1. The taxi driver zigs up back ways and zags down side streets and jinks into traffic queues to get us across town in time for our appointment.
2. Warm paper cups and crinkly paper bags.
3. Standing in my slippers at the top of the car pack, I get eyes on Mercury hanging under Venus to the west.
1. This morning, all four of us lie in bed, crammed straight like sardines laid out in a tin.
2. I can't see it today, but thanks to my star map, I know that a specific piece of space junk, Cosmos 928 r, which is a Russian rocket body launched a couple of weeks after I was born, is going by, and that it will be back again tomorrow night.
3. Bettany turns up a gentle joke about my parenting that makes me cringe and then laugh until I'm breathless out of sheer embarrassment and recognition.
1. I'm dipping in and out of foggy pockets. One moment, the world is grey and secretive between layers of mist; the next it's sunshine and blue sky.
2. Two icy sheets of cobweb hang aglow in the darkest part of the woods.
3. A dried umbel fuzzed with frost.
1. We take time to walk round and check out the crocuses at the bottom of the park, and they are spectacular, transforming the drab winter ground with their clean pale colours.
2. On the fourth try -- now I'm sitting quietly, properly fed and secluded away from interruptions -- I complete the Sunday puzzle.
3. The first-batch Welsh cakes are a cindery mess, and I can only be grateful they didn't set off the smoke alarm. The second batch is much better.
1. Our neighbour sees the mud spatters drying on my over trousers and says, 'You've been on the common, haven't you.'
2. Snipping parsley into my soup.
3. We find that we are enjoying our stories so much that we need a third round of drinks.
1. Through the rain over the road outside the florist, a posy of bright blue and pink flowers.
2. With our supper, pale pink wine in crystal glasses. Sound of the rain outside.
3. Since sunset, we've been glancing outside between tasks and messaging back and forth up and down the house because we hope to see the parade of planets. Mercury and Saturn, in our sky for just a short while after sunset, are hidden behind a bank of cloud; and Neptune is too distant and mysterious for anyone to see with their own eyes; but Jupiter, Mars and Venus are there for us.
1. I slide birthday presents for Nick into the children's desk drawers.
2. The tulips I gave her last week are still giving joy. At home, the last lot of supermarket daffodils are still bright and yellow and cheerfully brave.
3. Tim and I have a nice little Monopoly ecosystem: he has eaten the other players and owns everything except for six well developed properties of mine. He lands on them just often enough that I can survive another turn around the board. I feel constantly off balance, though, and I'm only really coping because of some lucky rolls, a few turns in jail so I don't have to land on his properties, and some helpful chance cards. We end with a draw, because it's getting very late.
1. While looking for something else in the back of the garden, I finally see that a pot of crocuses has put purple spikes through the compost.
2. When I come down, the sitting room is transformed to shut out the world, with candle light and rolled towels and a spa crate so we can sit wearing face masks and watch relaxing television.
3. New notebook.
1. Love to catch sight of our children running in and out of the soft play frame.
2. He falls to his knees in a slide across the floor to express his displeasure at the wrong kind of sweet. Once his mum has calmed him down, I tell him he did a cool footballer skid, and he smiles slyly.
3. Peppercorns fall and bounce as I fill the grinder. I think there must be a better sort of mill that is easier to fill, but then I remember this one was a wedding present, and that from his highchair Alec used to call it Bub and imagine it on adventures with a jar of Maldon crystals, named Salt.
1. Apparently, the disappointing biscuits are not disappointing to the menfolk.
2. The shadows of children in the night park. A late run-out that might make bed and sleep more enticing.
3. The cold air of the whole dark street is perfumed by that winter flowering thing a few doors down from us.
1. There is still some homemade cake in the tin.
2. He is very tall, with a voice that sometimes makes me think a visitor has come to the house, but he is still quite pleased to be given a cold collation plate.
3. During the course of our game, I zap a neo-nazi with my emotion control power to make him feel embarrassed. He starts crying, gives us plenty of information, and then walks off to start a new life with better choices.
1. I've already been in a taxi and had an MRI, and it is still so early that no-one is up at home, so I stop in the park cafe to drink coffee, eat a shortbread and read an Edith Wharton ghost story.
2. Nick wonders about the little white flowers outside the back door. They're snowdrops, and they mean spring will soon be here. Earlier I saw a planting of giant snowdrops, cyclamen and hellebores at the gates of Dunorlan -- all good friends when the rest of the park looks like it has been left outside all winter and then sat on.
3. Bettany has been asking about Outnumbered, which originally broadcast before she was born. We watch an episode (me through my fingers because well observed sitcoms about family life are just a bit too close to home; and her round her phone, occasionally laughing or asking a question).
1. At the station, a friendly face waiting beyond the ticket barriers.
2. I walk on to the platform in time to see the destination on the front of the train just arriving: it's on its way to Tunbridge Wells.
3. Our lovely child -- just a little bad tempered -- is home for half term.
1. I come down to a fruit bowl full of bright new oranges and apples -- veg box arrived while I was sleeping.
2. She asks for a hug so she can lie next to me and tell me all about her plans for own clothes day.
3. The Folk Show is particularly good this evening. Most of the tracks seem to speak right to us, and for an hour then show holds our attention so that we listen, rather than seeking other things to do while it plays.
1. My mother brings us two jars of blackcurrant jam -- perfect timing, because it's hot cross bun season.
2. When I look up, it's an hour later and I'm 1,000 words in.
3. To marvel at the set before the production starts. This is Dracula -- so of course there are ruins and high windows and disconcerting stairways.
1. Brushing mud off my waterproofs -- much easier to clean them dry than wet.
2. We've been throwing out some old school books. I find Nick sitting on the floor among the recycling reminiscing over photos the teacher has stuck in among the worksheets.
3. I win at chess against my son -- but only because he helps me.
1. As we make pudding for the evening, she is still asking questions about The Sound of Music. I've found a playlist and the songs are streaming straight into the kitchen.
2. Dipping spoons through the bubbly surfaces of our chocolate mousses.
3. Out there in the dark, the sound of steady rain. This is my best kind of rain: steady, and not happening where I am.
1. The satisfaction of finding a nice obscure news story that not many other people are talking about.
2. The little glint in Nick's eye as he talks about the young men behind the names on the honours boards at Alec's school.
3. From the empty containers in the sink, we can see that the children have done as we asked and got their own suppers out of the freezer.
1. I hand over three broken laptops for recycling and walk home with nothing in my bag.
2. In our street somewhere, there is a winter-flowering thing that keeps catching my attention with its scent.
3. An embroidery project -- a pair of gloves -- has been waiting resentfully in the corner for more than a month. I take it up from where I left off. But I can't love the way it looks, and don't think I can replicate it on the second glove. I unpick what I've just done. I try a different approach that should be easier to replicate. Still not happy. I unpick the lot, put the threads in the bin and begin again with a new colour and a new design.
1. As we get closer to the school, we find ourselves walking into a stream of bigger boys heading out to buy their break snack. I feel him shift beside me like a fish twisting out of my hands, and I tell him to have a good morning and he swims away into the dark cool water.
3. When he gets home, he joins me resting in bed for the afternoon. Both of us waiting to recover.
1. Some magazines, and a quiet hour in which to read them.
2. Following the sunlight around the house -- looking for the brightest, warmest spots.
3. We finally get to eat the pork that's been cooking slowly for most of day in a broth with star anise, ginger and cinnamon. It is very tender and delicious.
1. My heart cracks a little when something he says suggests the reason he understands our situation is because he's experienced something similar himself.
2. Across the street, Nick catches the eye of the man in the cheese shop, and within seconds we're crossing through the traffic.
3. The words, 'I just want to pop into Waterstones for three minutes.'
1. Blood oranges and satsumas -- bright citrus colours leading us through the year's darkest days.
2. In the corner on the field, even on this wet morning, a drift of frosted leaves.
3. At supper, someone wonders if prawn crackers actually include prawns. I say that I've seen Lizqi making them in one of her many videos, and she definitely chopped prawns finely and mixed them with the dough that eventually became prawn crackers. Nick says we should watch her later to mark the lunar new year. He selects one that seems appropriate -- Lizqi marking Year of the Ox with crafts and tasty food made from her own produce. It's the one with prawn crackers.
1. To wake of my own accord in the dark not long before the alarm.
2. Nick's potato cake today is a thing of beauty -- warm inside, with a crisp brown crust, ready and waiting to be eaten with a plateful of mince and kale.
3. I really like meeting my deadline well before the end of the day.
1. With my mug of tea, a couple of plain coconut biscuits stamped with NICE and sparkled with sugar grains.
2. I try to explain it by saying that if Daddy declared he was the chosen one and surrounded himself with an unstable cult, I'd probably be very cross because our values had become so different. But also, if Daddy then married a princess who was not me, I would still be deeply hurt. My child is not convinced, as usual -- but I'm sure all will become clear in due course.
3. It was probably fine to have a third cup of coffee, as I'm very much ready to sleep.
1. While reorganising, I find a tent, a magazine I have not yet read, a puzzle book, a space on the floor.
2. I brought the geraniums indoors too late and had to prune the frost scorched stems. Today, when I glance at their corner in the kitchen, I see they've put out some small bright green leaves.
3. A tense moment far away in space and time on the planet Arrakis -- in front of the TV right here, our fingers linked tight.
1. Shoots of wild arum, glossy and stiff as patent leather, force their way through the beige drifts of last year's leaves.
2. It's a particularly good kiwi fruit, and the pieces disappear as fast as I can cut them.
3. Towards the end of the afternoon, a mug of tea and a biscuit appear at my elbow.
1. Both children are off sick, so we all have a lie-in, warm in the dark, and don't get up until full daylight.
2. I work to a writing prompt -- first time in ages.
3. On my lunch tray, blood orange slices and chocolate biscuits.
1. Gorse blooms all year round, so to see the blossoms is nothing special -- but the thing is, the yellow pea-pod flowers are a welcome dot of brightness amid the dripping greys and muddy browns of a wet week in January.
3. To sit around a table making characters and back stories for a new game. I drift in and out of the conversations, thinking and chasing information rabbits in search of the perfect narrative details to match my random stats.
1. After the morning rush, I settle in with a book, aiming for a quick reset.
2. My son comes looking for a chat and some reassurance. Then my daughter joins us, sucking on a box of pineapple juice.
3. To add a few jazzies to a little rosette of whipped cream.
1. We don't have much on, and I am very tired after a day with friends. I spend the time drifting between books and podcasts.
2. The best thing to do for pre-food-tech nerves is to give her space to practise cutting apples and kiwi fruit.
3. The repair in our bedroom is done and we can finally tidy. The meter square of clear floor seems so luxurious. Hedonic adaptation will soon smooth it into ordinary, so we'll enjoy it while we can.
1. While I wait in line for the post office counter, the customers at the head of the queue for the shop fill a bag with vapes and vodka and chocolate, commiserating all the while with the assistant about bad wisdom teeth and the long wait for an NHS dentist.
2. It costs almost £4 in postage, but I am very pleased to dispatch a large parcel of well worn tights back to the manufacturer for recycling.
3. Cold at the open back door, I peer into the blue-green sky trying to see what Nick can see -- a fingertip width from Venus, Saturn should be visible. It takes a while and I have to be patient, but eventually the distant planet resolves.
1. A milky fog covers the town, tastefully draping the buildings that block our view of the horizon.
2. The little daisy in the awkward spot by the table has put out a defiant January flower.
3. Slipping boiled beetroots out of their skins.
1. Here, the ground is frozen into earthy ridges that crumble under my boots; there, I crunch across leftover snow; here again my steps break a crust of ice over a slurry of mud.
2. I roll sausages on to a baking tray while Nick checks the figures I have given HMRC.
3. Saving a copy of my completed tax return, and setting a reminder to pay the bill on Friday. I'm always very happy to get that job done for the year.
1. My eyes haven't woken up yet, but Bettany needs help putting in her earrings. The moment (times two) when the post slips through.
2. She's rather too pleased that her lip balm tube might easily be mistaken for a forbidden lip gloss.
3. I realise that my library book is brand new.
1. I've had a good lie in, done an hour of work, and now it's time for coffee.
2. Grating lemon rind into a pan of warming golden syrup -- the perfume fills the kitchen.
3. I find myself reading 'just one more chapter' until there is no book left.
1. One of those January treats -- making a lunch of the last of the Christmas cheese (although it's not the last as we didn't finish it, so we'll have another cheese lunch soon).
2. Up the stairs comes the smell of the veg chilli Nick is making for our supper.
3. Waiting for me at bedtime is Rosen's Almanac, which each day offers a brief consideration of the words and phrases people use in their private lives.
1. As I walk in, four librarians startle like a flock of crows, all hoping they can help.
2. We turn into a coffee shop for comforting milky drinks and teaspoons of cake. Despite the sleet and the dark, we are still a little overheated by the time we get home.
3. After supper, we make a quick loop of the neighbourhood, with wet flakes striking our faces, to see the snow's best effort at settling.
1. Our last few gingerbread stars are still crisp and good; still tasting of the butter we measured and melted and mixed.
2. I read aloud from his book until my voice cracks, my mind partly on what makes this narrative unwelcoming and hard work, and partly on the story of rats swarming a post-apoc Moscow subway in which ailing, fearful survivors form and break alliances across the dark between the stations.
3. We argue back and forth about important matters such as whether an omnipotent god could create a stone too heavy for him to lift; and whether by repeatedly halving the distance between two object you can ensure they never touch. Another twenty minutes of distraction.
1. The boringness of January: the markless calendar; the undecorated spaces in our house; the protein-themed special offers in the supermarket flyer.
2. Quickly setting a room to rights -- putting rubbish in the bin, folding a hoody, stacking books. Easy win.
3. In a room lit only by the glowing television, we cling to each other, anticipating Green Noah walking.
1. We woke up so late that we don't bother with breakfast tea, but go straight to coffee.
2. We return from our rain walk with feet wet from puddles that we could not walk around.
3. My daughter hands me a pair of thank-you letters written on her new notepaper.