Three Beautiful Things

1. Nick's birthday gift  -- a portable dice tower -- arrives just in time for the big day. Alec and I have a play with it, enjoying the leathery rattle of the falling die. 2. After supper, Nick and I escape to an event at our local independent bookshop. It's been a year, and we still can't quite believe we've got a real bookshop on our high street. 3. Because I've been watching Bridgerton with Bettany, and reading Katie Waldegrave's book The Poet's Daughters  about Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge, and chasing down rabbit holes that take my interest, I've suddenly got reference points that I can use to understand the context of the strange violent Kentish happening described in Mad Tom's Rising .

1. The Romanesco cauliflower with its green fractal spires will be cauliflower cheese this evening -- but for now, it's sitting up on the microwave so we can admire it. 2. There's a bit of a wait, sitting in the sun with my book, half hearing teenage voices and tinny music. 3. He's a sturdy fellow, pottering about while we have a rapid and efficient catch-up, responding amiably to boundaries and calling on us only occasionally to dip our heads and play some part in his waist-high world.

1. It's been a difficult morning already. To reset, I take a walk through Søstrene Grene without buying anything to remind myself of things I like that I already own. 2. This croissant seemed ridiculously pricy, but when I cut it open, I find airy crumb, instead of collapsing pastry flakes, and that explains the cost. 3. There's always herbal tea.

1. The little cyclamen which has been cheerfully putting forth dolly mixture pink flowers all winter has fallen back. There is nothing left but a pile of yellow leaves and a saucer-sized corm. 2. I've seen a rabbit and she wants to see it too. It's sitting by that fallen tree just past the strand of ivy, by those nettles, just up from the broken branches, down from the dead bramble. The moment it wriggles its ears and resolves itself. 3. A bag of lichen-scaled and tassled and fringed and bobbled sticks was collected on our walk for a photography project. I put them outside the back door until they are needed, and recall all the toddler stick collections that I quietly released back into the wild.

1. The town's horizons are layered in morning mist -- something intriguing to open the curtains for. 2. We quietly split a pastry and eat it before the children notice. 3. In sturdy boots we plough right through the muddy places.

1. When he comes home, his haircut is just fine -- pretty much exactly how it was, except it looks cared for and intentional. 2. A little brown bird with a stubby tail hops up the bare jasmine, on to the wall and through the trellis: the divisions significant to us and our neighbours are nothing to wrens. 3. It is nice to find a beer in the fridge after a good day's work. We share it -- those big bottles of ale are just right for two of our collins glasses.