Three Beautiful Things

1. I had an awful experience trying to book some train tickets recently, and I've been putting off trying again and putting it off... and off... and the people who are doing the same journey as us said: 'You'd better get in quick if you want the cheap tickets' and I put it off some more and worried about it. And then yesterday, I did it. Tickets are in the post. 2. We view a house that is 1960s ugly on the outside, but wonderful inside where an architect has put in a glass door to the garden that runs the full height of the split level sitting room, dining room and kitchen. 3. The paprika falls on my soup in dots, which expand suddenly like ink drops in water.

1. On my desk, the tray of sprouting cress has put out root hairs. By home time, the leaves are turning green. 2. One of the boards has been pulled off and we are mad with curiosity. We peer in. Drifts of shattered glass bounce light around the room. Silver air con ducts hang from the ceiling like discarded pupae. 3. I like watching documentaries about the making of nature documentaries. I like hearing how the cameraman got involved with the story, and the lengths to which he had to go to get his footage.

1. A substantial part of my extended family is waiting for me under a tree as I cross the street, my umbrella straining against the wind and the rain. 2. In the cathedral a clergywoman hurries past in full robes. Our eyes meet and we smile. 3. The washing up is done and shining plates are stacked on the table waiting to be put away.

1. My parents put the tray of coffee down on the table. 'Look what they did on the foam. Ferns.' 2. We walk into the church and immediately notice the incense. On his tour, the verger returns to the theme again and again. 'When the sun comes through those windows and we've got the smoke going...' 'We light the discs with a blow torch...' 'This is the mix we use.' 'We sometimes add some of these rose petals...' 3. On our way round the church I lose Nick for a moment, but find Anna who is a dedicated 3BT fan. When Nick comes over, she wants to try his head for velvetiness.

These posts are about this walk: View Larger Map 1. We turn a corner and look down an undulating three-mile drive to Windsor Castle. The road is dotted with tiny citizens and a few deer walk over from the left, stepping through the double avenue before running off across the park. 2. A long-legged boat winch waits to roll down the slipway to draw a boat out of the water. I get the feeling that if it has to wait much longer, it might lock its wheels and walk stiffly away on rattling metal legs. 3. We are looking for a place to stop. But the hand-wide path runs between fence and river. At a footbridge over a ditch, we find a flattened place where the bank has dropped. We sit with cake and apples and watch damsel flies hover and disappear while the Thames slips by. 4. My aunt says that on long journeys when she was little, she would pick her favourite features from the places passed and weave them into a dream house. 5. Mistletoe looks deep green when growing on a tree with budgerigar...

1. Earlier in the week, Nick expressed a longing for steak and chips. So buying supper is easy: I choose two juicy-looking sirloins and a bag of tiny plum tomatoes. 2. At the end of the morning when the sky is looking drizzly, we dive into an architectural salvage shop . The air smells of mortar and stone, and everywhere we turn there are wonders. Alien lichens still growing on staddle stones . Tiles glazed with deep and luminous colours. carved freizes. Mirrors and fireplaces. The ceiling is starred with stained glass lanterns and light fittings suitable for a castle. 3. The year's first sweetcorn on the supper table brings a lot of cheer to the meal, as does the bunch of dahlias in white, orange and deep red.

1. The morning tasks are interrupted because while he was cleaning his shoes on the doorstep, Nick has found a tiny baby snail -- the shell is not much bigger than the bright bobble on a pin head. We look in wonder at this tiny anatomy. It has wrapped itself in a shining bubble of mucus and waves its eyestalks but does not pull into its shell -- perhaps it's too small and naive to know what it should do. Or perhaps, with the world so new and all, it's as curious about us as we are about it. 2. Among all the brown and cream suburban homes, a house with russet and ruddy peg tiles and a white fretwork along its ridgepole. 3. During a Sunday evening shower, a father and two boys sit under a tree at the side of the games field. The pat their football to each other and laugh at the strangeness of the rainy world.

1. The finials off our roof are lined up on the scaffolding. There is a strange dragon and a cone like the roof of a fairytale turret, about the height of a small child. There was once a famous brickworks just down the road at High Brooms -- perhaps that's where they came from. 2. In our catch-up chat while we walk round the block, Nick tells me proudly that he has done battle with Sky and got his broadband working again. 'It took two hours and I had to speak to five different people before they put me through to an engineer who fixed it in five minutes.' 3. In the evening sun, dark pink roses growing through a rowan tree.

Today we took a walk out of Time Out London Walks, Volume 2 . 1. When I first wake, there are tiny hyphens of light on the ceiling where the sun has come through the blind. 2. At John Soane's Museum we pick our way through the architect's townhouse. Every room has wonders in every corner, and the place is a cross between a museum and a salvage yard. Classical marbles -- complete statues stand and shards of decoration -- are displayed so closely that it is almost impossible to move without touching them. I can look unobstructed at the intricate vines and curlicues carved on a freize. 3. In the depths of the house lies a limestone sarcophagus decorated in and out with heiroglyphics. 4. Spotting a vast cake in a shop windown, we cross Theobald's Road to take a closer look. Bea's of Bloomsbury also has plates of meringues, some chocolate-swirled and some splashed with bright crimson raspberry juice. As the shop assistant packs one for us, she says: 'We had a little gir...

Today, being Tim and Rachel's first anniversary , it is a year since I met Nick , who in his own well-ordered way has turned my life upside down. 1. Spreading Marmite on toast for Nick. I spend more nights at his house than he does at mine, so usually it's him making breakfast for me. 2. We go to a concert in the lovely Church of King Charles The Martyr. They sing Vaughn Williams' Linden Lea , which makes me feel as if I've made the right choice in my life with regards to not dreading 'peevish masters'. 3. Nick sits me down on the sofa and presents me with a beautiful pair of embroidery scissors -- here's a man who has been paying attention, because only a couple of weeks ago I bored him rigid with a Maison Sajou embroidery catalogue. He laughs when I solemnly hand him a penny to make it a purchase, rather than a bladed gift that might cut our love.

1. A very large bed with blizzard white linen. 2. Turning a corner and seeing the knobbly Gothic spires of King's College against a bright blue sky. 3. The bath is out in the bedroom, rather than tucked away in a windowless bathroom. As the light fades, we fill it with hot water and clouds of bubbles and sink into it -- with no arguing about who gets the taps, because they are in the middle. We were staying in the Hotel du Vin, Cambridge .

1. The kindness of strangers. The lady at the station ticket office is very sharp with a man who pushes in front of me in the queue; and then she checks the map to see if there is any way I can avoid a replacement bus service. Later, the coffee shop cashier says: 'I'll give you one of my crisp fivers' as she hands me my change. 2. Sitting in the front seat on the top deck of a bus. 3. The cliff road curls back on itself so steeply that you can look down the chimney pots of the houses and shops on the sea front. And what a roofscape -- there's a green copper and red brick dome; flowered clay chimney pots and a garden of vines.

1. Going up to a 13th floor office and catching sight of the view from the windows. 2. Because it's best not to discuss negatives in a job interview, I'm reminded of all the things I really liked about my previous jobs. 3. On my way to the loo, I pass a man alone at a table. He has an enormous bunch of white roses. I wonder who he is waiting for.

1. We visit a National Trust property that I have known since I was tiny. This year, the house has been opened up. Before, it could be glimpsed here and there, but now the evergreens have been cut down so that the mellow sandstone building is visible from surprising places, and the forbidden lawns are now accessible. 2. Dozing on the sofa leaning on Nick. 3. Finishing both packets of pills on the same day.

1. Walking down a street I hear a wonderful voice singing inside one of the houses. I wonder if she's practising, or if she's singing as she dusts. A lady coming the other way catches my eye and smiles back at me. 2. Coming to Alexandra Palace and seeing on one side the shell of the palace's outer wall and on the other London spread out like a toy city. Once inside, I walk round the exhibition hall, dazed by all the stands. Something makes me look up and I take in the rose window at one end and the huge organ at the other. 3. A mouthful of someone else's pudding.

Here, at long last, is a picture of the wonderful 3BT birthday cake made by my talented aunt. Go here for a more explainy version . In other news, Lauren B has been hard at work inspired by 3BT -- see All the Good Blog Names Were Taken for more. Isn't it fun? 1. At lunch, as is customary on hot days, there is a small group of men sitting the gravelled car park discussing important man things like table tennis tactics. I spot a piece of ancient broken blue china on the ground, pick it up and put it on the table. Then I see a larger piece of Willow Pattern in the hedge. Next time I look up, more people are searching for bits of blue china, wondering aloud if this piece belongs with the Willow Pattern, or a different plate. 2. The faint tick that weather-boarded houses make when the sun is hot and the air is quiet. 3. A sofa, an open door, a glass of wine, some trashy women's magazines and graphic novels and a free evening.

1. The venue we use for our London conference has a conservatory with a glass roof. While we had lunch there, we saw a crane on a nearby building site moving a skip high overhead. My father always says that while there are cranes in the city, everything's all right. 2. The biscuits at the conference venue, and seeing one of our speakers pocketing a few packs. He said he'd come back because he'd forgotten his coat. 3. The O. Henry story, The Head-Hunter .

1. The yellow leaves on a tulip tree. The road to work is all in shade, but the top of this tree was in the sun. The leaves were so bright I could hardly stand to look at them. They reminded me of a bowl of lemons on a sunny table at the height of summer. 2. On the other side of the road, a house is been going up. Today three men are hanging tiles on the roof. I think the family who is going to live there will be in by Christmas. 3. Pheasants. I like the way their feathers whistle as they fly up. I love seeing them scurry off along the path ahead of me. And if I sneak up really close, I can hear them brooding to themselves like contented chickens. (Photograph by Michael Grant)

1. For lots of reasons -- two egg yolks left over from the souflé; bacon needing to be eaten; bread has to be finished; uncertainty about lunch; gap between lunch and dinner expected to be long -- a cooked breakfast seems a great idea. I have a creamy heap of very yellow scrambled eggs and some crispy bacon on toast. Then I finish the last slice of chocolate torte from last night. 2. My travelling companions are held up; but that's all right, because it gives me a chance to do a bit more work; which means less to do on Monday. 3. Crossing a suspension bridge is rather magical, because it seems such a daring piece of engineering. The slope of the Severn Bridge and the fineness of the cables made it seem as if we are flying. PaulV had me film it, and the footage is full of laughter and exclamations.

1. A glimpse between the houses of the landscape beyond the edge of town. 2. Being asked to make a list of 50 things that make me happy. 3. Ladelling golden apple jelly into hot jars.