These are for Julie who commented the day before yesterday -- the throat chakra, which governs the thyroid, is blue, so I looked out some blue beautiful things as I thought they might help with the healing.

The very first post concerned blue, and I found the blue sweetpeas yesterday and the day before. And surprising delphiniums at Chartwell, and a blue azalea closer to home, and squills, bluebells and my mysterious blue plant food. There's people's eyes -- Alec's are still blue, but Poppy's are changing. There are skies and skies and skies and skies. There's snorkelling in Turkey, and blue glass charms.

I was very fond of the blue tits that hung off my bird feeder at the old flat. I love the blue of smoke and of bonfires and of brandy flames and of car exhaust. There are the blue gentians that stand out so clearly in my memories of Nepal, and the meconopsis that I've never written about, but was so bright it looked man-made in the browns and duns of a newly thawed Himalayan meadow. There are berberis berries and Doctor Manhattan and tonic water in sunlight and finally, vervet monkeys.

1. I accidentally duck Alec while we're swimming. He comes up coughing and to my surprise, laughing. I apologise, of course, but I don't want to make a huge thing of it. It took me a long time to learn to go under water as a child, so I hope my baby will always be this relaxed about it.

2. Tim says, as he offers Alec spoonfuls of potato, "I don't know why parents don't just spend the whole time looking in wonder at their babies." I resolve to spend more time doing just that.

3. I've been struggling all evening with what should have been a simple piece of writing. It needs a cut -- but I just don't have the courage to pare away any of the ideas I have fought so hard to express. I get in the shower, and suddenly know exactly what I have to do, and I have the resolve to do it (but in the morning, because it's late now).