Three Beautiful Things

1. To stand in the doorway soaking up some sun and enjoying the light and colour on my closed eyes. 2. I give up on trying to work through this cold and lie quietly with a podcast called Penny Royal. It's a good facsimile of the haunted generation experience of watching an Open University lecture on one of three available TV channels while off school because of a childhood disease. My son sits with me and is concerned that I'm being exposed to conspiracy theories, but I'm too sleepy to really engage with the material, so we're probably fine. 3. When I wake up, there are apple-cinnamon pastries for tea.

1. My lemon shortbread round is powdery light and zesty, and much more to my liking than Nick's chocolate rye biscuit. 2. He reports that as he was walking away, two magpies who had been watching him eat his lunch flew down to see if he'd left anything. 3. Paring one long strip of peel off a lumpy cooking apple, raw and weighty in my hand.

1. There's the scent of ferns, and now I will always be looking for an excuse to weed this pot. 2. The wood pigeon doesn't even look my way when I clap to chase it off my coriander pot.  3. My dad returns a book that I'd forgotten I'd lent him. Now I see it, I wonder if the sequel has come out.

1. We're having a rough few days with long sleep and disrupted nights, but 'some of that pasta from yesterday' heated up in the microwave  with a tablespoon of water bumps us over this hour. 2. It was just a quick glance in a busy day, but the sky at sunset, framed cigarette card style by the bathroom window is readily available when I close my eyes. 3. The way spinach wilts into a brownish mess of lentils and vegetables and makes it look like food.

1. Nick standing in the garden lets the roofer know that his enormous radio is very close to my desk window and he moves it over to the other side. 2. He says he can go by himself -- but can I wave him off out of the door. 3. There he is, waiting on the corner with his roof down for the last time this year.

1. I like to see my friend stretching up to catch my attention with a wave. 2. The fern drawn on the surface of my flat white. 3. While no one is looking, I have ice cream and warm chocolate sauce.

1. What will eventually be leek and potato soup simmers gently and comforts the house while I wash up. 2. My daughter is wondering how to go running without looking awkward and feeling cringe, but I am distracted by deer poo, still black and glossy, on the path, and I wonder if the deer are watching us from the shadows among the trees. 3. At teatime, she slips me a chocolate mini roll decorated like a sausage dog. We leave a trail of bone-shaped sprinkles over the kitchen floor.

1. My goddaughter is now grown enough to move out. To bask in her parents' pride at the unfolding story over WhatsApp -- and to admire the way she has cleaned the stickers off her door before leaving. There's something to give parents hope (If you know you know!)  2. There's always something to surprise and delight at an open mic night -- and here comes a youthful folk duo, Drover: beards and bright eyes and big jumpers with original songs telling old, old stories. 3. When asked if I have something for the second half, all I have is 'this old thing, that duologue that you've heard before', but Peppy says it will do nicely. On a lark, I freshen it up by press-ganging a stray actor to sight read the other role, and I am pleased with my boldness, and his gameness. 

1. The neighbours' scaffolding is a lot more in our garden than I was expecting. But there is a certain grim satisfaction in predicting that it will probably be there for longer than the promised fortnight; and that the scaffolders will certainly come and remove it all on a Sunday morning at 8am. 2. It's a day when I'm wanted in two different places at once -- but I get there just as the dentist calls Nick in. 3. The soft mumbling of cricket commentary tells me that Nick is resting as he should.

1. We wake to the sound of gentle, steady rain falling on the roof light and playing in the gutters. 2. For etiquette, we must ask forgiveness for our drenched and unprofessional appearance -- but secretly, I think we're both marvelling at the power of the weather. 3. I come home cold right through to my bones but quickly warm up in a second shower.

1. Flicking through the weekend's photographs -- can still smell the woodsmoke and the grass, and feel the sun on my face. 2. I got into the habit of ruffling my nasturtiums each time I pass to disrupt the flea bugs. This time, none of the iridescent beasties jump up. Now I look properly, the leaves are less lacey, and I'm still hoping for more flowers. 3. The air coming through the open window is definitely a draft and it has a gusty wetness to it that feels like rain later. I close the latch, and enjoy the stillness and the silence.

1. I wake in my sleeping bag just before dawn and crawl out into the cool dry air to admire the eastern sky, where the clouds are gilded on their undersides and all hung about with birdsong. 2. There is on our right an abandoned apple orchard, dark, unpruned and heavy with red-green eaters. We take one each for the continuing journey. 3. Every year, at the tired tail end of summer, I am so pleased to see cyclamen -- clean dolly mixture pink and white -- doing a kindly service  by brightening the dusty leaf litter under hedges. Cyclamen aren't natives, but they often pop up far from gardens, as if someone on a mission has tucked corms into banks and woodlands where they might be needed.

1. It takes me a moment to identify it -- but that's honey in my piece of rocky road, rather than golden syrup. 2. The rain has coaxed a fuzz of green out of the dry baked fields, and everywhere plants are giving it another shot. 3. He returns from the dentist with a packet of antibiotics and a promise that they will start working within 24 hours; and also an extraction appointment for next week.

1. To walk through town cradling a huge bouquet of flowers -- butter-yellow scented stocks and sunflowers and a galaxy of daisy flowers. 2. Following my cousin's recommendation, last week I pushed a few spring onion roots into a pot to see if they would regenerate. I notice now that they are pushing up green stalks, and digging into the soil with new white roots as if they mean to give it a go. 3. She says that the thing that made this evening worth coming out for was my thing.  PS: My thing is on the Word Up Instagram, but it's too early in the morning for me to listen back to my own voice.

1. When I wake in the night, I have something to look forward to: Kim Stanley Robinson's lyrical descriptions of another planet in Blue Mars . 2. There's a bit of an anxious buzz about in my emails -- a website I'm writing a bit of content for is launching. All good wishes to you,  Bridges Insight . 3. It is disconcerting to stitch a school nametape into a man's suit jacket, but that's how it is with teenagers.

1. The kitchen is smudged with chocolate and there is a bowl of ganache icing cooling in the fridge. After lunch, she will bake the cake. 2. To rub between my fingers the tracing paper moons of honesty seeds. 3. Now that my mind is settled and made up, the tasks I've been putting off tumble over each other as if they are in a rush to be done.