1. After several failed experiments I don’t have much hope that the coffee will work but it does.

1b. She tells us about being a teenager – in the so-called first generation of teenagers – and how she thought the arrival of the pill a few years later brought with it not freedom but greater expectation: “before then, if they touched your left breast, they’d be happy for six months”.

1c. The dots are perfectly circular and well spaced. (The next round is neither.)

2. I rub the dog’s ears then her chest until she is utterly blissed out.

2b. The soft nudge of a washing cat’s head against my leg.

3. Every time I’ve left the studio today, Shipley has smelled wonderful – a spicy aroma floating up the hill from the curry restaurants on the lower road. When I get home, the house smells the same way – but this time I get to eat the food too.