0. (From the weekend) A cluster of blood red french knots.

1. Due to a failure of both teacher and student, Lily fails to learn a new trick (“paw”) but is so cute in her efforts that she gets the treat anyway. (Though that in itself is a further failure of the teacher.)

1b. She licks her lips and rubs her nose as she wakes up. Has she been eating eggs in her sleep?

2. The sloppy sheet of snow hangs off the greenhouse roof, like a cold buckled blanket on an unmade bed.

3. A duet of slurps as we dunk our Wispas in tea then suck away the warm, melted chocolate. (It is a proven fact that Wispas are THE BEST chocolate bar for dunking in tea but as with all wonderful things, best done in moderation to ensure the moment is always special.)

1. Carla’s prerps and chirps, her coos and mews. She chatters away, sleepily content.

2. Looking through historical photos for research, I find a picture of my old house in Liverpool dating from 1970 (I lived there 1999-2000). I am surprised both by finding the picture in a random city-wide archive and by how little it changed, from the outside at least, in the intervening 30 years.

3. To see confidence blooming in different people through performance and basic questions.

3b. Having a calm, reasonably focused group for once.

0. On a day filled with discussion of equal marriage, I found some documentaries and clips about marriage (and cohabiting/attitudes towards sex) from the late 1950s and 1960s – exactly what I need for some research, a real treasure-trove. Thanks BBC archive!

1. The soup is momentarily put on hold while we watch the deer from the kitchen window. She’s in the clearing just on the other side of the elder tree, still and watching something in the woods in the opposite direction from our house. The wet snow falls steadily around her and she shakes it from her fur with a silver spray.

2. We exchange stories with the woman in the woods about our lovely rescue Springers. Just a little bigger than Lily and perfectly mannered, I hope we meet Charlie again.

3. I play a track thinking it’s something else and we’re surprised to hear a warm piano, later joined by just the haunting voice. We forget the original track we were looking for.

1. The smell of chicken stock fills the house but closer to home, my fingers smell of the garlic cloves I added to it earlier.

1b. A delightful lunch made up of the wings from the chicken, olives, carrot sticks and three tracks from Beth Jeans Houghton.

2. A dozen little caramel balls of thread and a dozen of teal. They’re probably older than me. They look so sweet in their little boxes and there is a temptation not to use them, just just keep them as a vintage novelty, but I hope I resist. Thread is made to be used.

3. Despite some avoidable (and some unavoidable) distractions, I reach the end of the day feeling like I’ve worked hard and achieved good things. (This is quite unusual!)

A geeky blog I read called today Superb Owl Sunday: a day for looking at pictures of Superb Owls. I don’t usually partake in mass cultural events but this one, I can get behind ;)

1. We’ve been hearing faint puppy noises for about a week now but thought they were floating on the breeze from the house across the valley – but today I head into the garden to find our neighbours out next door with the latest addition to their family. The puppy is tiny and I squee loudly when our neighbour picks up the ball of fluff for introductions. I coo even louder when she’s put back down and bounces around on the terrace.

1b. The chickens pad around the garden. The new ones squat down as I approach (their feathers are still super silky soft) but old Green is preoccupied by the bundle of fur excitedly watching them from the balcony.

2. The house is too quiet without both Lily and John. I pop on the radio to fill the void while I tidy the kitchen and joint the chicken. The half hour or so starts with Heard It Through The Grapevine and Last Night and later includes the Velvet Underground, Regina Spektor and The Ramones. I (blitzkrieg) bop around the room.

3. Lily stares at me from across the room, hugely jealous that I have my face buried in the cat’s fur. I think she is trying to telepathically transmit the information that she too has belly fur worthy of face burial.