Here's a short story I wrote for Christmas -- Lydia's Christmas Resolution. Merry midwinter, everyone.
1. I ordered in a small crate of easy peelers with our supermarket delivery. It's a lot of citrus, but I have no regrets.
2. I've had a long, busy morning (it's now 2pm) but Nick has my lunch on the stove.
3. It turns out that Alec has made all the arrangements over the phone. When I come down, he and Bettany are sitting ready in their waterproof trousers, coats and shoes ready.
1. I wake before everyone else and the quiet hour is a gift to myself.
2. The scent of a decade-old pomander in our box of Christmas decorations.
3. Alec shows off the purple welts on his hand from squeezing the icing tube to draw tiles on the roof of the gingerbread house.
1. I find Alec sitting in bed with a Madhur Jaffrey book, planning dinner.
2. It's been a difficult week. While no-one's looking, I quietly play catch-up with the cardboard house advent calendar, fitting a tiny jelly to the table and assembling a few beds.
3. The scent of cardamom seeds and the oily, gritty feel of them under the pestle.
1. At the back of my mind there's a commentary going on about how lying next to Bettany under a pile of blankets and watching a broadcast of the Wind in the Willows musical is a waste of my time -- but I ignore it: I'm resting AND spending time with my child.
2. Alec is rather late home from school and I have just messaged him to enquire when he knocks at the door, laden with secret Christmas shopping.
3. Quite suddenly, I can't bear not to clean the bathroom, which is how I know I'm getting better.
1. It marvels me that no one has run up the common and tugged on the low branches of the trees to shower their friends with snow. It's as if everyone has agreed to keep this snow day pristine.
2. I can't keep up my usual pace for long. It's a good excuse to stop and look around at the unfamiliar flat light and the buds packed hard and black against the snow.
3. In the distance we can see three snowmen. When we arrive, we are impressed by the beer bottle nose and the broken stick teeth.
1. Out of the batch of cinnamon buns, one looks perfect. I make sure Nick gets it.
2. It's my turn to be ill now, and I lie in bed listening to an audio book and floating around between asleep and awake.
3. ...and suddenly it is snowing.
1. We walk to school along the valley bottom. The sunlight is catching the woods above us, still hanging on to their autumn colours. It's not until we're nearly at school that we can stand in the sun ourselves.
2. There is a perfect Mary Poppins sunset, with smoking chimneys before a dirty orange sky fading up from duck-egg blue to night blue.
3. It feels like Bettany and I will never grow out of lying under the covers, holding our breaths and trying not to giggle while we wait for someone to be surprised at finding us.
1. To eat a few gingerbread biscuits at coffee time.
2. It's very cold indeed -- but towards the end of the morning, when the world has swung round, the light changes at my desk. I go downstairs and open the blind in the back bedroom to feel the warmth of the winter sun.
3. Alec has the joyful experience of finding a forgotten fiver in his winter coat.
1. To our collective horror, the music teacher starts picking parents out of the audience to play an impromptu set -- just to show us the mighty power of his teaching methods. It's an effective demonstration -- some of these mums and dads have never even tried the instrument before; but We Will Rock You is recognisable.
2. A display of sempervivums at the garden centre catches my eye in their soft slatey blues and greys and pinks.
1. The air is cold, but I, in the middle of a bundle of blankets, am not.
2. It's a foggy night and the park, though cheerfully lit for skating, feels secretive and rather intimate.
3. Catching sight of Bettany's hat coming round the rink. She is holding someone's hand, but looks determined.
1. Today we are resting. So we lie on the sofa watching Lilo and Stitch.
2. The ball of gingerbread dough is rather daunting; but thanks to the notes scribbled around the recipe, we find our rolling, cutting and baking skills again.
3. To let Alec loose among my spices so he can make hot apple juice.
1. The alarm goes off telling me that it's time to go and watch Bettany's dance class. I go to close the shutters before I leave and see that a deep red sun is touching the dark horizon.
2. In front of us very small siblings bob along in time to the music.
3. We close the door behind us, and we're home for the evening.
1. The children are very excited to find that two boxes of Christmas presents, and two mysterious advent parcels in biscuity wrapping paper have been delivered overnight.
2. At breakfast, somehow there is rooibos brewing in the pot, rather than tea. It makes an interesting change.
3. Bettany and I sit at the kitchen table with the house calendar and write festive treats and happenings on the tiny cardboard squares that go in our advent calendar house. It feels nice that she values the advent house experience so much that she wants to get involved in it, rather than just letting it happen to her.
1. The post has brought a new Fortean Times, which promises lurid tales of panic about satanic toys -- just in time for Christmas shopping.
2. I have a few minutes to wait and I spend it looking at the bright simple graphics on tinplate toys in a shop window.
3. The joyful news that our friends are soon to be grandparents.
1. I've had the vague, jittery kind of headache all day and don't really want to take anyone out for hot chocolate -- but sit down in the window, a chat and a huge mug of sweet chai sorts me right out.
2. We cross the road then stop and have a good look at the illuminated Christmas unicorn rearing above the tall laurel hedge.
3. I'd heard through the grape vine that she'd had an accident: to see her in person, cheerful and healing.
1. I enact a one-person mutiny at the thought of making pancakes for breakfast -- I've always done it, but today, I just don't want to. Nick asks where the recipe is, and when I come downstairs he is making the batter. Later, we show Bettany how to cook and flip a pancake.
2. I step away from the market stall we are admiring because I'm about to sneeze. I sneeze once, which is a relief, and then I sneeze a lot of times. When I stop, I get a round of applause and some congratulations. Bettany, meanwhile, has sidled away because she doesn't want to be associated with a parent who draws attention to herself.
3. Green and white spring onions dropped into the middle of the soup make it look like human food, rather than bland fuel.
1. This morning has been hard work. It's a relief to slip in between the lines of a structural edit, which is a task where I can let the words be and concentrate on the story.
2. Nick reminds us on this rainy evening to 'Hit the easy button all the way. Get a taxi up there,' he says.
3. '...and then Mummy said it looked delicious and she was starving, and the lady gave us extra.'
1. Homemade blackcurrant jam -- it's a summer afternoon that you can put on a toasted bagel.
2. Nick exclaims rather happily, 'Broad beans are nothing like they used to be.'
3. Granny and Bettany go through the toyshop's Christmas catalogue.
1. Anna and I plant up some paperwhites and look after our minds. Remembering Elspeth Thompson.
2. With a jar of Anna's homemade jam in the bottom of my handbag, I hurry on to M&S to stock up with scones and cake for a special tea.
3. We've been working our way through a bottle of Brut -- courtesy of Nick's mother -- since lunchtime.
1. The children bounce into our bed and demand to know if we have 'a drunken hangover'. We assure them that we do not: we only had one drink, although Nick did stay out very late dancing.
2. Even a grown-up person like Alec takes pleasure in shaking my phone to see what prizes we've won in the Christmas giveaway on the coffee shop's app.
3. Bettany painted my nails a bright coral pink for the party last night. They keep catching my eye.
1. Helping someone else choose a houseplant. It's a beautiful thing with great gleaming leaves and long speckled stems; and I won't have to pay for it or look after it.
2. My gaze is caught by the last fragments of bright yellow foliage on the birch tree that you can just see if you sit in the right spot in our kitchen.
3. Coming up the hill and spotting Mars's angry red face glaring down at humanity. A moment later, and he's stamped himself off behind the roofline again.
1. At least there is sunlight between the showers.
2. To look up and find that Bettany has sewn on three buttons while I wasn't looking.
3. It sounds as if Alec has had a lot of fun at the Scouts cooking competition. His team came second to last and he recounts the disastrous mistakes ('but at least we didn't serve raw chicken like the team that came last') with a glee that belies his claims of sympathy for the Young Leaders who were doing the judging.
1. A job ad has appeared in our bathroom, saying that Bettany's shop is now hiring. I explain to the advertiser that it would be conventional to put her contact details on the tear strips along the bottom of the poster, rather than leaving them blank. 'But I don't have phone,' she says. 'Maybe I could write "Shout Bettany" on each one?"
2. It was raining so heavily as I was getting ready to leave the house that I put on all my waterproofs. Now there is a clear Jupiter dodging among the chimney pots, and the square that makes up Pegasus nearby.
3. To plug into an audiobook and vanish into the world of Madeline Miller's Circe.
1. The scent of Earl Grey tea.
2. The feeling after a fortifying coffee and a reassuring chat.
3. Even the crumbs of soil on the patio have long shadows.
1. Catching sight of our children in the Remembrance Day parade, marching with Royal Tunbridge Wells Scouts. They both look rather pleased and proud to be there. It's nice also to catch sight of our friends from school in the crowd and in the parade.
2. 'It's like a lightshow,' says Nick of the yellow leaves on the long hedge of lime trees.
3. As the afternoon goes on, in Nana's living room I am half distracted by Bettany's requests for help with her hedgehog pincushion; and half distracted by the TV. It is showing incredible athletic and physical feats by aggressive and wheelchair rugby league players.
1. The last time I was at the cricket club at the back end of August, the ground was like a piece of toast. Today, it is lush green and rather muddy underfoot.
2. These stroopwaffels are rather superior, being both crisp and soft at the same time.
3. What a difference a tracking spreadsheet makes to my productivity -- not necessarily to how much work I've done; but how much work I know I've done.
1. Wintery sunshine and a brisk drying wind make all the difference after a week of long wet days and heavy showers.
2. Alec comes in from school and remarks that he has enjoyed walking home in the sort of cold weather that makes you glad it isn't a hot day. He suggested I might like to use this here, and so I said I might. Then he suggested I add that it's the kind of temperature that makes you want a piece of Granny's flapjack. I'm not sure why he doesn't just send her a message and ask.
3. I rarely buy fresh soft fruit out-of-season because it's often disappointing to taste; it's not very good for the environment; and it's poor value compared with frozen fruit. But Bettany doesn't know any of that -- and inevitably if Nick needs to pop to the shops on the way home from school he bribes her by allowing her to add raspberries or blueberries to the basket. It must have been a hard sell today, because they also have a small chocolate cake, which goes very well with the fruit.
1. A flock of starlings rises briefly above the trees.
2. The chocolate swiss rolls -- special edition for bonfire night -- that we have with our coffee have captured the bicarb taste of cinder toffee rather well.
3. To find there are caraway seeds in the rye bread I have bought for lunch.
1. 3.30ish: to watch Alec's dot on the map getting closer and closer.
2. The smell of Bettany's chocolate body wash mixing with the disco tunes we're listening to while she plays in the bath.
3. I'm already in bed, packed round with pillows and the winter quilt, when I hit the tiredness wall. I'm half aware of the shifting mattress and the change of light when Nick comes to bed; and then nothing until morning.
1. When I bring everything together from various stashes around the house, I realise we have a lot of boxes, tins, picture frames and other things that can be decorated on a rainy afternoon.
2. When I turn back the girls are making something complicated using Hamabeads.
3. Nick takes my muddy coat from me and puts it in through the wash.
1. Bettany's friends share their umbrellas with her, until they discover that they can use them to flick water at each other.
2. Flicking through some books my mother has brought for Alec's piano lessons, I remember the kindness and encouragement of my own music teacher.
3. With the heavy winter quilt on the bed, our night-times feel extra secure and snuggly.
1. The fallen leaves of a liquidambar lie spikey in the grass.
2. Where our ways part, we linger chatting.
3. There is a real feeling that when the older Scouts dump their slightly creepy guys on the fire that something uncomfortable is being driven away, out of the circle and into the sky by the blast of light and heat.
1. After a short break, we are back to having morning coffee again.
2. The book I didn't buy on Sunday is still there.
3. Today I have brought the right snack.
1. Before breakfast, quite casually, Bettany demonstrates a sleight of hand that proves I have eleven fingers. It's only once everyone has left for school that I work out how it is done.
2. A boy who left the children's primary school a few years ago comes to the door in costume for some Halloween sweets. He recognises me and politely asks after the children, which both charms and impresses me.
3. At bedtime I remember that I have a new video of the cousins dancing around like a pair of loons. Alec and Bettany make me play it four times. Then Bettany tells Alec that he should think about starting a family soon because he likes toddlers so much.
1. As Alec and I are coming up the High Street, we see Nick coming towards us.
2. We tried telling Bettany that the papercraft she's set her heart on couldn't be done because the video instructions are in Korean and the printables, taken from screen-caps, are not designed for A4 paper. But she was having none of that. And so we're all sitting round the kitchen table cutting out tiny accessories for a paper kitten.
3. Bad Moon Rising shows up on our Halloween playlist. I look up and see a huge crescent coming over Mount Sion.
1. To put Bettany's carved pumpkin out at the front of the house and help her go through the dressing-up bag in search of a costume.
2. To half-supervise Alec spooning treacle and syrup into a pan -- he's making another parkin.
3. It's an unseasonably warm night and there are even a few stars peering through the haze when I put out the last of the recycling. We are surprised and delighted by this evening of soft air that makes you think you wouldn't mind sitting outside in the pub garden. But with October, you never quite know what you're going to get; and I think that we would be no less surprised and delighted by a hard frosty night with our breath shimmering in the air under brittle stars.
1. A lot of the massage therapists appear to be moonlighting physios. Today's one is happy to spend time coaching me through some pre-massage stretches; and then poking down the sides of my spine to find exactly where the stiffness is coming from.
2. It is a relief when Nick comes home: he is much better at explaining averages to Bettany than I am.
3. At supper time, we unwrap the parkin, which has been waiting in the dark for four days. This year's one is a bit wholesome and boring; but we've already given half of it away and eaten quite a lot of it, so I might make another.
1. A nursery walks down the other side of the street, hanging on to a Walkodile. One of the children has a dolly tucked into her coat; another child is clutching a train ticket. A boy near the back suddenly sits down on the pavement.
2. Alec's pleasure in the 'perfect' ice cream cone that he has made.
1. The best approach is to supervise, but not too closely. While Bettany pours acrylic paint over pebbles, I chop swede and strip wintery greens from their woody stems.
2. The children are fighting over a blanket. I drop a heavy square of crocheted wool on Alec's legs, shove the red fleece over Bettany and sit between them on the sofa.
3. That moment when the last of the physio is done, and I can roll up the mat for the day.
1. I wake early and it's raining hard. I get on the XBox before anyone else and build an elaborate watery city in Townscaper.
2. Being beaten by your own child at a memory game.
3. After Bettany has had her afternoon bath we run down to the Pantiles in the washed autumn light to catch the tail-end of the market.
1. At coffee time, Alec and I play a bit of Minecraft Dungeons.
2. Then suddenly we remember that Bettany has a red jumper she can wear tomorrow to 'show racism the red card'.
3. I am too tired for the thing I planned tonight -- but then I remember that I still haven't watched half the 'new' season of Futurama that I completely missed because it came out while Bettany was tiny.
1. The fly that has been buzzing around our bedroom for the last eighteen hours finds its way out of the open window.
2. It's last day of term for Alec and I keep having to remind myself that it's not Friday.
1. In the garden on the edge of my vision, the flicker of little birds, and their shadows.
2. In the antiques shop, eggshells painted with flowers.
3. To pass Bettany a blueberry-sized tomato at supper.
1. The cafe lady says, 'See you soon, girls,' which makes us both laugh, because we've been sitting there moaning about editing and menopause.
2. This has been a terrible writing session. Everything has come out ashy, and the ink on my fingers seems more meaningful than the words on my page. But I kept going; and now it's done.
3. Alec asks me to read again a few sentences from our book.
1. I pull down the fading sweetpeas. If anyone asks why I haven't gone all the way to the end of the fence, the ones on the downhill end are still flowering. I'm waiting for the first frost, in case the last of the bees have a need.
2. To join some of the local literati for a book launch -- Available Light, which is a collaboration between the poet poet Val Pargeter and the artist Marilyn Garwood. Some of Val's poems started life at the Monday night writing group I used to attend, and it's so exciting -- and hopeful -- to see creative people producing beautiful objects, and to be part of a living local arts scene.
3. Bettany says it's her turn to choose next, and what she wants us to read is my battered copy of Ronia the Robber's Daughter, even though we've just this evening finished watching the animated series. She says she is a bit scared of this Ronia -- my Ronia, the wild, fierce, defiant, adolescent Ronia who asked child me to choose her book. She looks rather different from the BBC's cute anime girl.
1. Our boy, after a perfect morning routine, setting off cheerfully to school.
2. The hard greenish pearls of tomatoes that probably won't ripen.
3. At the end of the summer holidays I bought new tights for Bettany. They came by post in striped paper packets and we put them away ready for colder weather. As she is putting her clothes out for the morning, she tells me that she doesn't want to open the stripy packets, that she likes having them in her drawer. But, nonetheless, she carefully tears one open and brings out, folded in a coil, a pair of grey school tights.
1. There is just time -- a couple of minutes -- to examine the variety of things stacked outside an antique shop, but not time to buy any of them.
2. Bettany is very cross with me, but still reaches for my hand when we go over the road.
3. This mango is really very good -- perfectly ripe, piney and sweet -- but the children don't want any.
1. Released into a bit of open space and with no one telling them what to do, the Cubs dart around like little fishes who have just realised crumbs are being thrown on the water.
2. Sitting in the pub with a pint, I type up a scrap of a writing exercise, letting the characters reveal more about themselves, to see if I can bend it into a story.
3. We come home to find that Nick and Alec have both done Alec's art homework.
1. A wild creeper with crimson leaves drapes the neglected trees at the back of the car park. Bettany and I raid it for vines to weave around an autumn wreath.
2. We sit playing with an electronics toy, building circuits, testing them and clicking them apart again. We both marvel at the conductivity of Bettany's wet fingers, a pencil line and a cup of salty water.
3. Nick brings the printed copy of Alec's history essay downstairs.
1. Softening a stroopwafel over my coffee cup.
2. Burying bulbs feels like sending a message to myself in the spring.
3. We suddenly remember a phone call a while back in which we got some advice on a matter that is troubling us again. I flip back through my notebook, and there it is.
1. After coffee with our friends, Nick and I poke around the garden centre choosing bulbs for next spring.
2. Up the hill I can see the bright crimson leaves of a cherry tree facing the end of the growing season.
3. We are watching Ronja again. Bettany observes Lovis, tall and strong, taking charge of the robbers and her volatile husband, and says, 'I want to be like her.'
1. Ripe orange tomatoes have tumbled off the vine to lie on the grey-blue slate chips I used as mulch.
2. There is something a tiny bit magic about making a roux -- and it's fun to see Nick discovering that as he prepares cauliflower cheese for lunch.
3. Bettany brings me an enormous, richly illustrated book of world myths.
1. Bettany, who is really, really good at putting poems to memory, murmurs a maths mnemonic.
2. As I am walking home at 9pm, the bus from Brighton stops at the lights. It will go up town then turn round and go all the way back to Brighton this evening. The late night wash of sea on shingle under orange sodium lights and a chip shop with steamed up windows, still serving at 2am, pull at me like an undertow, then are gone.
3. To sit with Alec and hear the list of important things in his day.
1. The toothy smile on the birthday boy's face when he catches sight of Alec.
2. They shout that it's cash only from now on and the woman in the queue ahead of me turns away. But she is called back and given a free pizza slice.
As I am leaving the shop, I hear her tell her little girl, 'I know what that was. She's my godmother.'
3. I spent an hour in the sunshine on Saturday turning and sifting the compost heap; and now I have soil to pot on some languishing houseplant cuttings and to finish a number of tasks that have been -- similarly -- languishing at the bottom of my to-do list.
1. We go to a secondary school open evening, and Bettany dissects a kidney, implodes a drink can, builds a circuit, does some match-stick puzzles, writes a secret message using starch, watches chemicals change from 'water' to 'wine' to 'milk' and decorates a paper leaf.
2. After a quick supper in a Turkish grill we hurry home under a sky where rags of cloud and drifts of mist move aside to reveal the stars
3. We're definitely home before the menfolk, but Bettany wants to spend some time standing on the door step imagining that they are sitting in the dark on the sofa, and that when we come in, they will say in soft, creepy voices, 'We've been waiting for you.'
1. I briefly stop work to help Nick put clean sheets on the bed and enjoy the thought that later we'll be sleeping in fresh sheets.
2. There is a packet -- or rather less than a packet now -- of Fox's Crunch Creams in the biscuit tin.
3. I have read an awful lot of words today for work. To wind down with an audiobook.
1. I'm glad I went out to drink tea with a person who is in just as much of a hurry today as I am. It's cheered me up, and given me the energy to finish the afternoon.
2. I jog home in my shirt, my unsuitable coat bundled under my arm to protect it from the unexpected rainstorm.
3. What with one thing and another, I've barely seen Alec all day. There is time now, right before he goes to bed, to sit with him and hear what he has to say.
1. I sleep so long and so hard that Nick gets up before me.
2. We have to keep stopping because the children are playing conkers.
3. There is a single broken bullrush in the pond, and I think it would be all right to take it so the children can examine it and feel its brown velvet coat and maybe pull the seedhead apart and let the fluff float away. They fight over it all the way to Nana's. When we get there, they tuck it carefully into her flower arrangement and forget about it completely.
1. A tomato so ripe and full that it has split open.
2. On a clear cool day, to drink hot coffee with Nick in the kitchen.
3. Hard boiled eggs with soft, deep yellow yolks.
1. From my desk I can smell the apples that Nick is cooking for supper.
2. We're watching Ronja on BBC iPlayer this month. It's a faithful adaptation of one of my favourite books, and Astrid Lindgren's story- and character-craft shines through so that Ronja's actions are utterly convincing. Bettany and I find ourselves discussing her parents, Matt and Lovis, as if they were real people.
3. Bettany lying half on me across the sofa reading aloud from her school book.
1. After I pick up Bettany, tired after a day of school and tutoring, she walks next to me complaining loudly about everything. Nonetheless, as we wait for the crossing at the bottom of the hill, she reaches for my hand.
2. To rock along the side of a hill at dusk on a near empty bus.
3. I need to roll seven dice for this action: it's a good handful.
At last I've got some time to reflect on the wedding we went to on Saturday, and here are my beautiful things.
1. The people sitting nearer the arched entrance have a view sooner, but at last we can see our beautiful Jo 'sprig-muslin drest' coming up the aisle to meet her patient groom.
2. The groom's mother reads a rhyming, well scanned poem she has written and I am beyond impressed that she has worked in the word 'itinerary'.
3. We are interrupted by a conjuror who assures us it's all sleight of hand -- but it's very clearly magic when he instructs me to open my fist, which I have just closed around a single toy rabbit, and I find my palm is full of six or seven smaller bunnies.
4. After the formal pictures, Bettany and the other bridesmaids -- ten of them, because Jo is very fond of children and has a lot of goddaughters and nieces -- disappear and return wearing trainers under their dresses.
5. Alec chatting frankly and seriously with another guest who happens to work for Xbox.
6. Nick is reunited with a few colleagues and is delighted to discover that one of them has set herself on the dream career path that she always talked about over drinks.
1. We feel very sad to be leaving the large and beautiful house we have been staying in. It has large rooms with dark oak floorboards and carved stairways, vast beds, long sofas and more towels than you can imagine.
2. I go in the opposite direction to check out a pub and the bridge that I think must be at the end of this road. A flash of blue catches my eye. A kingfisher? No, far too big. Two kingfishers sitting on top of each other? It's a macaw, turquoise and egg-yolk yellow, climbing about the rail, apparently belonging to the man washing cars in a yard by the river. While I'm staring, startled, a walker coming the other way smiles at me and stops for a selfie with the bird. I call the others over and they come and marvel, too. THEN, a little myna bird flies over and starts chattering away. THEN, I spot a pile of kittens playing in the garage, four or five black, and one that -- strangely -- is red and green and yellow. We spot the mother cat, who is similarly coloured. The car wash man doesn't want to catch my eye when I go to ask, so I just thank him for the wonders.
3. The owner of our accommodation told us that there is a place by the river with a mill and a gravel beach where people like to go. We come upon it rather by chance, and it is lovely -- one of the millennium greens, it says.
1. In the rain, across the way there are three men doing a one-man job, as if it's something urgent that must be complete before the building gets any wetter.
2. Bettany brings her bridesmaid dress downstairs to show our neighbour, and she gasps so loudly when she sees it.
3. Watching the quiet live footage of the Queen lying in state in Westminster Hall. The public shuffles past, some pausing, some bowing, some walking right on by, and no-one says a thing. Every quarter of an hour, the queue halts and the guard changes, the strike of their boots and staves echoing in the hall. It is comforting to know that she does not spend this in-between time alone.
1. The soft racket of the news stories about the nation mourning the Queen.
2. The postman hands me a rigid envelope. Certificate?
3. I threw a frozen lump of elderflower syrup into the pan of fruit. Over ice cream, it tastes of early summer.
1. An instructive hour is spent researching the work of a top-selling author for an upcoming edit which will be marketed in the same niche. Of course I need to read a couple of the books, and I am quite justified in putting them on expenses.
2. In a back corner of the garden I find that a pot of soft strappy leaves has put out long stems topped with whitish minarets.
3. In the dark, beyond the shutters and the window glass, rain is falling.
2. We've been waiting for this sad news all day, and it's almost a relief when Alec comes back into the kitchen after supper to say that the Queen has died. We stop and put the radio on. The soothing all-channels BBC national crisis coverage helps us into the new reign.
3. It's been a week: two PMs, two monarchs and we're facing down a cost-of-living crisis. But the houseplants still need watering, and so I fill my little watering can with rainwater and pick up my orchid spray and paintbrush.
Photo by Ryan Johns on Unsplash
1. To unbox and marvel at the tiny folding stove that I have bought.
2. From the window I spot scarlet among the toothed leaves, a tomato that I have missed.
3. Tucking Bettany's hair into a shower turban.
1. Once I've snipped off the stalks and turned the bunch over, the bowl of grapes looks much more enticing.
2. Nick and I take a few minutes to anticipate the accommodation we've booked for a wedding we're all going to in a few weeks. One of the bedrooms has a freestanding bath in it, like you get in a posh hotel.
3. Bettany asks insistently for 'that swan dance music' for Barbie's ballet recital. We find Swan Lake on Spotify and this seems to satisfy her. Barbie has to go through many, many rehearsals before she is allowed to perform to an audience of one -- her mother (a long-suffering Scott Tracy doll in a dress. He stands in for Ken and several other men in Barbie's complicated love life and is emphatically not allowed to rescue her).
1. If the bigger church is needed and the orders of service run out, that's a life well lived.
2. In a rush of bright maxi dresses, Katie's girls race round the corner calling my name.
3. To see the iterations of a family face
3b. To know that all these people are holding safe a version of the story.
1. Beyond the expert talking about the dark final days of Romano-Britain, away on the other side of Crofton Roman Villa, I can see our children with their heads over a board game.
2. Bettany brings me some yellow leaves and asks for a crown. Unexpectedly, my construction holds together and she wears it all the way home.
3. There is a restful hush in the garden in these last days of summer -- despite the sounds of our children playing, and the neighbours' children over the fence. It feels like the quiet that comes after a job well done.
1. As we go up through town, we see more and more boys wearing the same uniform as Alec. I keep checking to see if he'd like me to leave him, and in due course, I get the nod.
2. At coffee time, there are salty French biscuits.
3. At the end of supper, I escape from the evening routine (taking my pudding) and go back to my desk to watch Sophia Jansson discussing Tove Jansson's peaceful essay collection, The Summer Book, which is 50 years old this year.
1. Sitting with Bettany combing out the hair on a Barbie. She was very keen to buy a new one -- but between my combing efforts and Nick showing her how to buy doll's clothes off Ebay, we've encouraged her to consume a little less.
2. Even though there are a lot of boys in games kit walking towards me in ones and twos, I spot my son from a very long way off.
3. Nick patiently and tolerantly cleans up the mess from Bettany's cocktail shaker accident.
1. The neat pencil drawings of laboratory hazards on Alec's homework.
2. ...and when he has done enough of them, we can go out for coffee.
3. Bettany looks down at her empty bowl and announces that she will not be ordering off the children's menu again.
1. Alec has organised lunch today -- ramen with leftover chicken and a fried egg on top.
2. I've been floundering a little with uncertainty over work for a new client. It is a relief to switch over to old familiar content that almost writes itself, and to remember that one day, the new client's work will be easier, too.
3. I come down for supper to find Bettany mixing up juice drinks in a cocktail shaker wrapped professionally in a towel.
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2. The path is thick with fallen acorn galls that crunch satisfyingly underfoot.
3. Last thing at night, to vanish into Mrs Gaskell's Cranford, which is fast becoming a favourite. She has the knack of sketching a whole personality from a single habit; and Mary Smith is a kind but perceptive observer. It reminds me a lot of L. M. Montgomery's Avonlea books -- but Mrs G is much less wedded to a happy-ever-after.
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1. In Canterbury, the mysterious way the cathedral appears and disappears -- by some miracle, its great sandy gold mass is invisible in the streets closest by, but in the outer streets snapshots of the pinnacles and spires are framed in alleyways and between the buildings.
2. Alec, dancing ahead down the hotel corridors, leads me up the stair to the fourth floor to see the view (it's the cathedral again, but it's worth it).
3. At the Roman Museum there is a case of reddish pottery dishes, some crusted with sea worm casts. They were pulled up near Pudding Pan Rock by fishermen, and were prized by their wives for daily use. It turns out they are Roman dishes, Samian ware -- some marked with maker's names -- from a shipwreck or dumped cargoes.
4. It's a bright hot walk from the bus stop to the station. To our right is a green space where the river is split by sluices for a long-gone mill. We divert through to walk on the grass and look down at the passing water, then re-join the route that Google Maps is telling us to take.
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1. To leave the house before anyone else is awake.
2. Bettany has been asking for a pet snake this summer. We're on a mission to find out lots about them so we can work out if we'd be good at keeping snakes: it's a big commitment, and they live a long time. Today Kacper and his mum bring us three snakes to visit. We marvel at the shimmering scales on the heavy python and the boa, and call our neighbour to wonder at them through the garden gate. But the one we really like is the slate blue and orange corn snake that quests around our pockets and around our shoulders.
3. We knew Kacper when he was a very little boy doing his best with his second language in a new country. Today, he is an almost grown man, articulate and knowledgeable and a great ambassador for the National Centre for Reptile Welfare. We are very lucky to have such a great source of advice, and if you see him with NCRW at any shows or events, ask him lots of questions: I guarantee you'll learn something interesting.
1. When I start work, there are long spatters of rain on the window, and a faint pricking sound of more to come.
2. In the rain boys from an office line up houseplants in matching white pots against the red brick wall.
3. I've been focussed on my work today, not rushing exactly, but pushing ahead and not lingering on anything. Now we are making sushi for supper, and I'm hungry and I want to hurry the children along. 'Make some sashimi,' I say. Slices of salmon and tuna are faster than the rolls they've been making. But then I realise, this is our family time. We've nowhere to be but here, and soon the rice will be finished.
1. The scent of wet earth through the bedroom window tells us that our neighbour is doing her watering on this hot dry morning.
2. I have a lot of desk work to do today, and I'm grateful for the natural pauses of a physio appointment, coffee time, going out to fetch a child from an activity.
3. We stop our evening's work and watch Bugsy Malone. Bettany has been listening to the songs all day at her dance workshop, and she has many, many questions. It is a bit tricky to get her to go to bed because she is more interested in constructing a mobster costume out of school uniform.
1. The pineapple part of my ice lolly.
2. We're playing Cluedo with Bettany. I ask Nick if he's sure the cards are in the envelope. Our gazes meet and we both laugh remembering Father Ted.
3. It's bedtime, but in the cooling dark I'm circling our streets to find an alarm that is going off. Fragments of quiet chat, lamplight and TV sounds finger their way out of open windows, and the scent of jasmine, honeysuckle is everywhere.
1. 'Your passport is here!' Nick calls up the stairs. Looks like I'll be going skiing next Easter, even if the children aren't. Their first passports are taking much longer than my renewal.
2. After supper, Nick leaves the washing up and we walk out, just for the exercise.
3. To feel desolate at the end of a book.
1. Picking and eating an early blackberry -- sweet and warm from the sun.
2. To sit in the garden watching the day fade out of the sky.
3. Towards the end of the evening, Alec calls to tell us about his day.
1. The list of names that Bettany mentions at the end of each day's workshop has been getting longer as the week passes.
2. At the end of the day, I'm a bit boggled by how much work I've done -- both in terms of hours and in terms of quantity. I've mostly had my headphones on, full of white noise, against the scaffolding racket and the household distractions. The day has flown by.
3. The physio has loaded me up with an exercise routine that is really pushing me -- and it actually feels okay to do that work.
1. Linda next door has a marvel growing in her garden. It's like a small green pineapple on an electric green stem speckled with brown. She says she planted it years ago and it never came up. 'It's not meant to be outdoors,' she says. We imagine that the hot weather might have brought it out of hiding. I'm admiring her vigorous pink lavatera and she says conspiratorially, 'Wilco. Their seeds are only 50p.'
2. Alec asks to walk home through the shopping centre. We're on the same floor as Wilco, and remembering Linda's advice I go and look at the seeds... and nearly have a heart attack when the woman herself bobs up in front of us.
3. I am supposed to be feeding Bettany her lines, but the script is downstairs, and I don't know the parts of two other characters not played by my daughter. But it's okay, because she can prompt me by bellowing those lines at me in between her own.
