Breathe, waffles and greyish.

1. It's such a little, simple thing, but the Google breathing exercise app; and the fact that Guanyin, Buddhist bodhisattva associated with compassion keeps appearing in various guises and places.

2. It turns out that it's fine to cook waffles the night before (when you have lots of time) and let the children put them in the toaster in the morning.

3. Alec comes home greyish from head to foot. He is full of stories about walking on a muddy beach in his pyjamas, having hot chocolate on his cereal and driving over The Sheppey Crossing.

Expedition, pineapple and independence.

1. Alec walks jauntily up the street with his uncle. They are going climbing and camping together.

2. This is a really good pineapple.

3. The non-sound of Bettany and her friend getting themselves ready for bed, watching a film and then taking themselves upstairs.

Occupied, can do and grasshopper.

1. When I look up again, the children are still sitting round a table doing a poetry writing workshop. (Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival is still going on this week)

2. 'I can't do poetry, I'm no good at English.'

I remember an editor once telling me that if I found something interesting, other people would, too. So I say, 'Just write down something you saw and thought was interesting.'

She thinks for a moment and writes a rhyming couplet about her dog's coat.

3. There is a bright green grasshopper in the hair of the woman sitting in front of me.

Cupboard, helper and hair.

 1. The sight of Alec tidying up the cupboard under the TV. I have tried for so long to tame this horrible mass of cables and devices, and usually have to hold everything in with one hand while slamming the door shut. But if Alec wants to take ownership, perhaps it will stay tidier for longer.

2. As I am leaving Nick asks Bettany if she'd like to help with the washing up. When I return, the step is by the sink.

3. I had my hair done this morning. Finally when I show up for drinks with Katie and Sarah in the evening, someone notices.

I did get there, a sound and reconnect.

1. A kind friend gives me a lift to a poetry workshop on Ashdown Forest with the poet in residence there, Sian Thomas. We write in a magical spot called Gill's Lap, which looks out across the gorse to the sunny fields beyond. 

2. While we are doing the opening exercise, I hear a sound which I think is someone grumbling, or laughing to themselves. The moment I realise that it's a dog. 

3. When I get home, the children are almost ready for bed. Nick has been reading to them. I join them on the sofa and we all cuddle up for a while to reconnect.

Children are home, splinter and open mic.

1. The children come rushing through the gate with pockets full of sand and then we let the butterflies go.

2. Tears spring to Bettany's eyes when she washes her hands. She has a splinter in her finger. I sterilise my magic needle and work away. She is very brave throughout, complaining steadily, but never flinching. And soon there is a tiny thorn clasped in my tweezers. 

3. The various sights and spectacles at an open mic night for Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival. John Wheeler, who speaks like a fire and brimstone preacher, and shares a funny, dramatic Shakespearean soliloquy about a problem with his zip. A woman who speaks mainly through a patchwork pig to hilarious, chaotic effect. And the usually gentle, mannerly Steve Walter, responding to environmental concerns and background noise, unleashes the full power of his voice, which is electrifying. (You can see Steve in person at Remember the Earth Whose Skin You Are).

Corralling numbers, not a wasted outing and eye-witness accounts.

1. Once I've done my financial admin and enticed the numbers back into their spread sheet cells, I feel much less anxious.

2. We take a stroll, really just to get out of the house, but we pretend we are going look at an antiques shop while we don't have children with us, and a mythical new food hall that is rumoured to be opening round the back of the Pantiles. They are both closed, because it's Monday. It's not a completely wasted outing, though: We run into our friends and they tell us with wide eyes and much joyful enthusiasm about their road trip round the south of England -- Jane Austen's house and the Bodleian Library were the highlights.

3. Talking to the children on the phone about their day's adventures. It's funny to hear how their stories differ.

Getting things done, poetry festival and butterflies.

1. The children are away with my parents for a few days and Nick and I have been resting and working down our to-do lists. Some of the tasks are tiny, but they've seemed insurmountable while also caring for children. Other tasks are bigger, but ticking them off feels as good as hours of rest.

2. Working down the programme of events for Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival and picking which ones I'm going to. Some are online, so they are open to anyone, anywhere in the world.

3. In between tasks, we've spent a lot of time watching the butterflies in their gauzy cage. I stare at the patterns on their wings, trying to discern differences between them, and marvel at their coiled tongues, furred bodies and fine antennae. We'll have to let them go soon so they can make their own way in the world.

Schedule, new client and new friends.

1. I try to avoid complex, close-call scheduling because as a family we don't need that stress. But today I drop Alec off just before 9am for tutoring; and show up over the road for a massage appointment on the hour. It feels satisfying and efficient.

2. A blank page for a new client is a challenge -- but today I've got the time and the headspace to work my way into the material. The client would be disconcerted, I think, to see my lists of words and the research rabbit holes I let myself tumble down and the snickets, twittens and ginnels I follow around the internet. But once I return to the writing task, the words go down easily and all the client will see is a smooth piece of content.

3. In the park after our picnic supper Bettany makes some friends, and I don't have to do anything at all -- just sit on a bench, poke at my phone and think.

Escape, the fairies reply and parcels.

1. During the dance display, a toddler escapes, runs to his big sister and joins in. 

2. A few weeks ago Bettany and Nick found a fairy village on the common, with a letterbox. They left a note for the fairies, of course. Today we are passing the place. The village has gone, but there are notes hung on the fence to all the children who posted letters. We photograph the note addressed to Bettany, but decide to leave it in place

3. Three large parcels of snacks arrive -- Grampy very kindly gave us some vouchers, and we had a bit of a spree.

3a. To meet some of my writing friends for the first time in 18 months. We aren't writing tonight, just chatting and being together.

Phase, parcel and chives.

1. Bettany has been experimenting with the phrase, 'What the heck is that?'

2. To find a parcel waiting in the undergrowth of our front garden.

3. I know that I put new potatoes on the meal plan, and I can smell them cooking as I come down from work to supper, already going through the tick list for the domestic side of my life. I am about to go in the garden and pick chives to snip and scatter over the potatoes when I realise that Nick is already at work with the scissors.

Start, churros and one of those nights out.

1. Nick comments, 'Things always feel better once you start work on them.'

2. As I am deep frying Lidl frozen churros, it occurs to me that this is probably a family memory. It's the combination of a late bedtime and a treat we are unlikely to have again that has to be made in small batches so everyone is waiting around chatting.

3. There is an article in this month's Fortean Times about the time Aleister Crowley visited Berlin and hit up Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger to track down Aldous Huxley so they could to a drag club.

Magazine time, watermelon and reading agreement.

1. Returning to bed to look through my new Fortean Times.

2. Slicing into a watermelon and feeling the skin crack. 

3. The children squabbling negotiating over which book we are going to read next. Alec makes a great case for The Land of Green Ginger; but Bettany wins out with Peter Green and The Unliving Academy. Alec is content with a promise that we will come back to his choice later.

Break, model and new book.

1. To look at my progress and feel like it would be okay to take a break.

2. Alec protests when I suggest working on his model car, but he gives in eventually. I cut the pieces out and hand them to him, and file off burrs as requested, but mostly I'm watching and drinking peppermint tea. He is very pleased when it is completed. We decide to leave the battery -- a cunning mechanism involving salt water and magnesium -- until Nick and Bettany come home.

3. There is, at last, some time to look over my new book of Hiroshige prints. There are sixty in all, ones I've never seen before, and I only get through half of them
.

Rainy evening, moon in a blue sky and swimming in the sea.

 We've had a short break in Bexhill, and this is a quick round-up of the best bits.

1. The sea is cold and it takes me ages to get in -- but once I am in, it feels so good to be part of the waters that cover most of our world.

2. A fingernail of moon hiding in a wrack of wispy cloud in the blue, blue sky.

3. Bettany in a rage that we have not found a playground marches us away from the garden in the old town that we planned to visit and down a twitten that takes us over a road bridge and right back to the seafront.

4. I convince everyone to go back to the garden and it is indeed very lovely, laid out around a ruined manor house in a series of rooms, each different and surprising, within the bounds of what municipal gardening can achieve.

5. To catch sight of Alec's friend waving at us in the park.

6. Eating dinner in the window of  restaurant while the rain falls steadily outside.

7. Our proper seaside landlady tells us she is going shopping and asks if there is anything we want for breakfast that we haven't been offered.