Three Beautiful Things

1. I haven't got my head round the clocks going forward. I sleep badly, wake up shouting at skeletons on top of the wardrobe and then I doze through the news on the radio alarm. Nick suggests I should have a lie in and this strikes me as an excellent idea. Twenty minutes later, I'm ready to go. All things come to he who waits. 2. The dentist praises my hygiene. I tell him I'm lucky with my teeth. He tells me about the golfer Gary Player -- "Someone told him he had a lot of luck, and he replied: 'You know, it's funny, the more I practise, the luckier I get.'" 3. I go along to the Tuttle, and the men are all full of a game called Foursquare -- every time you go somewhere, you use your iPhone to sign in. They have been competing to get to places first ("I bagged hobbycraft," says someone proudly), and to go to places the more times than anyone else (that makes you the mayor -- "I'm now mayor of the Pantiles -- Rob's really anno...

1. Susan speaks with such passion about Wilkie Collins that I go home with her to borrow The Woman in White . 2. We've settled in for a long rain. The birds are still singing, and the sky is flat white. 3. It's my father's birthday -- a good excuse for a phone call and a quick chat.

I had some very sad news yesterday -- the gardens and interiors writer Elspeth Thompson has taken her life in a bout of severe depression. She wrote a blog about converting two railway carriages into a home, and her words and pictures gave a lot of pleasure. I own several of her books, and I take them down often for inspiration, or just to enjoy them. Elspeth was incredibly kind and supportive to 3BT -- she mentioned it in her The Wonderful Weekend Book, and I still get messages from people saying they found 3BT there. We never met, although we emailed, and talked blogging on the phone once. I felt incredibly special to think that such an accomplished writer would take notice of me. Our emails from the early part of last summer are full of half-hatched plans to meet, and I so wish we had. This isn't the sort of thing you come here to read, but I know that a few links to 3BT come in from dark places, so I'm going to say it. If you are suffering from depression, please, pl...

1. A lot of train journey means a lot of reading time. I picked up Michelle Lovric's The Undrowned Child on my way out of the house, and I'm glad I did. It's set in Venice, and it's the story of a bookish girl who must fulfil a prophecy to save the city from a watery fate -- with some salty-tongued, curry-loving mermaids to help her. 2. We go up to Alexandra Palace for a model train show. Among the grittily realistic industrial layouts and nostalgic rural idylls, was found Smallbrook Studio's lofty locos in Yellow Submarine colours. They look as if they've chuffed out of a Heath Robinson illustration, but a chat to the maker revealed that they were inspired by another illustrator, Rowland Emett . 3. We dig in with Stardust -- a romantic fantasy film based on a novel by Neil Gaiman in which the heart of a falling star is pursued by... well pretty much everyone. I particularly love Mark Williams' performance as a goat turned into an innkeeper.

1. To improve a day when everything has gone wrong, I sit down for elevensies with a mug of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie. 2. When I drop off my CD of words and images, the art editor is pleased: "These pictures are beautiful," she says. 3. The doorbell rings. My husband can't get at his keys because his hands are full of purple daisies.

1. The grubby yellowish light of a thunderstorm. 2. My Tunbridge Wells Twitter pane lights up as a thunder storm goes over. Exclamations and back-up reminders make me feel as if I'm working in a friendly office again. 3. The last piece of work has been a slog -- I feel as if I've actually climbed the South Downs that I've been writing about. I'm so glad to be standing on the top of the hill looking back at my progress.

1.  Finally -- when time is running out -- the interview is booked. 2. We watch Bettany Hughes' Ancient World . It's an episode about Alexandria -- famous in the ancient world for its great library. She stands in the city's modern library and explains that today, as well as the books, there's a massive computer. "Every two or three days, it backs up the entire world wide web." And do you know what means? It means 3BT is (in an indirect way) in the Great Library of Alexandria. 3. I've just heard that Katie-who-I-used-to-live-with's grandmother has died. Katie has recorded the funeral tribute on her blog, and it's a fascinating read. Eileen was a journalist, and whenever our paths crossed, we would talk about that. And after I came back from the epic 2006 Africa trip, we'd talk about that, too. She'd spent many years living in some of the places we'd visited for a few days. When I told her about hearing the kindergarten in the incred...