1. A windowsill full of glossy houseplants.
2. I've had to wait for my lunch while we unload a grocery delivery. The shepherd's pie tastes even better reheated.
3. Just before sleeping, I go wandering on the edges of fairyland with the second Emily Wilde book.
1. The scent of bluebells rolls down the hill to meet us.
2. From where we're eating our lunch in the holly scrub on top of the crags, we can see passers-by -- including a loud thumper on the railway -- but they can't see us.
3. To realise that now would be an okay time to introduce our eldest to a Werner Herzog documentary. We lie on the sofa watching Into the Inferno on Netflix.
1. A chaotic chocolate-brown spaniel with ears undulating soaks its belly running through a puddle among the rocks then races across the rough grass to the cricket pitch before making a circle back to the rocks..
2. Getting a mocha on my way home was the right thing to do.
3. The boys are hanging out of the window to photograph a distant verdegris roof dome, and a gull nesting on a chimney stack.
1. Nick calls upstairs. He has come home much earlier than expected, and he brings me a book -- Richard Ayoade's The Unfinished Harauld Hughes.
2. The surgeon reckons they can schedule it within the month, which is a lot sooner than we expected.
3. From half past eight to nine o'clock on most evenings we lie almost nose to nose just taking some time. She says of her day, 'It was boring when I was living through it; I don't know why you want to hear about it now.'
1. During my walk, I find an intriguing buff-coloured spongy mass on a pile of wood chippings. I guess it's a fungus -- maybe a slime mould -- and I can see older dried out ones, splatted like cow pats. I make a note and look forward to finding out what it is when I have time to tumble down a rabbit hole.
2. In an unkempt garden, a lawn thick with violets.
3. We're down to two players passing £500s back and forth over the board. With my property portfolio there's a chance I could hold my own until the good luck (or bad luck) I need to win turns up -- but it's very late, and I'm all right to concede into a comfortable second.
1. The wisteria on the back wall has done particularly well this year -- the mauve flowers hang heavy and so does the sweetcorn scent in the brick cell of our back yard. When I brag about it, I am repaid with pictures of apple trees and rhododendrons and all other things in bloom.
2. This might be the last time she wants me to push her on the swing.
3. To pull down a branch bearing apple blossom to catch the shy pink and white scent.
1. I stir the tea in the canister to get the right mix of black tea leaves and flower petals and orange peel and lift a spoonful into the infuser.
2. There is a general marvelling at the batter pudding Nick pulls out of the oven. He is grumbling quietly that the new oven runs at a cooler temperature than the old one because he has become a person with some expertise at cooking.
3. I start to pack. It feels rather like dressing a doll; imagining myself away and thinking what I might like to do and what I might wear to do it.