Keep in touch, captured and in the window.

Wow, it's photographarama today. First, two beautiful things from my mother.

a. Today a white van came rattling down the track and a small movement in the far top corner of the field turned into an avalanche of sheep pouring towards us bleating anxiously. 'I hope you've brought something for them too' I said to the delivery man. 'How odd' he replied and climbed back into the van... after handing  me the parcel from John Lewis. A natural lambskin for carseats and strollers!

b. Every where has been covered in frost all day and this morning a pure white pheasant appeared on the garden steps, but not for long.


And here are my beautiful things:


1. Two of my friends post on Facebook pictures of their babies. Oli is doing a tarot card series of his son (I particularly like the Tower built from Duplo, and the guest appearance by a big sister as the Priestess); while Paul has posed his little boy in tableaux from famous films. The Good, The Bad and Ugly -- baby in poncho and hat with bread stick hanging off his lip -- leaves me crying with laughter.

2. PaulV comes round and takes the last batch of bump photos -- "The light is lovely," he says, pushing me out of the back door.


2a. Anna sends me home from tea in her office with a plate of scones and gooey chocolate cake.


3. Across the car park, in a top window there is a lit-up Christmas tree. Better than an advent calendar. 

Sunday morning, warming up and tracking.

1. Nick takes me out for breakfast -- at 10am the streets are Sunday silent and the air is so cold and still that it feels as if we are watching the world through glass.

2. Hot chocolate with a peak of foam on top and flecks of chocolate melting into it.

3. He calls down from the attic: "Darling wife, I can track our pizza on-line!"

Silence, trim and not isolated.

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.

Contrast, find the baby and no trouble.

1. It's such a bright beautiful day. The woods are wearing rags of autumn colour still, and the contrast with the winter branches makes me want to look and look.

2. The midwife says: "I can feel a back here, and I think this is a bottom up here." She says that I'll get some strange feelings in the next few weeks as Baby Badger grinds its head down into my pelvis.

3. When the time comes to make my next appointment, I ask the mother (who has offered to drive me there) when would be convenient. She shakes her head -- she doesn't mind. The midwife says: "First grandchild is it? Nothing's too much trouble, is it." I'm loving all the attention you get from being pregnant.

End of autumn, woodsmoke and circles.

1. Walking through the park in the rain. Cold air. Cold sky. Warm reds and golds hang on bravely.

2. The smell of woodsmoke on a rainy day.

3. We've been walking in circles all morning, she says in a text. I assume it's a metaphor for a frustrating day. No -- walking round and round holding a couple of Mum's fingers is Ben's new favourite activity.

A secret, crocuses and don't move.

1. The Common, with its bare trees and clear ground, seems barren at the end of winter. But it’s smiling in the sunshine as if it has a secret happiness.

2. Crocuses (baby mauve, egg-yolk yellow and whole milk white) have pushed their way through the khaki dead ground in the park. Today, they are the only pure bright colours in all creation (apart from the sky, I mean).

3. The financial advisor comes round, and I ask him a question that has been bothering me for months. He looks over a few pages, taps on his calculator and says that it's best to leave things as they are.

Storing up sunshine, new bread and windowsills.

1. It's a sunny day, with bright, clean air. We make the most of the light -- the forecast is heavy rain for the rest of the week.

2. I like to wrap a loaf of new bread (still warm) in a tea towel and carry it round to a friend's house.

3. Katie's new kitchen windowsill is wide enough for a tray of seeds -- she's looking after it for her mother-in-law.

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.

The rain in Tunbridge Wells, truffles and red pepper.

The podcast is up.

1. The soft whispering rush of torrential rain is a welcome sound when we open the front door. It is washing away the snow and melting the ice.

2. A box of truffles arrives from Artisan du Chocolate -- I am writing a feature about them. I eat four (they pop so satisfyingly) because they are delicious (complex flavours in the shells, and a silky filling flavoured with a local wine), and I want to work out exactly how to describe the experience.

3. Abel and Cole has sent us a beautiful red pepper. It is shaped like the nose of a Venetian mask, and its glossy skin shades between red and green. I look at the places between the colours and try to understand where the red ends and the green begins.

The apple, off the snow and an evening with friends.

Was talking about bird footprints in the snow the other day, and look, Lucille has put some pictures on her blog, Useful or Beautiful.

1.How gratifying to see the apple I put out for the birds pecked into a mass of peaks and chasms.

2. It's such a relief to come off compacted and frozen snow, where I have been sliding and sinking by turns, and on to a gritted road.

3. Coming into a warm, bright house where there will be an evening of pizza and gaming.

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.

The bird, thaw and boneshaker.

I put three more blogs on the Roll of Honour yesterday: Nicsknots, For the Love of Beads (home of regular commenter Rosebud) and Tru's Flickr photo set.

Both Feather Duster and Joannezipan have been following footprints in the snow. I loved Den's picture of a prideful garden bird.

In one of those odd thematic co-incidences, a small congregation of 3BTers have written about places of worship this week. Whitney (who got a wonderful treat on her birthday) had a Yoda moment while serving communion. Raymond Pert has been feeling at home in his church, and so has Leonora. Lynn uses a lovely phrase to describe packing away the decorations in her church, and enjoys one of her mother-in-law's sayings.

Finally Ruth at Sheer Sumptuosity raced through the snow for an Arabian treat, and shares a picture of the beautiful badges she is making for Valentine's day.

1. I am on the phone to my mother-in-law when I spot a bluetit on the bird feeder. I haven't put food out before because I assumed we had no birds in our corner. But the forked footprints in the snow made me realise that they do come down here. I put out fat and a dish of water, and was rewarded by a scribbled mass of bird prints.

2. The chorus of drips, draps and splats of the snow melting. Two lines of translucent slush now pass our door.

3. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. It's the story of a Chicago that never was -- ruined by a mining machine gone mad, poisoned by a blight gas and walled up the protect the people making a miserable living outside. A boy in search of answers crosses the wall and is trapped. His mother follows, hoping to protect him from the horrors inside -- or is it the truth about his father that she's trying to save him from?

The universe calls 'halt', watching the snow and domestic pleasures.

Edit -- to share a lovely post from Elspeth Thompson.

1. I have a cold, and it's completely floored me -- every time I try to do something, I get tired and achy and frustrated. All I can do is lie in bed and watch the snow.

2. It's hard to tell if the white dust fogging up the yard is new snow or snow picked up from the ground by the wind. Great clots of snow drop from the dark cupressus trees, fall to powder and are whirled away.

3. The crackle of static and the smell of clean laundry as we sort and fold the final load.

The chore, snow's back and winter duvet.

1. Nick goes to the supermarket so I don't have to.


2. While we were watching a documentary on Russian art, the snow returned, silently covering the world an inch deep. We grumble about the inconvenience, but go outside to make footprints in the drive and to marvel at the soft cold. It's a bit like an ex who has hurt you in the past -- but they are so cute and charming that you are always pleased to run into them.

3. We remember that we haven't yet put the winter duvet on the bed. So we do, and it's much cosier now -- before, I just couldn't get warm by myself. I inherited this duvet from my grandmother. Whenever we put it on the bed, I think of her.

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.

Rain in the sun,cold hands and put them away.

The husband of a friend was commissioned to write a song for The British Humanist Association's choir. It's called Gathering Round the Fire, and it's about how at this dark time of year we crave the warmth of human contact. I think it's rather a pleasing sentiment.

(The link is to the MP3 on Amazon -- I get a small commission if you choose to download it that way. It is available on iTunes, too, if that's more your thing.)

1. It's a bright day, so I take a basket of damp washing out to the line. But the air is full of cold needles and I am annoyed at having to take it all inside and hang it up again. Then I see sparks of sun-gilded rain and can't help but forgive the weather.

2. A hot mug of tea makes my cold hands tingle.

3. I never feel comfortable when the best wine glasses are by the sink. I like to wash them, dry and polish them and put them away.

Dumpling, sandwich and decorations.

1. Nick is hovering as I serve up my dinner. Then he swoops to steal a fragment of dumpling.

2. I covet Nick's sandwich -- the piece of bacon, and the red tomato slices layered between flounces of spring green lettuce. The colours are so bright that you would think it was a plastic toy sandwich intended to delight a child.

3. In our quest for Christmas cards, we bring down the box of decorations. I dust it off and discover all the treasures I had carefully wrapped in last January's newspaper and then forgotten about.

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).

Long light, jam turnover and soda.

Three Beautiful Things weekly round-up

• Two posts about first snow: A Journal of Days and Glimpses of Grace; while Louisa meets a lady at the chip shop who must content herself with a snow substitute.
• Aisha eats a pomegranate unadorned for the first time.
• Plutarch opens up a whole new world of perfumes, and is unable to resist buying a second apple.
  
• Mary Loves appears to be raising a junior 3BTer with a good eye for sunsets.
  

If you 3BT regularly, please let me know -- I love reading other people's beautiful things.

1. In the middle of the morning, I go out to the bins, and stand astonished (rubbish in my hand) at the golden winter light and long shadows.

2. He makes a jam turnover with the leftover pastry and marks it with our initials. At teatime, I get ticked off for picking the wrong half.

3. Last thing at night, to pour some soda crystals down the sink to keep the drains sweet. I like to break up the lumps in the powder through the plastic bag.

No coat, the black cat and meat.

Over at Daily Mammal they are discussing My Family and Other Animals.

1. I leave the house without a coat.

2. A black cat shape has been cut out of the car park.

3. He's looking covetously at my pink lamb cutlets, but he's not having any.