Best bits, diagonal and new threads.

1. Madie has taken to coming out with me at lunchtime. I like showing her my favourite things about each walk.

2. Paths that go straight across the middle of a field.

3. Starting a new area of my embroidery.

Oils, visas and dumplings.

1. It's tangerine season again and in the afternoon when we are snacking on fruit a faint citrus smell wafts through the office.

2. The visas in my old passport. I like the textured paper and the different coloured stamps and the foreign lettering. At the time, it was cross-making to pay so much for them, but I still enjoy them years later.

3. Dumplings puffing up in a pot of stew.

Brew, complete and bundle.

1. The noises my coffee pot makes -- the lid rattles a little, and the top and bottom rasp as I screw them together. I like tiny hiss as the pressure builds up, and the quiet bubbling as the coffee comes up into the top half.

2. Putting aside the first half of a difficult task.

3. Bundling up with a hot water bottle and my quilt on the sofa before I go to bed.

Photographer, dryer and afternoon tea.

1. I have to get a passport picture, which I have been putting off and off. The picture has to last ten years, so I don't want one I hate. Also, there is added pressure because I am quite fond of the present picture: Ali grabbed my ankle as the shutter went and it caught me at the moment I was about to laugh. Picking a photoshop at random I went in and found Caroline, a friend of a friend, working there. So I got my picture taken by someone who cared a little about me having a photo I liked. It's not brilliant, but it's not a picture I'm going to resent until 2015.

2. I know tumble dryers aren't green, but on days like this when it's too cold and damp to get washing dry, they are wonderful.

3. Eating sticky ginger cake and drinking tea while catching up with Fenella and Andy.

Tables turned, something for nothing and romance.

1. Last winter in the old office, I spent the entire time shivering, partly because Ed would find it too hot and switch the heating off. This year, for some reason to do with weird heating physics, Ed is constantly cold (despite his seat next to the heater) and I am just right. Which is very satisfying.

2. Just before I was about to go home, a user rang in with a problem that I didn't understand. I told him I would look into it and call him back. In the morning I looked again at his question and realised there was no problem at all. So I got the benefit of pleasing a user without doing much work.

3. Watched a few episodes of Futurama. I like the episode where Fry -- in a few hours of uncharacteristic romantic eptness -- moves stars to write a love note across the sky.

Woolly, greeters and still.

1. The snuggly warmness of my bed in the morning, with a blanket wrapped around my feet and a shawl from Nepal around my shoulders.

2. Just as night fell, the wind got up, blustered around for quarter of an hour, and then all was still again.

3. The jewellers shops round here all employ large men to stand around outside in heavy coats. Today, two of them were gossipping as I walked past.

Hot air, discard and berries.

1. Standing by a row of houses on a cold morning and watching steam and smoke curling out of chimneys and vents.

2. Fallen hornbeam leaves the colour of polished copper.

3. The leaves are mostly fallen and now there seem to be shiney red berries everywhere for the birds to gobble up.