1. 'Your passport is here!' Nick calls up the stairs. Looks like I'll be going skiing next Easter, even if the children aren't. Their first passports are taking much longer than my renewal.
2. After supper, Nick leaves the washing up and we walk out, just for the exercise.
3. To feel desolate at the end of a book.
1. Picking and eating an early blackberry -- sweet and warm from the sun.
2. To sit in the garden watching the day fade out of the sky.
3. Towards the end of the evening, Alec calls to tell us about his day.
1. The list of names that Bettany mentions at the end of each day's workshop has been getting longer as the week passes.
2. At the end of the day, I'm a bit boggled by how much work I've done -- both in terms of hours and in terms of quantity. I've mostly had my headphones on, full of white noise, against the scaffolding racket and the household distractions. The day has flown by.
3. The physio has loaded me up with an exercise routine that is really pushing me -- and it actually feels okay to do that work.
1. Linda next door has a marvel growing in her garden. It's like a small green pineapple on an electric green stem speckled with brown. She says she planted it years ago and it never came up. 'It's not meant to be outdoors,' she says. We imagine that the hot weather might have brought it out of hiding. I'm admiring her vigorous pink lavatera and she says conspiratorially, 'Wilco. Their seeds are only 50p.'
2. Alec asks to walk home through the shopping centre. We're on the same floor as Wilco, and remembering Linda's advice I go and look at the seeds... and nearly have a heart attack when the woman herself bobs up in front of us.
3. I am supposed to be feeding Bettany her lines, but the script is downstairs, and I don't know the parts of two other characters not played by my daughter. But it's okay, because she can prompt me by bellowing those lines at me in between her own.
