Gold dust, taking over and clap hands.

1. To marvel with Alec at the gold dust in my bath from the Golden Egg (he thought it was a golden potato) that was among my Mother's Day surprises. He climbs in with me and I'm glad to have him because it gives Nick a bit of space to prepare lunch.

2. To remember that I have a husband who can cook a roast dinner -- even with a noisy baby issuing orders from the corner of the kitchen.

3. I bring Bettany upstairs for some bub and when she sees me getting into bed with the Kindle and my water bottle, she claps her hands.

Compost, cool and mover.

1. My compost sack is once again, to my surprise, full of compost. It never gets old, the transformation of decay.

2. On a warmish day, to do some work on the shaded side of the house involving water and rags. It is mild enough to sit Bettany on a rug nearby so I have some company, too.

3. "Where's Bettany?" We're looking under the table and wondering if she's fallen out of the back door -- but then we hear her in the front room. We still forget, from time to time, that she no longer stays where you put her.

The pilgrimage, one of us and hurrying away.

1. In the dark hours I am administering a dose to my feverish boy. I glance at the clock, 3.30am, and instead of worrying about my child, I think of Lucy, who will be starting her long pilgrimage to Joe's funeral.

2. I have been pacing around the cemetery while I wait. When I return to the crematorium there is a man sitting on a sunny bench -- a sunny bench just right for watching and observing and recording life and nature. He is scrawling in a generous loose hand on an A4 pad so I know, I just know, that he's one of us. "Are you here for Joe Hyam's funeral?" he says. It's Tristan of The New Emotional Blackmailer's Handbook.
"I've come in my eight ton truck," he says. Later Lucy and I see it pulling out of the gate, hurrying away from all the small talk. We wave like mad -- we can see his mirrors, perhaps he can see us.

3. Joe's coffin looks too small to contain all those words and all that wisdom and all that good cheer. I give it a wave as I leave the chapel, just as I would have seeing him and Heidi across the park. I think he's hurried away, though, gone somewhere more congenial.

4. It is marvellous and rather comforting to see variations of Joe's features in his family's faces and in their manners and in their voices.

By the hand, the call and doing it now.

1. Anthony unselfconsciously leads Alec by the hand.

2. It is rather a relief to get the call: Alec has had a bad nap, is upset and has a temperature and he needs picking up from nursery. He tells me that during naptime he dreamed I was mending the roof and dropped my hammer. Apart from that, he seems quite cheerful, thanks to a dose of paracetamol. It's only an hour and a half until Bettany's pick-up so I put him in the pushchair and we go out for tea.

3. To get a task done that I was planning to cram in tomorrow morning.

You deal with it, gums and blue fur.

1. To be able to hand over this morning's bedding crisis to our lovely cleaner.

2. I hand Bettany another piece of pasta and marvel at what she can eat with those gums of hers.

3. I come to the till feeling guilty about buying good quality, well designed, expensive clothes for a mere child, and my own child at that, how indulgent. The shop assistant scans the Cookie Monster blue furry jacket (that Alec needs badly because his old sweaters now expose his forearms) and tells me that it has been further reduced. When I show Alec later that evening he says it is so soft that everyone will want to cuddle him.

Up, transaction and listening off to sleep.

1. To discover that I can still lift Alec, wellies and all, on to my shoulder when he is too tired and cross to walk.

2. I apologise to Alec for being cross and rather harsh; and he very elegantly apologises for the thing that made me lose my temper in the first place.

3. Alec and I drift off to sleep to a Beatrix Potter audiobook. I wake up in the middle of Johnny Town-Mouse and enjoy Timmy Willie's pleasure at going back to his garden.

Walk in the woods, jumping spaniel and pick-up.

My sister-in-law Sarah has put some of her jewellery on Etsy: do have a look and see what you think. I particularly like the fruity beads: they remind me of a necklace I had as a child.

1. To stamp through the woods on a warmish spring morning with Alec. Under bare branches and sunlight like watered down fruit juice we discuss plans for the summer: I would like to take him camping (he is surprised to learn that we own a tent); and he would like to go fishing.

2. A spaniel the colour of very cheap milk chocolate jumps over the ditch, ears and legs spread wide.

3. At nursery they hand me a smiling Bettany. It's a bit different from picking up baby Alec: who generally greeted me with a wall of rage.