Three Beautiful Things

1. Pigeons on the ridgepole, black against the rain smudged sky. You know we're in for a long, wet day because they haven't bothered to find shelter. I'm so glad I'm not a pigeon. 2. Louise comes for supper -- we sit at the kitchen table and talk babies and sewing with small people. 3. Nick comes home late because he has been out to dinner. He is ever so slightly the worse for wear, and even more fond than usual. It reminds me of when a normally rather reserved assistant art editor I used to work with told me that the night before his girlfriend had come home after an evening out, and he was still delighted about it. "She was so pretty and giggly and happy and it made me love her even more."

1. It's Nick's first day back at work after his week off. He hits the snooze button and goes in late. 2. Reading back my shorthand. 3. I went to a lunch party for literary ladies on Monday, and everyone was full of the new Sunday night costume drama, Downton Abbey -- except me, because I hadn't seen it. Now that it's not football night, we can sit down to watch the scheming would-be heiresses and ambitious staff slug it out in a stunning country house. We are completely entranced. I felt bad about inflicting it on Nick; but he gets very caught up, and at the end he says the writer Julian Fellowes Got It Right because he is properly posh. "He knows how people would address a Duke."* * Say the Duke of Westminster is your landlord. If by some chance he came round to collect the rent, you might want to show some deference and address him as "Your grace" -- "Sorry about all the sheets, your Grace. We could really do with a new washing machine...

1. I get an email from a proofreading client. He's finished his course and is going home -- boo, because his material was fascinating and challenging. But he's recommended me to a colleague, which is very satisfying. 2. I pick up a sewing kit I bought last year -- some birdy Christmas decorations from Buttonbag . I thought I'd better get them done in time for BB's first Christmas. They are meant for children, and I notice that in contrast to the sewing kits I had as a child that you are not told to be neat -- quite the opposite in fact, because the instructions call for visible stitches and raw edges. I never finished anything when I was little because I always felt as if my inevitable mistakes spoiled the project. Of course perfection has a place, but if you despise your efforts that fall short, you'll definitely never achieve it. I hope I can teach Baby Badger that -- it really shouldn't have taken me 30 years to learn! 3. I've picked up Stephen Baxter...

1. To see Ellie start to get the hang of sewing. She picks colours from my floss box, and I show her how to sew buttons on to a piece of fabric, and how to thread a needle. Then I stitch a lazy daisy flower and she makes the centre in tiny orange stitches. 2. Daniel finds a lampshade in the attic and puts it on his head. "I'm a light." 3. Today, Cat and Alan have brought us a carload of bits for Baby Badger; then Ian, Caroline and Maggie roll up with a carful, too. We put the rocking moses basket by our bed -- just to see if it will fit -- and then tuck it away until the time comes. We sort the bags of clothes by size, and marvel at the tiny newborn onesies. Our friends say that they are glad to be rid of their baby clutter -- but we are so grateful for this equipment and the advice that comes with it.

1. These plums are disappointing. I bake them into Delia's oat and plum slices , which are not. 2. I have my doubts about the replacement plums, too. They are deep aubergine purple -- some of them -- but streaked and shaded with green as if they might not be quite ripe. I pull one out of my shopping bag on the way home. Very sweet, very juicy and very plummy. 3. This piece is pushing the boundaries of music. It's pushing the boundaries of what a clarinet can do, with haunting polyphonics and hysterical screeches. Baby Badger reacts with some hefty kicks that are visible through my dress. " Your first concert ," whispers Dad proudly.

1. On the train, a mother tries to explain why brown bread is better than white without mentioning anything indelicate. "Wholegrains. It's got wholegrains in it." "But why is that better?" "It's less processed." "What does that mean?" 2. On the cake plate are Victoria sponges, one inch in diameter. 3. We walk through the rooms at the Wallace Collection, mostly ignoring the pictures because the decor is so astonishing. One room is the green of the deep sea or haematite, another is wedgewood blue, a third the colour of marrons glacé.

In Catcher in the Rye , the hero talks evocatively about visiting his city's museum on a rainy afternoon. When I was younger, if we were out shopping, my mother would sometimes leave us to amuse ourselves in the town museum -- it was (and still is) free, and warm and out of the rain. She would come back 20 minutes later and we would still be crouched by the first case, entranced by the animals marching two-by-two into Noah's Ark. We also discovered that if you trod on a certain place on the floor, a single piece of meat in the toy butcher's shop would swing. The next room was set aside for natural history. We would stand and stare at the case of drooping privet leaves, hoping to see a stick insect move -- or at least some stick insect poo falling to the floor. The village where I grew up had a museum, too -- and for us children, the most talked-about item was a mummified rat that someone had found while restoring their house. In my memory, it is the size of a small cat, ...