Left behind, invoices and reading.

1. I spot a left-behind fork propped against the croquet club railings. 

2. To do my invoices at the end of a very long month.

3. I get Alec to read to us from The Black Cauldron so I can use the time to stitch a nametape into his new swimming trunks. 

Slow, caterpillars and sticky.

1. Our birthday Bettany takes her time opening her presents. Though she starts just after 5am, she doesn't get through them all and has some left after school.

2. It's probably a mistake to name caterpillars, but we do it anyway. We're a bit worried about George, as he is smaller than the rest and seems determined to climb up to the ceiling, rather than lounging around eating like the others.

3. Today the Beavers are making bird feeders by coating cardboard tubes with honey and birdseed. It is interesting to see how different the children are: some dig right in and enjoy getting sticky; others carefully handle everything with their fingertips. 

Melon, table time and orchids.

1. The kitchen smells of the melon in the fruit bowl -- we'll have to eat it today.

2. To spend some time building Lego and painting a desk tidy with Bettany.

3. To come to a glade where orchid spires are growing. We bend down to catch their faint once-a-year perfume. 

Bramble flowers, very slowly and butterflies on their way.

1. The rose-like flowers of brambles. 

2. We make our way to Alec's friend's house very slowly because the boys want to play catch, scramble around on the rocks and go a longer way round. 

3. There are thick tangles of black caterpillars on the stinging nettles by the path.

Scent, cricket and gardening in the dark.

1. A scented birthday present arrives for Bettany and perfumes our bedroom.

2. Alec comes home so bursting with joy about the cricket he has played at Cubs that he seems to be in two places at once. 

3. I spend the evening planting up tomatoes and cucumbers until it is too dark to see -- by which time it is bedtime. I have put them by the front door so we can be sure of supervising them properly.

Light work, mould and time.

1. To have a light work day. 

2. In Bettany's woodlouse jar a piece of strawberry has grown an extraordinary crop of white flossy mould. It makes me wonder why people don't deliberately grow mould gardens. 

3. Alec prefers to wash himself these days -- I love the bit of time I have while he does this. 

Uke, ghost stories and lyrics.

1. Bettany reminds us five minutes before departure that she wants to take her ukulele to school. We remind her that it is not tuned, so she can't. There are tears. When I get back from the school run, I find that Nick has spent an hour teaching himself to tune it so it will be ready for next week.

2. I discover that I never did finish listening to an audiobook of dramatised ghost stories by M R James's. So I've got a bit of a treat in store. 

3. For our writing class, Anne has looked into songwriting, and tells us what she has discovered. Our faces light up as we understand -- properly -- that verse, chorus, middle eight and coda are just lines of poetry. And that we can all write poetry, so we can probably write passable lyrics.