Three Beautiful Things

1. I like to take from the fridge a cold and heavy bowl of chicken stock, and take off the mats of yellow fat that have floated to the edge. 2. I swear the spiked cucumber on the vine by the door gets larger every time I see it. Yesterday, it was thumb-sized, bloomy cute and almost strokable. Today (polished green and angrily spiked, the length of my middle finger) it looks like a stroppy teenager and I'm afraid it might explode if I touch it. 3. In the night, he confides that he is going to make loving me his life's work, and the shadows behind my eyelids are driven away (as if someone turned on a light when I was stumbling in a dark room) by a technicolor vision of walking on grass under brightest sunlight in clear air where cold new water springs from the places inside mountains.

1. Our Monday morning meeting is interrupted by the bellowing of cattle being moved into the barn and the shouts of the cowmen. 2. Ignoring the phone because I am on my lunch break. 3. Just as I am falling asleep, a vision of smoky dragons dancing in a blue-green sky.

1. Three littlies all holding hands as they walk into nursery school. 2.When the plunger of the coffee pot really pushes back, because it means the coffee is going to be strong. 3. I stay up late because I feel as if I can't settle, but when I finally go to bed I fall straight into a deep and dreamy sleep.

1. A dream in which a friend who I fell out with a couple of years ago called round with a bottle of wine and a book I might like. 2. He who shall not be named (pictured) calling me to the window to watch him drop his new bouncy ball. It goes higher than the roof of the oast and lands on the other side of the road. 3. A fridge so full of food that you can't see the light. Also a postcard arrived from Fenella and Andy in Fuerteventura. Their beautiful things are: 1. Sleeping - hadn't realised how tired we were, commuting really takes it out of us. 2. Dozing by the pool, whilst sunbathing and between reading the many paperbacks we needed to catch up on. 3. Eating (then sleeping) enjoying the paella and potatoes. Been trying to stick to salad bar, but discovered banana splits today, so fear it will all go down hill.

1. The moment after I decide I am ill enough not to go to work but before the guilt kicks in. 2. A dream about being able to breathe water. 3. Feeling as if I have had as much sleep as I want.

1. A dream about exploring a sea covered in vastly thick but clear ice on the back of a mammoth. It was night and there were more stars than I have ever seen. 2. When the freelance detective in a crime novel steps aside, giving up the girl he loves because he prefers single life. I've been reading about Albert Campion in Margery Allingham's Mystery Mile 3. The more I think about it, the more I like the motto William Morris put up all over The Red House : Si je puis - If I can. He meant that he would give anything a whirl.