1. To spot some friends from school a little way ahead of us and to stop for a quick socially-distanced chat.
2. Bettany's Beaver colony suggests we might like to watch the nativity put on by Tunbridge Wells Salvation Army whose hall we meet in when things are as they should be. They livecast it on YouTube, and it's absolutely lovely.
3. I put on an episode of I'm Sorry I haven't A Clue and it makes Nick laugh.
1. A husband who is willing to rub my aching back muscles.
2. A friend comes by with a bottle of home-made creme de cassis that glows warm garrnet red with the light behind it. We take a couple of turns around the park to catch up and it does us both good.
3. To stop work quite a while before bedtime.
1. When I come down both children are sitting calmly and politely on the sofa waiting for a cuddle.
2. To walk home through the woods -- even on a wettish, grey day with a flat sky it's soothing to be among trees. The real world seems miles away, although I can hear (in a muffled way) the traffic at the bottom of the hill.
3. The smoke alarm goes off right before supper. The silence when it stops.
1. I enjoy finding Dave Bonta's Morning Porch in my inbox. I can't always visualise the wildlife he records, but I always get the feeling of it, one way or another.
2. Alec working on an origami paper star. I tell him that I always find those models really tricky -- no matter how many times I do them I can't seem to master the technique. 'It's like this, Mummy, look.'
3. As I walk up the High Street I find myself overtaking three runners in high vis because they keep stopping to look in the Christmas windows.
1. A grim and determined-looking member of the school kitchen staff marches out to tell the delivery driver he'll have to wait until drop-off is finished before coming through the gate.
2. There is something satisfying about Nick bringing the children home rather late and covered in mud because they went the long way round home from school. He says they were looking for the epic puddle that we found last time it rained.
3. The children are watching a Christmas film as part of a Cubs camp at home this evening. It's so... quiet.
1. I am standing under a shelter scrabbling through my pockets to sort out mask, headphones, gloves, hat, waterproof etc. A lady comes out of a doorway and asks if I'm searching for my mask. 'Because,' she says, 'I'd give you one if you needed one.'
2. Walking home I realise that the chiropractor has done something about the stiffness down the back of my legs.
3. I work pretty much full time and I'm the main breadwinner. So it's a real privilege that I can be present to help out when the children and Nick come home from school soaking wet after a rainy walk home.
1. I have a call with a client that wanders a bit off topic -- but it feels so good to hear a real person's narrative.
2. The children have decided between them that we are going to read the next Morrigan Crow book now; 'and then we'll read the next dwarfs book.' Alec picked The Weirdstone of Brisingamen for our last read, and Bettany grumbled quite a lot, so I'm pleased she's keen to read the next one -- and I'm pleased that she and Alec agree on something, for once.
3. My phone has a new thing that makes it go monochrome at bedtime. The lack of colour cueing makes some apps unusable and the whole thing is so tedious to navigate that I am glad to switch off and put it to one side.
1. It's our eleventh wedding anniversary this weekend. We take some time to flip through our wedding photos. As always I am struck by how many people wished us well as we set out on married life. The children stare at the faces of people now gone; and Bettany tells a version of me living a day four years before she was born that I should have left more room on the bench for Nick.
2. The bright red and yellow shoots of pollarded willows.
3. We spoon the rest of the clotted cream on to our apple crumble.
1. A delivery arriving will always be exciting, even if it is just a bag of frozen fish or some drain cleaner.
2. Around the time I need to switch the lights on, one child or another comes upstairs to see me. This afternoon it's Alec. We look at the sunset, which is very blue and orange -- like a painting, he says -- and he tells me more about a book he's been reading at school. It's a collection of extracts from longer adventure stories. Yesterday he said he wanted to read some of them, but couldn't remember the titles. We worked one of them out from the details he could recall; and today he has the name of another: King Solomon's Mines.
3. While I work in the evening I chew on the orange slice from my drink.
2. The way fallen yellow birch leaves create an illusion of sunshine on a grey day.
3. We come home from our walk and find that Nick has opened a bottle of wine -- apparently the other players on his remote war games session had wine and he wanted some too.
1. A flock of birds hurrying across the sky
2. The glow of a reading light under Bettany's covers.
3. While Nick is busy with his gaming friends and the children are asleep, I get a go with the TV and the Xbox.
1. I don't remember falling asleep.
2. To start a brand new edit and feel that it's going to be a good one.
3. The children asking me to buy books for them -- Alec wants His Dark Materials; and Bettany wants more Morrigan Crow.
1. Nick announces that he's getting up to cook a Japanese rolled omelette for breakfast. When I come down a little later, he's looking very pleased with his new skill, and the children are refusing to eat it. We finish it off (it's delicious), and make some toast.
2. There's time to do a little tidying in the garden and have a quick gossip with the neighbours.
3. To find a lot of seeds in my pocket.
1. To open the shutters to a morning so foggy that the world has almost vanished.
2. A woman crouches to photograph a robin at the corner of the park.
1. Unnatural though this might sound, I'm so pleased to be back at my desk.
2. We hoped that we could settle the children down with a calm, quiet bedtime. But this chapter of our book features a race between a giant cat and a rhinoceros.
3. Bettany confides that in PE her class has been doing boxing -- which is strange, because I understood they'd been learning basketball. But apparently she climbed up on to the ropes and jumped on her opponent then hit him with a chair. She's called 'Smasher' in the ring. One of her friends is known as 'Volcano'. It doesn't sound much like boxing, but I'm definitely not allowed to query it at the next parent-teacher consultation. (Alec's class did do a few of weeks of boxing in PE last year, but he missed all the sessions because he was ill one week, and then, as he says, 'out for the day on school business'. If he's going to get hit with chairs by a girl named Volcano who doesn't play by the Queensbury Rules then I think it's just as well.)
3a. I pop downstairs in the middle of my writing group Zoom session to say goodnight to the children. They are looking at a book of Charles Addams cartoons. Will I explain why this one is funny? And what about that one?
1. To buy a secondhand cookbook for Alec and to know that he'll spend a happy couple of hours planning days when he will cook all the meals.
2. I go into the garden to move compost around and am joined by Bettany. She sets up a mud cafe in the front garden and serves cakes on leafy dishes.
3. We've tracked mud into the house. Nick says, 'I'll get the vacuum cleaner out.'
1. To hide behind a stack of recipe books with the meal plan and shopping list.
2. Bettany informs me that she is worried about how much work she's going to have to do for our halloween party. I tell her about delegating tasks to different people, which pleases her immensely.
3. 'This is Alec's pumpkin,' says my father. 'And this is Bettany's. And this is the one they got for you.' It is weighty in my arms, like a large orange baby.
3a. We spend the evening on the sofa. Nick is watching a baseball game. Its narrative is so thrilling and extraordinary that I look up from my embroidered roses and leaves astonished.
1. The bright yellow flare of the ginkgo tree down the back of the Pantiles.
2. I am following the thread of a story, pulling and winding as I go. Suddenly the whole thing falls apart. But there's another, different story hidden inside.
3. We send the children up the hill to buy chips for supper.
1. The doorbell goes just after half past nine. The poor postman standing in the rain hands me a dripping plastic-wrapped parcel and an envelope that is falling to pieces. The doorbell goes just after half past ten. To bring a sodden husband into the house and put the kettle on for coffee.
2. While planning our family Halloween party Bettany and I discover that we have a dedicated spooky playlist.
3. Being wrapped in sheets during my massage.
1. Rain is coming, and perhaps the groundsmen, too, so I go out of my way to once again shuffle in the leaves under the turkey oak.
2. Nick has become fast friends with the Japanese lady who runs a nearby newsagents and sweet shop. She has given him a couple of what look like teabags -- they are for making soup, though. We try some at lunch, adding pieces of dried dulse and bonito flakes. It does look rather like a rockpool, but it has a delicate, satisfying savoury flavour.
3. The children are very strict about their fifteen minutes of telly during the bedtime routine, and there is hell to pay if we try to skip it. But tonight Alec asks if I'll read to him. He's reached 'the boring bit' in Return of the King and wants me to read him over it. So we curl up on the sofa and enjoy a tedious tour of the lands surrounding Minas Tirith.
1. There's a knock at the door, but by the time I get there, the person who has left a miniature bottle of prosecco and a huge slice of cake on the doorstep has gone. Of course it's Anna! We're due to meet by video chat to plant paperwhite bulbs for Christmas and drink a toast to the writer Elspeth Thompson.
2. It is eerily dark by the time we finish our picnic supper, but Bettany wants a quick play in the park before we set off for home. Twice bats fly in front of us and parts of the way are not lit. The path is slightly lighter than the woods, and it swings round unexpectedly before us. 'Are you scared?' I ask Bettany.
'No, because you're holding my hand tightly.'
3. The turkey oak at the corner of the Grove has dropped its leaves. We take a moment to shuffle through the great deep drifts of them before we hurry home.
1. Bettany has nerves of steel and went into her dance exam as if it was barely a thing. She swaggered out quite cheerfully, too, and enjoyed walking away with a lollipop.
2. Between us, Nick's mother and I explain to him how to make the sauce for cauliflower cheese. We give him a step-by-step list of instructions written on the back of an envelope, too.
3. To spend some time with Alec, just reading our books in a near-empty coffee shop.
1. The field is empty, but there are footprints in the dew.
2. The flurry of activity after supper on a Thursday when the bins have to be put out. The children run up and down stairs bringing rubbish from all the rooms and then they scamper down the hill to the big bin. I'm not sure why and I'm not going to ask, but the one not carrying the bag brandishes a big stick.
3. That funny feeling when you are pleased that your children have lifted some of your parenting burden by doing more tasks for themselves, but you also feel sad because they are moving out of your care.
1. Bettany brings a small parcel upstairs -- my narcissus paperwhite bulbs have arrived.
2. To discuss our plans for half term. Bettany would like a big box of crafting supplies from Baker Ross and Alec wants a day of eating snacks and playing video games.
3. To push books back into their spaces on the shelf.
1. I generally sit with the children on the sofa in their bedroom while they wake up. I notice that if I lean backwards I can see through the window behind me to the very top branches of the great turkey oak in the Grove. The leaves are on the turn.
2. Nick is exceptionally proud of his fried onions this evening. They are very good -- holding their shape but tinted with caramel brown.
3. We tweak the bedtime routine and find that it goes much more smoothly, with a better division of labour.
1. I open the curtains in time to catch the smudge of pink across the sky to the south west.
2. To throw some birdseed out of the back door.
3. On a rainy afternoon to get the call that an outdoor activity has been cancelled.
1. A little dish of rosehips collected on our walk yesterday. No-one is quite sure what to do with them -- but they glow absolutely certain red.
2. 'I hope you're not offended, Mummy, but we're having some Daddy, Alec and Bettany time and don't want you,' Alec tells me. It's just as well, because I've got a writing class this Sunday afternoon and I was feeling vaguely guilty about taking two hours off during a time of the week that usually devote to family.
3. To get a message from a blogger I haven't heard from in a long time. Raymond Pert over at Kellogg Bloggin' has kept the faith while I was away: he has been using the 3BT format since 2006. I was ridiculously pleased to hear this: it felt good to know that someone had kept the little flame alight when I could not.
1. Bettany asks for a little box of cherry tomatoes as a school snack.
2. I've had atar of roses geranium stem drying near my desk for a few weeks now. I occasionally catch the scent of it, and when I turn it in my hands the oils are sticky on my fingers.
3. I'm reading an irritating comic novel and it strikes me that the shouted 'ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET?' bits of the book -- mainly the stream of forced, shoehorned references to other humorous works -- contrast poignantly with the more subtle things that the author does do well: the relationship between the protagonist and her co-pilot, which neither of them fully understand, for example.
1. This is the day when the air temperature changes.
2. I give Bettany some old bits of soap in a net bag to play with in the bath. She makes long white foamy gloves for herself.
3. We are snuggled up reading when Alec comes upstairs to show us the Newton spinner he has made during his Cubs Zoom meeting. Bettany is amazed at how the colours mix to white, and also at how it spins on its twisted strings.
1. To point out to the children that they don't want to go to school because they are, at this moment, in bed, wearing their pyjamas and hungry for their breakfasts.
2. Today Nick needs to take Alec up to town after school, so as he passes the bottom of our road he sends Bettany running up the hill. She looks very pleased with herself with her curls and coat flying.
3. The simple pleasure of stuffing unpleasant and unwanted items into the backpack of a character belonging to an absent player during games night.
1. To escape on a walk in the wet woods with my dad.
2. We are invited to write about anxiety on our Zoom writing call this week. I noticed that to start with my writing closed off, and we shared less often in these screen meetings. But this week we all risked vulnerability by talking about our experiences of anxiety and the tactics we use to harness it, and to reduce its effects. It felt a bit magical.
3. I have been looking for the smell of sandalwood for a few weeks now -- no particular reason, just really want it, and I keep adding sandalwood chips and oil to online baskets and then not buying. I glance at the ingredients list on a pot of balm that's been sitting in my bedside drawer. It includes sandalwood. I open it and apply a good amount to my elbows and knees.
1. The children come home from two nights at my parents. We needed the break badly, but we've missed them and it's a relief to have them back in the house.
2. Alec has a long sleep in the afternoon and comes downstairs at teatime with his hair all sticking up.
3. To tip the last half glass of wine into the gravy pan.
1. My playlist comes up with a track that is remarkably soothing and kind at exactly the moment it is needed.
2. The pumpkin we bake for supper is grey-green, almost blue in colour
3. The children have been saving up for large purchases, and they hit their targets. I get to help them order the items in question.
1. To write in a coffee shop once again.
2. Nick, because he cares very much about our health, doles out carefully researched vitamin pills at lunchtime.
3. I'm working on a draft for Morgen Bailey's 100-word story competition. It falls out at exactly 100 words.
1. I love morning coffee, and hearing Nick's news from the school run and his visit to his mum.
2. My mother brings us a hazelnut and raspberry meringue, which we devour after supper.
3. The children have been a complete nuisance with their whoopie cushion this week. It feels really good to throw it out of the back door while threatening to nail it to the ceiling.
1. Coffee, cake and a friendly chat with a mum from school.
2. Our walk home takes us towards a fine sunset, a mix of slate grey cloud in tyre track shapes,and orange sky fading into blue.
3. I am almost too sleepy to participate properly in my writing group, but I push on through and enjoy some great writing from the others; and then I fall satisfied into bed afterwards.
1. Chopping fresh herbs in smaller and smaller and smaller pieces with a heavy knife.
2. The restrictions on meeting face-to-face are tough -- but it has opened up a whole world of remote writing workshops. There is no need to go anywhere: I can sit at my desk and benefit from the live, real-time expertise of masters of the craft.
3. The children's faces when it is revealed that Long John Silver is not the man that Jim Hawkins thought he was.
1. Waking to the sound of heavy rain.
2. To sit and cuddle the children for a few minutes before we go downstairs. It makes the mornings so much easier -- and we're lucky that we can do it. If both of us had to work outside the home it would be difficult to find the mindset and the time to do this.
1. I help out at Beavers, supervising four little fellas on a bug hunt. They scamper around, exclaiming about spider's webs and feathers then head straight for the hole in the hedge leading out of the park. I call them back and persuade them to stick their heads in the hedge to look for bird's nests. Then they find a place where the ground is soft and dig for earthworms until the Beaver leaders call us back.
2. To sit on the last bench to lose the sun and eat our picnic supper before we trot home through the woods.
3. In the course of my writing group's session the thin moon moves across the sky before my window.
1. It's been a busy morning and we are all rather frazzled. Nonetheless, and although it is out of our way, we decide to walk home through the woods -- and I think it does us good.
2. In our front garden Bettany has set up a stall selling packets of seeds. From the hidden green space behind the sweetpeas, where I have retreated to supervise at a distance, I hear Alec coaching Bettany, encouraging her to address passers-by with a cheery 'Hello, would you like to buy some seeds.'
3. When I get tired of grinding spices I hand the mortar and pestle over to Nick.
1. To see a faint mist against the wooded flank of Broadwater Down.
2. Over the course of my half-hour fake commute the day warms up.
3. I have been dreading starting the complaint process about a broken toy we purchased only in June. ?It seems so trivial, but the toy was not cheap and it's much loved and well used. Bettany's pointed remarks from the bath prod me in action and I start the process while I wait for her to wash. A short text conversation later and a replacement is on the way. Nick even has a shoebox in which to return the original.
1. Nick messages after the school run to say that he's having coffee with one of the mums. She sends back a slice of apple cake for me to have with my coffee later in the morning.
2. Ice cream with hot stewed fruit.
3. Bett is very overexcited after supper, so we take a walk around the block. We end up on the street with lots of frog statues, and we hunt them down one by one.
1. It is terribly uncomfortable and confronting to listen to Alec's litany of facts about the destruction of the Amazon. It's really embarrassing to have him realise what an almighty fuck-up we've made (thanks Aquila and World Wildlife Fund). But I am so pleased that he is starting to understand the world's wider story. I hope that his understanding will translate into more empathy for the smaller home actions that are uncomfortable for him -- like eating mushrooms and lentils rather than processed foods; saying no to more Lego; sending him back upstairs to turn off lights; and rejecting the car lifestyle so he has to walk everywhere.
2. To spend a few minutes watching sparrow drama in the tree below my office window.
3. It leaves me feeling disoriented, spacy and very tired -- but what a relief to have my back adjusted by Emma the chiropractor. For the last few weeks I have had no idea where I am in space, or what a relaxed, neutral position is.
1. Alec, who is off school with a cold, comes up to quickly tell me that he has just completed a very difficult puzzle in a book.
2. While I am bouncing the seesaw for Bettany a smaller girl comes running over. I step back so she can sit on the other end. She doesn't really know how to use a seesaw and is surprised at the jolting, but her mum gives her instructions and encouragement. Bettany looks uncommonly pleased, and bounces very gently until the other girl gets used to it.
3. On our return journey we walk in the dusk through places that are still warm from the day's sun; and places that are still cool from the day's shade.
1. At every turn there are plants that have stories. 'There's your mum's pinks; and this is that rose you gave me.' And I can see cuttings from my sage plant newly potted on; and a scented geranium grown from a cutting I took from a plant given to me, itself grown from a cutting.
2. Bettany tells me that we need to spend a day shopping for fancy clothes that rich ladies wear, getting our nails done and going out for coffee and cocktails. She says, 'You've been working too much. In the middle of our day you will say, "What was I worrying about again? I can't remember."'
3. I spend an hour framing and hanging some prints I bought from my cousin Laura Thompson's Daydream Emporium. Nick looks at my handiwork and says, 'We've got pictures on the stairs like in a proper house.'
1. Under the flower troughs on the railings by the Pantiles there are bright blooms grown from last year's scattered seed.
2. I do my first school run. To see and talk to people we haven't seen for months on end.
3. There is clotted cream for our scones.
1. The shining white insides of conker cases. And conkers arranged on the wall of a house with boots and scooters in the porch.
2. These last few days the children have been planning ahead. Bettany is collecting melon seeds to plant next spring; and Alec has spread rosebay willowherb seed in the garden in the hopes of attracting hawk moths.
3. Nick calls up the stairs to say the new Fortean Times has arrived. It makes me look forward to bedtime, when I can sit and read it.
1. Watching Alec playing cricket. He hits a couple of real belters, and I feel very proud.
2. At bathtime Bettany appears wearing a wolf hat and a pair of wicketkeeper's gloves. 'I'm Wolverine,' she says with utter conviction.
3. I push past the children's complaints and make them read 'our' book. It's a good way of getting the school's required listening-to-reading minutes in; and it saves my voice.
1. I am glad I brought a box for blackberries out with us.
2. A few nights ago Nick and I stopped doing the jigsaw at our bedtime even though we wanted to push on and place the last fifty pieces. This afternoon the children and I finish it up and they feel very pleased about that.
3. Bettany now has such long hair that it needs to be put up for school. And I suddenly realised that this would by my job each morning. I asked if we could have a practice after bath and she gave me a look. 'I can do it myself,' she said, pulling a scrunchie on to her wrist. And sure enough, she can put her own hair up.
1. Alec doing his own packing to go to Granny and Grandpa's. He appears to be planning on a long stay, judging by the amount of clothing he is taking.
2. There just happens to be a slice of cake at coffee time.
1. Last cricket session of the season. Bettany chasing a ball outruns one of the boys and remembers to throw the ball back, rather than carrying it.
2. A toddler running after a tennis ball turns to look at me, checking whether I am watching her pick it up.
3. A football rolls towards us down the side road we are walking up. I return the Dutch woman's favour by stopping it and dribbling it back the way it has come until we see a little boy jogging to meet us.
1. To take half an hour off and play Lego Marvel Superheroes with Alec. We don't have a specific quest in mind, instead preferring to run around the city throwing cars at each other.
2. The trees are thrashing in an August storm and we are indoors.
3. Salt crystals scattered across a tray of roasted new potatoes.
1. A godmother brings Bettany the hobby horse she has wanted for a long time. The look of genuine joy on my child's face. And also, later: the horse joins us at supper, eating a few wooden vegetables; Bettany dressed in her sheriff outfit clopping downstairs to tell Nick that 'this town ain't big enough for the both of us'; and finding her asleep in bed cuddled up next to the horse.
2. It's wonderful just to enjoy time with our friends, sitting sprawled in the park.
3. I do offer him a dignified umbrella -- but he and his children think that borrowing Bett's pink princess brolly would be more funny.
1. Bettany asks me to go to Nana's round by the main road while the Nick and Alec go across the estate. She pretends we're not racing them, but secretly we are -- and we win.
2. To point out to your children that there is no need for them to fight over an abundantly available resource -- in this case, acorns.
3. For dinner we have one of those recipes featuring ingredients that the children wouldn't usually touch with a bargepole -- watercress, anchovies and capers whizzed into a pesto. It is eaten with a lot of enthusiasm.
1. Grandpa brandishes the spanner he has brought to take the front wheel off Alec's bike for easier loading.
2. While we are unloading the car, the football rolls out of the boot and down the hill. I have to chase after it in my slippers. There is absolutely no hope of my catching it before it rolls into the High Street at the bottom, though. Luckily, a kind lady in big boots is game enough to stand in its way and catch it. It is all a bit absurd, and we share a moment of laughter.
3. To Alec's unalloyed delight, Tom Carradine sings his requested song, 'I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair' from South Pacific.
1. Feeling spits and spots of rain on my arms. I am drenched by the time I get home. Being out in the rain comes with a whole bundle of experiences, from cold stinging dots to the water trickling down my neck to the sounds of falling water. I am grateful that I don't have to include 'anxiety about arriving at work soaking wet' to that list.
2. One of my clients has need of me again and we've got a meeting towards the end of the afternoon. I used to know how to use their conferencing system; but my skills have dried up. I have an anxious play to see if I can make it work. Then my 'handler' calls me to check that I know how to get in. He apologises for micromanaging -- but it's exactly what I wanted at this moment.
3. To start reading a new book with the children. Inevitably they fight over who gets to sit next to me, so I point out that whoever sits on the floor by my feet can make a nest of blankets and cushions. They fight over that, too.
1. We have re-heated pizza for lunch.
2. I have the children for a couple of hours this afternoon. I sit with them putting icing and sprinkles on little cakes. Then I play a video game with Alec. And then I start Bettany off making another gymnast.
3. Bettany (wearing her new school shoes) and I slip out into the summer evening to deliver some cakes.
1. Nana makes us ice cream cones to eat on the way home. She is determined to get the ice cream right to the bottom of the cone.
2. Bettany and I use a craft kit to build a little acrobat who flips over on a twisted string when you squeeze two rods. She is very pleased with herself and says that 'Gymnast Judy' is her favourite toy in the whole house.
3. Nick has taken over making supper so I spend the time cutting back some jasmine shoots to maintain a human-sized width in the narrow space outside our back door. I don't like the sticky sap on my hands, but I do like the heavy perfume and the improved space.
1. A passenger on the train waiting at the other platform spots Alec's bike and explains with gestures that we should look out for the carriages with red markings as these have bike spaces.
2. The children, streaked with sand and mud, running and shrieking on the beach, collecting shells and dead crabs.
3. The five of us huddling under one big umbrella while we wait for the rainstorm to pass. A lot of people hurry past us on their way back to the car park and we know that if we only wait, we'll have the beach to ourselves.
3a. Bettany finds two bright, newly painted pebble ladybirds on fence posts. I wonder if they are the work of the sturdy blonde teenage girl who pedaled past us in such a determined way five minutes ago.
1. The park is so quiet and clean and cool this early in the morning.
2. To pull a new bar of soap out of the dark blue tissue paper packet.
3. It takes a long time to settle the children and we go to bed rather late. I'm so tired that I'm tempted to forget about my physio -- but I do them anyway. It's perfunctory; but it's done.
1. Even this early in the day it is uncomfortably warm for walking. I am so grateful that I am returning home to work and that I can overheat in peace without worrying about professional appearances.
2. To remember that ice lollies came with the grocery delivery.
3. Nick brings the children home filthy, hot and tired from playing on a friend's waterslide.
1. A long drink of cold water in Nana's kitchen. She has taken over the naming of the children's clothes before school starts again.
2. Even in this hottest part of summer the spring at Brighton Lake is still flowing. We poke dead leaves and sticks out of the gully until the water runs freely again.
3. Bettany has chalked encouraging words on the brick pavement in front of our house.
1. On a hot afternoon to have a chat and a catch-up in the shade.
2. To stare up at the places where the edges of an oak tree's canopy meet the sky.
3. Alec rides a little ahead of us down the path in shadow splashed and speckled with with sunlight.
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| Diagram of Arum maculatum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit |
