Three Beautiful Things

1. I go looking for a writing group -- but it's half term, so they're not meeting. Good -- I can go back to bed. 2. It's such a beautiful day -- and I have plenty to do in the back yard. I plant a few bulbs, and feel pleased at the sight of fresh compost in the pots. I also cut down the tired mint -- it makes the rubbish bag very fresh smelling.   3. A high flock of birds -- each one small as stubble on a man's cheek.

1. To go outside and find that a little rain has fallen on a warm day. 2. Thunder storm: save your work. 3. I unlock the door and the house smells of new bread.

1. One of my least favourite pregnancy symptoms is the constant peeing. From the start, I lost the ability to make it through the night -- they say it's preparation for the sleep-deprivation to come. The exact time varies -- but this morning, it was around dawn. The sky was shell pink and streaked with con trails, and I was glad that I had seen it. 2. About ten years ago, I had a back problem that caused pain in my hip. I dreamed that the pain was back, and that I was walking around an unfamiliar town trying to find a shop selling food for supper. The door was always round the next corner, down steps, along a beach, up some steps, under a bridge... Then I woke up, safe at home in bed, and there was no pain. 3. We've been really looking forward to Sherlock -- Mark Gattiss and Stephen Moffat's up-dated re-telling of Sherlock Holmes. I'm really fond of Mark Gattiss, and we know Stephen Moffat from Dr Who, but we felt a bit cautious. I have BBC drama series trust issue...

1. Today, town is looking particularly lovely from the top of Mount Ephraim. Great cumulo nimbus clouds scatter sun and shade across the roofs and parks. 2. Crickets -- someone has wound the hillside up and it is hopping round in circles like a clockwork toy. 3. Nick comes in early and sees my computer face. We go for a walk. When we get home, everything is all right again.

1. As we are leaving, we are startled by a roar. I jump. "What's happened? What's happened?" "Someone's just scored." Nick points to one of the upstairs flats -- our quiet and unassuming neighbour is leaning out of the window jabbing his thumbs at the sky. "10 seconds to go," he calls by way of explanation. 2. I am not above stealing a raspberry from Fenella's plate. 3. Neat arc of new moon. The shadow side is waiting.

1. To wake early in an unfamiliar room and see that the eastern sky is pink. 2. Our blackbird splashing in the puddle by the bins. 3. The cherry blossom is out in our street. Nick says: 'It was just like this when I bought the flat.'

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.

1. The grubby yellowish light of a thunderstorm. 2. My Tunbridge Wells Twitter pane lights up as a thunder storm goes over. Exclamations and back-up reminders make me feel as if I'm working in a friendly office again. 3. The last piece of work has been a slog -- I feel as if I've actually climbed the South Downs that I've been writing about. I'm so glad to be standing on the top of the hill looking back at my progress.

1. When my glasses are smeary (everything has a blue-grey mist to it), to clean the lenses between my thumb and finger with washing-up liquid. To rinse them under the hot tap. Then to put them back on, still warm. 2. Low cloud today. The sky begins abruptly -- before the houses have even finished. 3. Nick brings home a bag of Easter chocolates from his boss.

I added three new 3BTers to the Roll of Honour -- all in Spanish. Estando en Babia , El w.c. de Eric , and Despiertos . I've been using Google Translate to get an idea of what they're saying. Muchas gracias por los tres cosas agradables. 1. To hear the shopkeeper discussing ingredients with the family ahead of me in the queue. He is opening a bag of fresh herbs and saying: "I've got some black vinegar downstairs, but it's very expensive." 2. While I work, I can hear Nick and his friend Nigel battling their forces up and down the kitchen table. At the end of the afternoon, they say rather ruefully that they spent most of the day stealing chickens from each other, rather actually engaging. 3. We watch the lovely, lovely Professor Brian Cox revealing the wonders of the solar system . I'm sort of aware of space and moons and eclipses and doesn't the sky look cool through binoculars . But as a result of a disturbing incident with a science book ...

James Alexander-Sinclair from Blackpitts Garden (and Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits ) has written a 3BT post (with pictures). And the 3BT podcast is up. 1. To get absorbed in my work so that time slips away. It's very satisfying to string together words and know that I am being paid for it. 2. Getting out of the flat for half an hour after lunch. The cold air and the vast blue sky are the wake-up I need. 3. I grab a ready meal because I don't want to think about supper tonight. Oven crisped rice, dull curry, no vegetables. I fall in love with my own cooking again.

1. The sky is Tupperware white, but look carefully: there is a layer of mackerel sky below the flat white ceiling. 2. The road is misty Sunday-morning quiet. A cyclist passes me. He's singing in a reedy voice about angels. 3. I'm a bit rubbish with money -- I feel terrible when I spend, and yet always seem to end up with less money than I should have at the end of the month. When Nick says: "I always give myself a set amount to spend. Once it's gone, that's it", I grumble about it not working for me. However, since one of things I really admire about Nick is his head for finance, I take his advice and go to the stitching show with the money that I could afford to spend in my pocket. Strangely, it exactly covered what I wanted to buy.

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. I have an appointment at the hospital to sign up for clerical voluntary work. My bus is late, and I scramble to find the office among the builder's hoardings and the temporary footpaths. When I get there, I put my head round the door and say I have an appointment with the volunteer officer. "He's not in today." I am now dismayed as well as disarrayed. And then I recognise the Welsh accent from my phone conversations, and I laugh with relief. 2. Out here on the hillside, the sky is large and wonderful -- vaulted wet blue and ribbed with streamers of high white cloud and drifts of macintosh grey raincloud. 3. After supper, warming two cookies in the pancake pan.

1. In St James' Park, looking back up to Horse Guards Parade and the Ministry of Defence behind. It looks like a fairy tale castle. I think that the MoD has King Arthur and his knights sleeping in one of the towers, in case of national need. 2. To come off a hot, bright shopping street in London and walk down a narrow lane that looks as if it hasn't change since 1780. 3. The moon (white silver and shaped like an egg) has been peering round clouds and through the window of the train all the way home.

We've got a game going on Twitter. Tweet your beautiful things in the style of a 3BT title (eg: Long horizon, little clouds and plate of lemons.) and tag it #threebeautifulthings . You can follow me, too if you like: Threebt . 1. This garden on a hillside is so full of sky. Hilary says: 'I just like watching the weather.' 2. At two, everything is marvellous -- including a cat that streaks across the room when you try to stroke it; 'Aeroplane! In the sky! Making a noise!'; running faster than your parents; and 'One, two, three, four, five' apples on the tree. 3. Lorna and I slip round the the back of the house to bounce on the trampoline and talk about being brides. I need to get out of breath, and be reminded that I am not the only woman getting married.

1. They give me CV advice with such joy that I think this is what they've been waiting for all morning. 2. I like to stand on the doorstep as the first raindrops fall from a slate-blue sky. 3. I take a yellow bowl from the cupboard and put yellow plums in it. Then I change my mind and get the purple bowl instead.

For anyone in TWells -- my former teacher, Linda James has a book launch at Waterstones on Tuesday. More information on her website, Writing Under Water . 1. I have picked aquamarine ink today. By chance I put the bottle down so that the sun coming into the kitchen window lights it up like a sapphire. 2. I pick up the material for my wedding dress. The assistant who served me said as I inspected it: "Have you got clean hands, and nice hand cream on so roughness doesn't catch on the fabric?" What a kind way of telling me to be careful. 3. "What did you run down the drive for?" Nick asks when I am off the phone. I explain that Alan mentioned that where he was, there was a dramatic red sunset against dark clouds. I'd gone out to the street to see if we had one, too.

1. "So much eye-candy for the girls," says a spectator at the homecoming parade of our local troops, First Battalion The Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment. 2. We go to the very top of the Tate Modern and eat supper looking out across London as the night washes in. 3. I like to read last thing at night, and to feel my head getting heavy.

1. Two guide dog puppies (long legs and big paws) in the shopping centre. The yellow one watches the tip of a furled umbrella carried by a woman walking past. He tries so hard to leave it, but at last can't resist having a chew. The black dog fails by stretching up to grab a shopping bag. 2. We are doing self-portraits in art. I liked drawing a practice eye and suddenly finding that it was looking at me. 3. Nick is not amused when I call him away from his baseball to walk back up the hill and look at the sunset. 'I've been walking down this road for 20 years. I know about the sunsets.' But this one is particularly good -- the edges of the clouds shine as if they have been heated to white hot.