Three Beautiful Things

1. Nick takes me out for breakfast -- at 10am the streets are Sunday silent and the air is so cold and still that it feels as if we are watching the world through glass. 2. Hot chocolate with a peak of foam on top and flecks of chocolate melting into it. 3. He calls down from the attic: "Darling wife, I can track our pizza on-line!"

1. These days, it doesn't pay to get up too quickly. I must be patient with myself -- and with Baby Badger. I like to lie in bed until 8.30am and watch (through the curtains that I have opened for reading light) the wind shaking the blue-grey gum tree across the car park. 2. With my mug of tea I get three ginger biscuits. 3. We watched BBC4's Among the Ruins , a documentary about British novelists between the wars. The series features rare footage of some of these towering names: E. M. Forster (who seemed like a charming, disarming dear), Graham Greene (who wouldn't show his face), Evelyn Waugh (who was breath-takingly rude); Barbara Cartland (who was just... Barbara Cartland) and Virginia Woolf. Check out 08:38, where Alan Bennett mocks the Bloomsbury set. I could have kissed him, because (this is very shaming to admit, and I know I'm letting the woman writer side down) my admiration for Virginia Woolf is very grudging.

It's my day at Oxfam Bookfest (in case anyone has forgotten!). I'll be at the Chapel Place Oxfam Bookshop in Tunbridge Wells today from noon to 3pm.  1. My courgette plants have drooped in the full sun. I move them into the shade, and marvel at how quickly the leaves perk up again. 2. Her love is so fierce and absorbing that her attention always turns back to this wailing, difficult baby. If that's how I am going to feel about Baby Badger, I am not afraid of anything. 3. In these hot days, my evening glass of soda water and Angostura bitters (cool with condensation) is very welcome.

1. Treading on a loose brick in the pavement and hearing it go "collop". 2. I lose Nick while shopping -- a combination of my dreaminess and the crowds. I like to catch sight of his head behind a book display. 3. Ladelling mulled wine into a pair of goblets made from purbeck marble. Purbeck marble is really polished limestone, not marble at all. It's packed full of fossils. Every time I use these goblets I spot something new -- this time, two translucent spots on my goblet distinguishes it from Nick's. The wine was good, too.

Louisa Parry (who runs one of my favourite green blogs, How Can I Recycle This ) has started 3BTing on her personal blog . 1. Nick's dad says of Nick's mother: "If she's holding Nick's hand, I don't see why I can't hold yours," and with a rare smile, he takes my hand. 2. On Friday I had a bit of a career setback. Anna and Sarah have sprung into action, and over mince pies and fizzy wine, they help me work out what it is I can do. 3. Going to a pub and drinking beer while a band plays covers.

1. The apple juice man appears at the door. "I was passing through and wondered if you'd like a crate." Yes please. Supermarket juice just doesn't cut it for me. Mole End's single variety bottles are as exciting as wine. I drink just one small glass a day with my breakfast, so twelve bottles should last almost three months. 2. It's time for the BBC's Autumn Watch . We enjoyed Springwatch so much this year, so we've been looking forward to this; particularly as they promised us badgers. They delivered: badgers frollicking in an orchard (complete with scratching action) as well as rutting stags (which is like a soap opera, but with MURDER), migrating barnacle geese and drunken butterflies. 3. A slice of chocolate beetroot cake has a subtle red tint when you tilt it to the light. Tastes good, too. I split it and filled it with strawberry jam. Picture of guelder-rose berries from Barn Digital .

1. The sound the basin filling with hot water. 2. I've run out of angostura bitters. I console my soda water with slice of lemon. It's cheerily yellow and citric. 3. After I have got into bed and pulled the covers up around me, Nick goes round and puts the heating on for the first time, a small ritual to mark Autumn. He is not impressed by the dust on the switches. Picture of lemon in glass from Stock.xchng.

1. While we wait, we go to a cafe and drink coffee with froth on top. 2. I've cooked kale with our pasta, and when I add the tomato sauce, Louise says: "Look at how a bit of green lifts the dish." 3. It's such a clear night that the stars look like the sun coming through holes punched in a blackout curtain. Picture of kale from Stock.xchng

1. Nick brings tea -- and a plate of his home-made jam tarts -- into the sitting room. My mother is very impressed. 2. His set of pastry cutters nest so that you can pick them up as one; but they separate easily. 3. New potatoes that taste of earth and... well potato. A sweet, soothing, cold and juicy piece of galia melon. I love Able and Cole .

1. Hot apple juice with honey stirred in. 2. I have spent the day sleeping and waking -- I seem to hit a wall after a couple of hours awake, and doze off wherever I am. 3. A documentary about the Cloud Appreciation Society reminds us to look up.

1. The town under a spring mist looks like a pile of junk in the corner of the room covered by a piece of voile. 2. A couple of winters ago I was temping in an office. A week into my stint the guy at the desk next to mine came back from his holiday looking as if he had discovered some wonderful truth. He kept telling us: 'I'd never have done it before, but now I can only say, if there's something you want, go for it. Do it.' He had fallen in love over the internet with a girl from Cape Town, and he had taken a three-week holiday to meet her for the first time. Yesterday on my way to work, I saw him -- and a girl -- on the other side of the crossing. I couldn't catch her voice over the traffic -- I hope she had a South African accent. 3. They bring some wine, and a chocolate tart, which are both really needed by me.

1. Pam sends fluffy yellow puris to the table. I sneak out to the kitchen to see her stretching and rolling the dough and frying them so they puff up like clouds. 2. It's hard to resent delays and a snarled journey when the sun is setting orange in a grey sky. 3. Finding a burnt sugar note in my green tea.

1. It's a flat sort of day, and all I can find to amuse myself is a cluster of scarlet berries in a hedge and an old bird's nest on the end of a bare branch. I've passed it every day this winter, but not noticed it before. 2. Cheeky little boys out and about with their bikes because it's half term. 3. Lying in a silky Lush You've been Mangoed bath with a Neil Gaiman book and a glass of wine.

1. The flavour of the cinnamon that infused our hot chocolate milk wriggles its way to the top. 2. We have no need to go out, so it's no concern of ours if the wind roars around the walls and the rain soaks the world drop by drop. 3. It is late and silent, except for me tapping at the keyboard.

Wow -- I'm over 100 followers. Cheers everyone. 1. Clouds -- gold edged -- are massing in front of the sunrise. 2. A few pieces of raw celeriac. 3. Condensation diamonds on a crystal wineglass.

1. I like having the right change for the bus driver. 2. Given the coffee snobbery that taints my character, I am surprised by my weakness for packet cappucino that foams up by a mysterious chemical mechanism. 3. We sit with in a deep hotel sofa with large glasses of wine close by. Plans for the future float around our heads like bubbles.

Happy new year everyone. Here's to a shiny, clean blank page of a year to fill with fun and adventure. 1. I discover that the sachets of instant cappucino I bought yesterday are decaf. Woe is me. Then I remember that Katie-who-sits-next-to-me doesn't do caffeine, but is very fond of these coffee sachets, so I can share them with her. 2. Picking over the crisply curled leaves of kale and stripping out the stalks and shaking off the diamond drops of water. 3. Spotting a bottle of fizzy wine cooling on the window ledge and hearing fireworks all around us.

Thanks for the good wishes everyone -- much appreciated. 1. My cold has come back -- which means mugs of hot tea and meals on trays. 2. My mother has had a picture re-framed as my Christmas present. I lie dozing and hearing Nick trying to work out how to hang it on a brick wall that bends nails. When it's done, he wakes me: 'Come and look, darling girl.' For me, it adds a bit more home to the kitchen. 3. Digging out My Family and Other Animals . The hot Corfu air creeps into the bedroom.

1. From his Christmas Eve shopping, Nick brings me back a bottle of vile, sticky black cough mixture. 2. Christmas cake -- on one of the best blue plates -- and mug of tea is brought to me in bed. 3. I mix and mix, with a warmed spoon in a warmed bowl, and slowly, the butter, sugar and brandy combine.

1. I expect a noseful of rubbish from the dustcart on my left but instead get wet woods from the stream on my right. 2. A bowl of salty chips splashed with vinegar and a glass of red wine. 3. In our work clothes we pick our way back from the pub along footpaths through the woods. At the office I wave goodbye to my colleagues who still have things to do, and then I head for home.