Three Beautiful Things

1. It's half term and the clocks have just changed, so we're allowed to sleep a little later. 2. No one can remember making this beef rendang that I've found in the freezer -- but it is delicious, well flavoured with fat and all kinds of vegetables, as if someone was emptying the fridge to make it. 3. I start a brand new pad for my schedule list. I use Rhodia pads, and the covers are scored so that they fold back on themselves in a way that is so satisfying.

1. After two days of being blown and drenched and shaken by a pair of storms, a morning with clear blue sky. 2. I have no answer to his question about why the banana slices in our rice pudding have turned purple. 3. I remember to light all the candles as our program begins, and the room as a whole is very warm and cosy because blankets have drifted in like falling leaves.

1. A coal tit quickly checks something in the acer tree, glares at me and is away. 2. One of those train guards who goes off-script, playing with the familiar announcements for his own  satisfaction and amusement (and mine, too). 3. In the station, two mums are waiting with a few small children, who are (as Alec's nursery diary would have put it) enjoying their voices in the echoing space. 

1. Sparrows tumble in and out of the sky on unknowable little brown bird business. 2. I hack out a crisp quarter slice out of a red cabbage head and peer within to admire the white on purple curlicues. 3. At the end of the day, there is a heavy autumn duvet and the comfort of Naomi Alderman's memoir  crossed with scientific thriller The Strangers. 

1. The forecast, and the falling pressure, promise wet weather, but for now the light is fresh and busy, and the sky is such a kindly blue. 2. It's a work handover, but it's also a chat and a catch-up. 3. Our post sometimes goes astray to a street with a similar name. I had plans to walk over and pick up a missing parcel once I got to a good stopping place with my work, when the doorbell rang. From Nick's cheery tones, I guess that it's our house number twin bringing my parcel round.

1. There's that moment when a story twists in your hands and becomes its own self. 2. I've been pruning back the acer tree in the front garden, and there's the sharp fresh smell of the green branches as I bring them round to the compost heap. 3. When the rain begins falling steadily, first one child and then the other leaves the house for some time  alone in the wet woods.