Three Beautiful Things

1. Our neighbour sees the mud spatters drying on my over trousers and says, 'You've been on the common, haven't you.' 2. Snipping parsley into my soup. 3. We find that we are enjoying our stories so much that we need a third round of drinks.

1. Through the rain over the road outside the florist, a posy of bright blue and pink flowers. 2. With our supper, pale pink wine in crystal glasses. Sound of the rain outside. 3. Since sunset, we've been glancing outside between tasks and messaging back and forth up and down the house because we hope to see the parade of planets. Mercury and Saturn, in our sky for just a short while after sunset, are hidden behind a bank of cloud; and Neptune is too distant and mysterious for anyone to see with their own eyes; but Jupiter, Mars and Venus are there for us.

1. I slide birthday presents for Nick into the children's desk drawers.  2. The tulips I gave her last week are still giving joy. At home, the last lot of supermarket daffodils are still bright and yellow and cheerfully brave. 3. Tim and I have a nice little Monopoly ecosystem: he has eaten the other players and owns everything except for six well developed properties of mine. He lands on them just often enough that I can survive another turn around the board. I feel constantly off balance, though, and I'm only really coping because of some lucky rolls, a few turns in jail so I don't have to land on his properties, and some helpful chance cards. We end with a draw, because it's getting very late.

1. While looking for something else in the back of the garden, I finally see that a pot of crocuses has put purple spikes through the compost. 2. When I come down, the sitting room is transformed to shut out the world, with candle light and rolled towels and a spa crate so we can sit wearing face masks and watch relaxing television. 3. New notebook.

1. Love to catch sight of our children running in and out of the soft play frame. 2. He falls to his knees in a slide across the floor to express his displeasure at the wrong kind of sweet. Once his mum has calmed  him down, I tell him he did a cool footballer skid, and he smiles slyly. 3. Peppercorns fall and bounce as I fill the grinder. I think there must be a better sort of mill that is easier to fill, but then I remember this one was a wedding present, and that from his highchair Alec used to call it Bub and imagine it on adventures with a jar of Maldon crystals, named Salt.

1. Apparently, the disappointing biscuits are not disappointing to the menfolk.  2. The shadows of children in the night park. A late run-out that might make bed and sleep more enticing. 3. The cold air of the whole dark street is perfumed by that winter flowering thing a few doors down from us.

1. There is still some homemade cake in the tin. 2. He is very tall, with a voice that sometimes makes me think a visitor has come to the house, but he is still quite pleased to be given a cold collation plate. 3. During the course of our game, I zap a neo-nazi with my emotion control power to make him feel embarrassed. He starts crying, gives us plenty of information, and then walks off to start a new life with better choices.