1. The whole way to the motorway is beautiful – rolling fresh greens fields decorated with gamboling lambs and stretching out to snow topped hills and mountains in the distance. The Tour De Yorkshire followed this path (in reverse) yesterday and so all the villages are still decked out colourful bunting and bike sculptures. Yorkshire flags – white roses on turquoise – still flutter en masse and in some places they make it look like some sort of medieval (or Westerosian) tourney.

1b. We take the wrong exit at the roundabout and end up diverting through Kendal to get back to the motorway – a long but pretty route. The road finally brings us out next to the north-bound lanes – we drive parallel to the M6 for a mile or so, tanalisingly close but 50m higher up.

1c. Everyone in the cafeteria makes the same face as they watch the teeny-tiny baby ducks. We also marvel at the well behaved springer who doesn’t run into the water and disrupt everything.

1d. We have to select a new album just as we’re about to cross the Scottish border: of course it has to be Admiral Fallow. After the tight bend in Canonbie, the roads become pleasantly familiar.

2. The B&B is lovely but intense – very much just rooms in someone’s home. The owners are welcoming, friendly and we share a lot interests but still, we feel like we’re intruding. The cats give me something to focus on though – one of them jumps on my knee and gazes up at me with utter adoration for a time in the afternoon, and when we return from dinner, the other stretches out on my lap for belly tickles. They’re almost identical former farm cats with the bestest colouring: black with a white spot on their chests.

2b. The Italian restaurant is better than we’d hoped. I have pumpkin flowers and a pizza topped with very good salami & pancetta (and a hint of rosemary), while John follows his stuffed pepper with parmagiana over chicken. He is disappointed that it’s good value for money – if it had been poor value, we’d have had room for dessert.

2c. Sunset over miles of border hills as we drive back to the B&B.

3. Even with the headlights in the holding car park and our as-yet unaccustomed eyes, we can still see thousands of stars.

3b. When I lean into the eyepiece to look at a galaxy, a shooting star streaks across the lens.

3c. They use laser pointers to show which objects they mean. The columns of light stretching upwards make us woo almost as much as the objects themselves. We joke about beings in another observatory somewhere else being blinded by them while they watch us.

3d. The crispness of Saturn’s rings through the telescope make it look artificial. A white paper cutout against the black.

3e. I’ve been worried about it all week but when he puts his hand on my arm and says ‘hello you’, I know it’s going to be ok. We don’t have long to chat, five minutes maybe, certainly not enough to cover the missing 18 years, but I’m so glad to have seen him again, and to see that he’s happy too. As I say to him, there are bad times from Southport that I would like to leave in the past but there were good times, good people, I’ve lost by mistake and it’s always such a joy to reconnect. I’m so grateful that a crazy coincidence – and our mutual space nerdiness – have brought us back together.

1. An afternoon of interesting podcasts.

1b. To note how brilliantly the lemon juice has lifted the rust stain off the kitchen counter.

2. We pop around to John’s mum and dad’s for a cup of tea but stay for dinner. Z and I play with megablocks while John reads to little JJ, then later, when she’s gone to bed, John, Z and I build the tallest block tower we can manage, using all the blocks and careful balance.

2b. Both Z and John’s dad react the same to the 3D videos.

3. It’s a novelty for us to be packing for a B&B instead of a cottage – I don’t have to think about towels or blankets or condiments.

1. Finally, a day without snow. I sow beans in the greenhouse and pot on some cramped cucumbers and assorted squash. Next door’s R-kitten supervises my work.

2. The deer is back again and is confident enough to stay even when I go out onto the balcony with the cats. The cats watch it as it eats great green clumps of grass and dandelions.

3. R-kitten wrestles and plays with M-dog to distract us from our disheartening meeting.

3b. I work too late and need to eat quickly – I’m so glad that I have leftover curry ready to go.

3c. I sit on the window seat while I chat to my mum. Kaufman stares at me for stealing his usual spot but then realises he can join me.

3d. John and I chat for his entire journey home. We only hang up when he is through the door.

1. Mint in savoury food often takes me by surprise and is all the more refreshing for it.

2. I spend a couple of hours tidying my craft supply dumping ground the upstairs hallway. I fill a white shelving unit with colourful yarn, sort stray threads into their rainbow trays and tidy away all sorts of findings and ribbons into one neat tool box.

3. Huge heavy snowflakes.

1. The sunshine when I wake up makes me want to garden but before I get outside, the weather has transformed into hail and snow: it falls like snow, uniformly and softly, but when the pellets gather in the gutter and on the balcony, we can see it’s hail. Later, it manages to fall both vertically and almost horizontally at the same time.

2. A convenient parking space.

2b. We very much enjoy the panipuri – little paper thin puffs of chaat masala, tamarind sauce and pomegranate seeds, made even more flavourful and delicate when we pour on the fragrant water.

2c. My curry is a builder – each mouthful alone is nothing terribly special but a warm pepperiness builds in the back of my mouth.

2d. We laugh at how the decor makes it the “anti-Jinnah” – stark concrete and brick walls, compared to the deliberately OTT gaudiness of our more usual haunt. In the bathroom though, it strikes a better balance – clean & elegant tiling and fixtures enlivened with fun wallpaper.

3. Their sound and energy can’t help but utterly fill the small room. Everyone in there – on stage and in the crowd – is left sweaty and elated by the music.

3b. The violin player gives a shout out to his dad – we’d already guessed a familial connection for the grey haired man, in a waistcoat and tie, singing along to every lyric and dancing along like a man possessed.

3c. We take our post-gig gelato at the shop on the corner. It turns out there are now three dessert places on the strip of road between the cinema and the pub — if only they’d been there when the cinema was our local!

1. The gravy – a vegetarian George’s Marvellous Medicine effort – works out better than I’d expected.

2. We’re positively giddy before Game of Thrones starts.

3. A basket of warm, colourful socks.