.

1. Hearing the voices of men working on the railway embankment above me.

2. Tipping packets on Lego on to the table and counting out the pieces I need.

3. He wonders why I am still awake. I tell him that the red shoes were expensive for these uncertain times; that I think I should have got the cheap pair. 'But,' he says, 'they will last, I think they look lovely and you'll wear them again and again.'

Treasure trove, walking home and gotcha.

1. DIY shops -- which were once my idea of dull hell -- have become caverns of fascination: sheets of textured copper and red bath plug chain.

2. Nick is home early because of the G20 disruptions, so he walks out to meet me on my way home. Our paths converge in a bus shelter and he kisses me firmly to show anyone who might be looking that we belong to each other.

3. At bed time I realise that I have been got by A Quarter Of's April Fool's Day jape -- an ad for a new sort of chocolate bubbled through with helium.

Exercise, gas tower afternoon and school's out.

1. Walking to work on a cool bright day and arriving warm and loose-muscled.

2. I like seeing the gas tower sunk down in its lattice of girders, with the bright white sky behind.

3. A tight ring of teenagers crouches in the grass like a black mushroom. A malfunctioning lighter makes one of them leap up yelping.

Lady, gentleman and French film.

1. A female blackbird with mud on her beak.

2. A male blackbird sings in a bush, dropping trills into the street. A cat behind glass watches him.

3. I show Nick one of my favourite films, Amélie.