1. The taxi driver zigs up back ways and zags down side streets and jinks into traffic queues to get us across town in time for our appointment.
2. Warm paper cups and crinkly paper bags.
3. Standing in my slippers at the top of the car pack, I get eyes on Mercury hanging under Venus to the west.
1. This morning, all four of us lie in bed, crammed straight like sardines laid out in a tin.
2. I can't see it today, but thanks to my star map, I know that a specific piece of space junk, Cosmos 928 r, which is a Russian rocket body launched a couple of weeks after I was born, is going by, and that it will be back again tomorrow night.
3. Bettany turns up a gentle joke about my parenting that makes me cringe and then laugh until I'm breathless out of sheer embarrassment and recognition.
1. I'm dipping in and out of foggy pockets. One moment, the world is grey and secretive between layers of mist; the next it's sunshine and blue sky.
2. Two icy sheets of cobweb hang aglow in the darkest part of the woods.
3. A dried umbel fuzzed with frost.
1. We take time to walk round and check out the crocuses at the bottom of the park, and they are spectacular, transforming the drab winter ground with their clean pale colours.
2. On the fourth try -- now I'm sitting quietly, properly fed and secluded away from interruptions -- I complete the Sunday puzzle.
3. The first-batch Welsh cakes are a cindery mess, and I can only be grateful they didn't set off the smoke alarm. The second batch is much better.
1. Our neighbour sees the mud spatters drying on my over trousers and says, 'You've been on the common, haven't you.'
2. Snipping parsley into my soup.
3. We find that we are enjoying our stories so much that we need a third round of drinks.
1. Through the rain over the road outside the florist, a posy of bright blue and pink flowers.
2. With our supper, pale pink wine in crystal glasses. Sound of the rain outside.
3. Since sunset, we've been glancing outside between tasks and messaging back and forth up and down the house because we hope to see the parade of planets. Mercury and Saturn, in our sky for just a short while after sunset, are hidden behind a bank of cloud; and Neptune is too distant and mysterious for anyone to see with their own eyes; but Jupiter, Mars and Venus are there for us.
1. I slide birthday presents for Nick into the children's desk drawers.
2. The tulips I gave her last week are still giving joy. At home, the last lot of supermarket daffodils are still bright and yellow and cheerfully brave.
3. Tim and I have a nice little Monopoly ecosystem: he has eaten the other players and owns everything except for six well developed properties of mine. He lands on them just often enough that I can survive another turn around the board. I feel constantly off balance, though, and I'm only really coping because of some lucky rolls, a few turns in jail so I don't have to land on his properties, and some helpful chance cards. We end with a draw, because it's getting very late.