Three Beautiful Things

1. Katie opens a compact of Clarin's blusher (it's Barbera Cartland pink) and says "This looks a bit scary, but it'll make you seem as if you've been for a walk in the country." 2. The last time I went blackberrying, there were a few gleaming, plump berries among burgeoning green leaves. Now every bramble bows under the weight of six, seven, eight berries. The leaves are ragged and rusted. Tired out. 3. I like to see Nick lift a piece of pastry into the pie dish.

1. At an exhibition about the Bloomsbury Group's Omega Workshop , the Courtauld Gallery displays some prints by Winifred Gill. I'm charmed and smitten. I feel like Alice when she swallows the contents of the drink-me bottle: the small images remind me all at once of several things I like: Samuel Palmer's black and white landscapes , scherenschnitte and book illustrations. One of them makes me feel as if I am peeping into someone's office through a crack in the door. This linocut on paper called Olives . It's in the exhibition, on loan from Dr Margaret Bennett. 2. We take tea at the Courtauld Gallery and have both scones and cake -- which amuses the manager very much, because both are enormous. My cake makes me hiccup lavender for the rest of the day. The scones are large and freshly crusty, full of caramelised raisins; and they send out a whole jar of strawberry jam. 3. Just once in a while, to have supper on a tray in front of the television.

1. Oh milkman, we wake up to find that in the small hours, you placed on our doorstep a pot of yoghurt and some milk for breakfast. 2. As we are climbing over a stile, a squall blows up the valley. The sky darkens, the wind gets up, and the cold rain blows in our faces. We are so surprised that we stand there like idiots for a moment, before taking cover in the lea of an oak. 3. Flattening a felafel and jamming it into a hot pitta.

I'm loving Anke's series on Tunbridge Wells at War. This entry in particular is wonderful. It's about the astonishing funds raised for the war effort. 1. "You're not letting it get to you, are you," the job centre officer asks. "Remember it's not personal." 2. I like a squashy ripe tomato chopped up and dropped into my soup towards the end of cooking. 3. The broken bell clonk of an empty milk bottle being put on the doorstep.

1. I stand sadly in the middle of the precinct because I can't think of any chocolate or cake in town that I want. Later in the greengrocers, I put five plump and sticky fresh dates in a paper bag. 2. Grating the zest from a lime -- the scent of it. 3. A book of short adventure stories by the man who dreamed up Conan, Robert E. Howard. Haunter of the Ring and Other Tales is a collection of those ponderous dark stories that publishers won't take any more. They begin slowly -- sit down, get comfortable, ready to listen while I tell you -- rather than bouncing you into the story by starting in the middle of the action.

1. Trading in two old games for a new (new to me, that is) Zelda game. 2. Turns out that there's no work for me tomorrow after all. But that's all right: there are plenty of things I'd rather be doing anyway. 3. I've seen a couple of Ray Mears' programmes where he asks people to show him how they would light a fire using natural resources, but they've have only heard about it and don't know how it's done. Then he asks politely if they'd mind him showing how he'd do it, and they're a bit doubtful (it's a bit humiliating, after all, for a hunter-gatherer from the Amazon to admit he doesn't know how to make fire using friction any more). And Ray demonstrates, and as the pile of dust grows, and the spark comes and they laugh at Ray coughing in the smoke. They all have a go at blowing on the tinder and suddenly they get these big toothy, happy grins on their faces. Ray tells them that a lady from the South Pacific says: "With frictio...

1. Writing my goals for the week in a notebook, and looking forward to my writing work. 2. I love the golds and creams and bright yellows of corn chowder. And I like the salty-sweet taste, too. 3. We listen to the first part of Hothouse , a far-future coming-of-age tale about life on an Earth that has been taken over by carnivorous plants. I'm very fond of travelogue-style science fiction stories that give you a whole new world to explore.