1. I wake up super early with a knot in my stomach. Nick is half-awake beside me, and I tell him that I'm feeling anxious. Alec rolls over in his cot and pulls the cord on his music box. "See," says Nick. "Alec doesn't want you to worry either. He wants us to listen to Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
2. There is one step in the recipe that I'm a bit wary of: the poaching. I can't help but imagine my bagels falling apart in the seething water. But they bob around and puff up -- they take on the texture of wobbly thighs, however. They smooth out as they bake, and turn reddish brown and glossy.
3. "Oh, really," I tell the lady on the rapeseed oil stall, "I grew up in Staplehurst."
"Small world," she says.
I tell her which farm.
"That's the one," she says. "The big field behind the white cottages."
Really small world. And I buy a bottle of her oil.
