Three Beautiful Things

My cousin Amy shares a beautiful thing: "Nipping down to the corner shop for some washing up sponges after having been confined to the house for two days. It's really windy and I become aware of just how much air there is for me to breathe in! I gulp in as much as I can on the two-minute walk." 1. We take Alec to see his paternal grandparents for the first time. Nana chats to him in baby talk, and tells us that she used to comfort Nicholas with some sugar in a handkerchief: "Just half a teaspoonful and we boiled and boiled the handkerchief." 2. Alec's aunt Sarah cradles him calmly and capably and brings us news about her own grandchildren. 3. Nick brings from the oven a substantial pudding bubbling with black treacle.

1. A card comes from Nick's sister, niece and great nephews. Dylan, who is just about to start school, has embellished the envelope with pencilled letters, diligently copied from our address. 2. The health visitor encourages us to help Alec's wind by giving him a finger to suck between meals. We'd already been doing that, but didn't want to admit it in case it was the wrong thing to do. 3. A mouthful of dark chocolate -- according to Fenella it will make my milk taste better for Alec.

1. A parcel for Alec: a knitted tanktop depicting a workmanlike digger, sent south by Nick's gaming friend Simon. 2. We pop into the Oxfam bookshop to show Alec to Sandra the manager, and get chatting to one of her volunteers who is a proud grandfather. "You can look at babies for hours," he says. I can only agree. 3. Shhh. One of my favourite moments of the day is when we lay the sleeping Alec in his moses basket and snuggle up together. He'll probably join us later in the night, but for now, it's just the two of us.

1. Fenella visits, bringing encouraging words and an offer of babysitting -- it means a lot to have a diligent and skilled mother willing to do this for us. She also brings some clothes, including Alec's first blue item: a knitted hat the colour of hyacinths. We put it on for his walk round the park. It suits him so well that we (very) briefly consider Hyacinthus as a middle name. 2. Granny Pat comes round to meet her first great grandson. He was born on my late grandfather's birthday, which pleases her very much. She salutes Alec smartly, and tells Nick "I was in the army for two years." 3. We're getting on better with the feeding -- mainly thanks to lanolin and a very supportive husband. Nick administers the Infacol, helps with positioning and records the time and length of each session in a notebook. He winds Alec afterwards, and gives us tonnes of praise. Our first 20-minute feed made me feel on top of the world. Alec just burped.

1. It's such a bright beautiful day. The woods are wearing rags of autumn colour still, and the contrast with the winter branches makes me want to look and look. 2. The midwife says: "I can feel a back here, and I think this is a bottom up here." She says that I'll get some strange feelings in the next few weeks as Baby Badger grinds its head down into my pelvis. 3. When the time comes to make my next appointment, I ask the mother (who has offered to drive me there) when would be convenient. She shakes her head -- she doesn't mind. The midwife says: "First grandchild is it? Nothing's too much trouble, is it." I'm loving all the attention you get from being pregnant.

Susan emailed to let me know that she'd posted her 'how I found 3BT' story on her blog, Notes from Innisfree . It was mentioned in a sermon at her church -- so thank you to that pastor, whoever you are! And I had another message this morning: Sandy wanted to tell me about the 1,000 Crane Mission -- a project to release 1,000 paper cranes, each inscribed with a positive word, into the wild. I really love these projects that reach out, hoping to touch the lives of random strangers. 1. My mother appears, and she has some cake. 2. We have guest staying tomorrow night. I hunt down the bag of visitor's linen and make up the bed in the attic.  3. We have our first NCT class. They separate the mums from the dads to help us mix. We're talking about how we've found our pregnancies. We can hear the dads roaring with laughter next door. "They're just talking about beer and football," someone says. When we are alone again, I ask Nick what they said. ...

Natalie commented the other day to say that she has started her own 3BT blog . Go Natalie! 1. We think we should probably get up. I guess that it must be at least lunchtime. It turns out that it's only twenty to eleven. 2. Nick's dad is still thrilled with the results of his cataract operation -- "The curtains when I woke up the morning after. All those reds and greens." Plus he is thoroughly enjoying the sharing of his gory eye surgery story. Now he has gout -- but it seems that even this cloud has a silver lining. He can fit into a pair of shoes (the colour of a freshly picked up conker) that were previously too big. "They're handmade, look, beautiful. We found them in a charity shop for £6." 3. "This is going to be more of an amuse bouche than a bowl of soup," says Nick looking anxiously at the single serving that is going to have to do for two of us. But there's some cream that needs finishing, and leftover cold potatoes in ...

1. To arrive home just as my aunt and cousin come to the gate. 2. Granny Pat says: "I love you, Clare and I love the baby." She is delighted over and over again by the news that I am her grand-daughter, married and carrying her great-grandchild. 3. Cyclamen in dolly-mixture colours, and pale autumn crocuses planted around trees. It's good to see some gentle colours among the deep greens and hot reds and yellows.

1. Sarah Salway gave us a nestbox for a wedding present. I think it brought us luck in our house-hunting. Nick has come up with a cunning plan that allows us to wire it to the trellis in the garden. 2. Nick's dad rings. I say I'll call Nick down from the attic. "Tell him to be careful on those stairs." 3. Recently I friended a fictional character on Facebook. She's the creation of a friend -- a character in a TV series (I think) that he's working on about an institution for gifted teenagers. Blue Malone 's gift is that when she holds an item, she knows things about the last person to use it. She writes up her diary on FB and posts snippets that she's picked up. She's been known to comment on her friends' posts, which is strange -- but pleasing, too. I've never consumed fiction like this before -- I know it's out there, but until now, I've never found anything that appeals to me. I think anyone can friend her -- try this link to...

1. This morning, everyone wants a piece of me. I think this is what being a mother must feel like. 2. Rosey is off to the Arctic this weekend, and her worries put mine into perspective. Will a half litre bottle be large enough to pee into when she can't get out of her tent during a snow storm. Where is she going to find a black bra with no underwires in her weird size at short notice (she's not changing her clothes until June so a white bra will turn a distressing colour). 3. We watch the last Wonders of the Solar System -- Professor Brian Cox's final wonder is our civilisation. This put a big smile on my face. I fully admit that there are a lot of things wrong with what we are doing to the planet, but I do get tired of the way we run ourselves down. When you think about things like microchips, bicycles, chocolate biscuits, four-year crop rotation, neurology and German expressionist film, you have to admit that we have achieved an awful lot.

Here are my favourite beautiful things from this week. As always, the long-list is here . You can even subscribe to its feed and watch it growing as I do my Sunday reading! Sprite spots a patch of violets . Lynn celebrates a cherry blossom festival . Louisa woke up under a pile of beasties . Mary enjoys her Christmas cactus . Plutarch celebrates German because it has a word for everything . 1. To use a vacuum cleaner to suck dust off the skirting board under the bed. 2. My aunt baked us a simnal cake, and decorated it with a Zepplin flying across the Caucasus Mountains (she can represent anything in cake). We have a gooey slice with our tea. I love marzipan. 3. We move into the sitting room because the painter is coming to freshen up the bedroom. The sofa is smaller than our normal bed, so it's all very cosy.

1. Granny Pat remembers my husband. "She said: 'That's Nick Law'," my aunt tells us. 2. Stand still. Willow tit (drab little fellow in a black velvet cap) and nut hatch (black Lone Ranger mask, blue-grey jacket and a waistcoat the colour of the ragged inner bark that clings to sweet chestnut rails). 3. "That bright star on the horizon is Venus," says my uncle. "And at about four o'clock, there's a dimmer one -- that's Mercury. You don't often see them together." Later, as we walk home from the station, we look at the sky again. "Do you see stars, or just dots of light?" Nick asks.

Here are my favourite 3BT posts for the week. Lynn plays the glad game . Penelope's daughter sees the joy in a banana . Eyebee has something nice for breakfast . Leonora fills her hands and empties her head . Bag Lady will never be short of work . Whitney takes a holiday . Spring has come for Merope's dogs . Louisa's new dog has her dancing to a different rhythm . Sprite's birthday presents are handmade with love . Confucian bells ring true for Plutarch, and a toad reminds him of national service . Genny hears some satisfying gossip . It's spring for lucky Joe in Vegas . 1. We visit Nick's parents, and find them in good spirits. When I write that, I feel like a historic diarist -- my whaler's wife, or Anne Hughes from Diary of a Farmer's Wife . 2. I like to bring bedding in off the line -- it always smells better than any detergent ever could. It's a cold smell that fills the vault of my head and makes me think of light and shadow....

I had the pleasure of interviewing artist Lesley Featherstone recently about an exhibition of her pictures at Trinity and Town and Country Foundation Gallery that runs until March 14. She also ran some workshops for women at the gallery. Lesley emailed me to say that she thought the article was a beautiful thing, which tickled me immensely. She added: "The other was the incredible women at the workshop Monday. The third was putting it up with Jane." Jane is Jane Churchill, who runs the gallery, and she's a very lovely (but busy) person -- I'd really like to interview her one of these days, too! The podcast is up . 1. I look up to see the dustman passing the window where I am working. The fourth time he passes (on his way back from replacing our bin) we exchange half nods. 2. I am making a ginger cake, and I am mystified by the instruction to add a certain weight of golden syrup and treacle. I picture myself standing there until Turpentine Sunday while the...

1. My mother scrubs the mould off our kitchen window frame. 2. Stuffing sacks of old clothes into the recycling bin. The hopper closes with a polite clang. 3. A pair of palm-sized portobello mushrooms in our vegetable box. Their dense flesh looks like real food. I imagine how a hunter-gather would have felt to find them on her patch. Perhaps she would have smiled and thought: "That's supper sorted."

1. It strikes me that my job these days is to investigate things of interest, and then write about them. That puts a smile on my face. 2. I couldn't get the name of the song mentioned in yesterday's post -- my hearing of the words is a mis-spelling, so I couldn't find it anywhere on-line. But somebody knew -- somebody who we all laughed at when he bought a CD of Nepali folk music. Thanks Daddy. 3. Putting a paycheque into the bank.

In the 3BT world last week: Raymond suffers a coyote alarm .  Louisa explains why she doesn't want a second bathroom .  Plutarch admires the style of an elderly man crossing the road , and remembers when all this was snow .  Den suffers for her husband's art (but thinks it was worth it) .  Whitney hears Fitzroy's oldest member lift up his voice .  Leonora has a very mannerly farrier . 1. We have put away all the wedding cards, and now the room looks spare and clean. I'm keeping all the good wishes safe, though. I still like reading over them, so I'm keeping them with the other ephemera that reminds us of the day. 2. We show Nick's parents the wedding photos. They coo over them, marvelling at how good the photographer is, and at the pictures of themselves. 3. We go to The Ghurka Restaurant on Church Road. Towards the end of the meal, a song comes on that was playing everywhere when I went to Nepal in 2001. I chatter to Nick about prayer wheels made fr...

1. New snow has fallen in the night. It looks curiously like mould. 2. Just before 10am, my Twitter screen is full of sad lines about trains stuck just outside Tunbridge Wells. I really feel for Nick, who I reckon is stuck on one of them. Then, I hear the door go, and his "Hallo!" 3. When we go to see the butcher about supper, he says: "Am I feeding two nuns, or two navies?" We decide on one of each. What a strange dinner party that would be. 4. Chatting to my mother on the phone, she says: "Your father has just come in saying that the icicles have fallen off the gutter on to the bench, right where he would have been sitting had it been a warm summer evening. He could have been skewered right through his gin and tonic."

This week I've been astonished to see the hit counter on the 3BT podcast creeping up -- thanks for listening, everyone. I've added Outré and It's a Long Way Home to the Roll of Honour -- thank you James and Cathy. Becoming Human and Whitney at Glimpses of Grace and Louisa Parry have all been enjoying the company of small people -- I just hope Whitney's little'un managed to get herself out of the hatbox. Plutarch has seen daffodils braving the frost . Raymond Pert has put away a burger 'the size of a buffalo's head' . Merope discovers Marks and Sparks and salt 'n' vinegar crisps. And Eyebee is taking pleasure in Shredded Wheat . 1. My aunt says: "Do you want to go to Hobbycraft?" as if she is suggesting a guilty pleasure to us. 2. More birch trees -- their top branches have been smeared by an artist's finger covered in burgundy pastel across a landscape of fawn and khaki. 3. I come home to Nick, and we hug each...

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.