1. To get the early train and have time to visit the shops I want to visit before the exhibition opens.

1b. Fog covers the fields on the train journey north. Everything disappears as we cross the Crimple Valley Viaduct.

2. Last year, everything felt rushed and chaotic – this year, it’s a lot calmer.

2b. It’s such a relief to see the tutor make a (tiny) mistake in her demonstration (which she immediately spots and laughs about) and, at other times, for the tutors to contradict each other: it reinforces to me that even experts have to undo stitching from time to time and that there is often no one right way to do things.

2c. I spend too much. (I made up for yesterday’s lack of spending today.) Some of it is bargainacious (lovely chunky yarn for a third of the usual price in one case, another about 20% cheaper) but other things are luxury: some hand-dyed mulberry silk tops and two pairs of proper Sheffield-made scissors from Ernest Wright & Sons.

3. The soup is so spicy that makes me hiccup. It’s very good.