Three Beautiful Things

1. At the other end of the phone he says: "It's good to hear your voice." 2. There is one loaf of bread left in the bakers. I buy it. 3. We listen to Tartuffe on the radio -- it's a translation by Roger McGough in funny, current wordgamey verse. I am hooked from start to finish.

1. A book in one hand, a jam sandwich in the other. 2. Archie seizes my finger, puts it and several of his own into his mouth and gives the whole a good gumming. 3. I read a poem about clouds today in qarrtsiluni and turn my eyes to the sky. 'Did you feel rain?' someone wonders. 'No. Just looking.' And throughout the evening the conversation turns again and again to the changing sky. As we are leaving, Pete points to the west at grey clouds with orange bellies.

1a. Today I am 30. 2a. There is a new post up at 12 Old Masters . 3a. My book proposal is one of six shortlisted in the Long Barn Books loo book competition . The results are posted on Susan Hill's blog . I'll hear on 30 June if it has won a publishing contract. I can't stop smiling. 4a. My new favourite riddle: 'A man in Egypt jumps into a river and shouts "I am not wet." Why?' Guesses in the comments , please, and I'll give the official answer tomorrow. 1. My brother has bought me half an acre of rainforest from Cool Earth . I love the idea that there's a little slip of land in Brazil that belongs to me, containing 22 mature hardwoods and thousands of species of insects. The purchase price will be used to pay for rangers from the area and to support income generating schemes that work with the forest rather than against it. 2. Hearing owls -- this reminds me of a line from a Siegfried Sassoon Poem called 'Middle-Ages': ' Owls in the ...

1. The lovely egg-yolky colour of tinned peaches. 2. Getting my groceries delivered. It feels like shoplifting because so little effort is involved. 3. A.E. Houseman's On Wenlock Edge . It's one of my favourite poems. This is because it's very learnable -- each line has a little picture, and the rhyme scheme is simple a b a b. Also, it's about Romans and it deals with one of my favourite themes: things are pretty much the same as they ever were. I had a bit of an epiphany about this during my GCSE year when I was studying some other poems about Romans in Latin. Catullus was a young man who wrote a series of very brilliant (and very rude, some of them) poems about a heart-rending love affair. I studied them, read them over, wrote about them and suddenly realised that Romans were not just exercises in a Latin primer; they had been human beings who quarrelled and fell in and out of love and teased their friends, just like me. Catullus also made me realise that there was so...

1. My new trousers have massive pockets -- so big that I keep losing my handkerchief. 2. It is raining hard at home time and so Oli drives me to my front door. 3. When a book falls open on a poem that's been chasing round your head -- in this case, Ogden Nash's The Adventures of Isabel .

1. The smell of No. 7 lippy, because it makes me feel as if I look beautiful. 2. The extra height from high heels. 3. Laughing at the poem Chris wrote to mark his leaving the company until my eye-makeup was quite ruined.

1. Oli has written a poem describing how Tunbridge Wells makes him veer between wanting to fall in love and wanting to shoot people. Which is nice. What I like is the number of details he picks out that made me go 'Oh yeah! I noticed that too!', such as the apparent coldness of the army surplus shop. I have put the poem (I would have used the word 'verse' here so as not to repeat 'poem' but Oli got cross yesterday when I called it 'verse'. Given the theme, I'm trying to stay on his good side) up on Tunbridge Wells Tells, my celebration of 400 years of the town. 2. I got caught in the rain again, but I enjoyed warming up under a hot shower. 3. Dried mushrooms because they magically expand when cooked.

1. Walking into a charity shop and seeing a beautiful 1950s Wind in the Willows illustrated by E.H. Shepard. Wind in the Willows is one of those books I like to read and re-read. I have had an edition illustrated by Michael Hague since I was seven, and flipping through this new copy I've already spotted some familiar compositions. 2. I saw five magpies, and it reminded me of the counting rhyme One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold and seven's a secret that's never been told. I like counting rhymes because they have a good walking rhythm. And the ones to help you remember the alphabet, too. 3. Walking home across The Common and seeing other people out enjoying the rain, too, including a lady walking a big white poodle, and someone far off with a bright crimson umberella.

1. Rain dropping out of the sky in straight lines. I once saw a poem - it was arranged letter by letter down the page - that said something like: 'When the rain is falling in long columns we are inclined to forget how wonderful it is.' 2. I've got a sore wisdom tooth. Not really sure what to do about it. Then my dentist rings. 'Our computer's down. Do you know if you've got an appointment soon?' 'Nope,' I say. 'But can you tell me what to do about this wisdom tooth?' 'If you pop in, we'll have a look and maybe give you some antibiotics.' 3. I'm reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything . I love popular science books about the origins of life; and I love Bill Bryson's eye for interesting details - there are giant concrete dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park and a dinner party for 21 was held in the iguanadon; Marsh and Cope discovered the same dinosaur 29 times; mastodon means 'nipple tooth'.

1. The outside of our office building is being painted. Every time I go in or out a different coat in a different colour has been put on. 2. Ed leaves work half an hour before me. I noticed that it was chucking it down with rain and laughed. He replied: As Clare walks home down the lane Let there be a hurricane. Obviously I couldn't let that go and cursed him with: Cold winds batter Edwin Birch To make his footsteps veer and lurch. 3. A call from my neighbour Fenella. 'When you get home, can you do me a HUGE favour? Can you pop down and let Andy out of my study?' Apparently, the doorknob had 'come off in his hand.'