Three Beautiful Things

There will be a short break in posting -- I'll catch up on Monday. 1. Alec's key worker is very proud that she has managed to take a picture of him for his book. He is digging into a basket of musical instruments. The updates she gives me always sound very much like my baby: "He's been looking at books" and "He was fascinated by the wind in the trees". 2. I have a moment to look -- really look -- at the irises Nick brought home on Monday. They are a dependable violet and clear hot yellow. As he walked home, a woman outside a pub shouted: "Your wife upset with you then?" I felt a bit sorry for her, that she needed to be annoyed with her husband before he would buy her flowers. 3. Thank heavens for a bar of cooking chocolate in the back of the larder.

1. We have a rough morning -- Nick leaves us for the attic at 5am. Alec is so demanding and implacable and so unlike his usual cheerful self that I decide to get a doctor's appointment about his cold and cough. But then we fall asleep and don't wake up until 10am. He seems happier, but just wants to cuddle, so I cancel all our plans and we do just that. 2. I'd given up hope of my tomatoes ever ripening -- but one of them is streaked with red, and another is looking distinctly orange. 3. This quiet day has given me plenty of time to read -- in particular The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson , which Caroline brought round (as usual she has judged my taste very well). It's a modern gothic novel set in Provence, and if you've read Rebecca you'll find some of the other threads and themes very familiar. Caroline thought I'd like it because one of the perfume theme running through it -- one of my aims with 3BT is to capture input from all the senses using words. No...

1. "Is there any housework I can do?" my mother asks. I hand her some carrots that need making into soup, and the mince for a supper I didn't have time to cook. What a relief. 2. "Good thinking!" says Anna at my suggestion. I remind her that she taught me everything I know about sourcing pictures on zero budget. 3. Halfway through the afternoon, a charming domestic email from my husband.

1. I realise as we are getting on the train that I don't have a snack for Alec, so I pick up a bakery scone. We find a shaded bench near the swimming pool and share it. The pigeons step up in their crisp grey suits and pick at our crumbs. 2. She is dimpled and small -- but giant compared to Alec. She squats down beside him in the water and stares. Then she reaches up and pats my shoulder. 3. A long nap time meant that I got plenty of work done today -- so the evening is my own.

1. The ice cream chimes ring out, and tinies run out of the bushes where they have been playing. Their dads, who are lounging on the grass outside the pub, call: "You've already had some, go back." And three of them burst into wide-mouthed howls. The dads laugh guiltily. 2. We are sitting in the park, Alec and I. A two-year-old girl strolls up and examines him. Then "Sit?" I nod, and she plumps herself down next to Alec on my legs. 3. Alec won't go to sleep and won't go to sleep and won't go to sleep and I have to work and I'm running out of time. "I give up," I tell him. "I'm going to come to bed now and and I'm going to lie here and feed you." Within 15 minutes he's so deeply asleep that I can work next to him. So much of motherhood is about surrendering.

1. Coffee and crisp croissants for breakfast -- and someone else to do the Weetabix spooning. 2. I love to take a steamy shower when I have bunged up nose. 3. The Great British Bake-Off is oddly compelling -- it provides good baking tips and the contestants' fortunes can change in a moment under Mary Berry's steely blue gaze. It's undemanding viewing, though -- the bakers want to do well, of course, but they haven't built their entire lives around it. Even the losers go away with a bit of a spring in their step -- they're glad to have got this far.

1. Alec takes a nap from 9am to 10am. 2. I come to the nursery and see through the door that Alec is sitting with a book -- upside down, but he's an alternative kind of guy. "He does love his books," they say. And that he's been much more settled today. 3. To hear a helicopter circling, and to check the Tunbridge Wells Twitter stream to see what it's all about -- @kentpolicetwell is ever informative and vigilent.