Authorlouisa

3BT – new toys, beyond, the correct combination/melts

1. The Otamatones arrive. We honk vague attempts at melodies back and forth. The only thing I can do successfully is make sounds like old car racing games.

2. The low buildings reveal the vista beyond: the hills and mills hooded in the mist.

3. Scrambled eggs and brown sauce.

3b. A drop of tea slowly spreads across the spoon, melting the sugar.

3BT – chirp, perfect timing, bright

1. Kaufman chirps as I stick my head in his belly.

2. We throw dinner ideas back and forth but nothing is interesting us – then a message pops up from a friend, inviting us over for our favourite pizza. Hell yes.

3. The stars are often more visible there than here but tonight, with the clear sky and fresh air, they dazzle especially bright.

3BT – flick, I want to go to there/pack hounds, dry me

1. Flicking stiff paintbrushes to loosen the bristles.

2. We go out to Coopers for lunch. Possibly remember the times she’d been given treats there (or just because it’s NotTheCar), Lily pulls us across the road and strains on her lead, dragging us inside. (It’s behaviour she only usually exhibits when we’re visiting a house she knows well.)

2b. We watch a pack of dogs – four springers and a black lab, the two very best types of dog – run around, playing together and chasing a ball. Five long waggy tails, sixteen muddy paws.

3. Just as we turn out the lights, Strange jumps onto the bed. She’s slightly damp from her outside adventures and demands to be dried with strokes. Then she settles into the warm crevice between us, purring loudly.

3BT – relief, automated, Otamatoned

1. To finally take off a pinching bra.

2. The moment I realise I’ve internalised the pattern and can stop counting every stitch.

3. We watch Otamatone videos on Youtube (eg, this one) and can’t help but laugh. (John can’t help himself from ordering two for us as well – honked duets, here we come ;) )

3BT – assortment, company, of course/try

1. Three (small) pieces of toast: one buttered, one with apricot jam and one with raspberry. Not the healthiest breakfast but boy, was it tasty.

2. Winter – and a warm stove – has brought the cats into our office again. They’ve always visited (and Kaufman tends to sleep in there at night, possibly a hark back to when the office was their whole world) but they hang around longer. Strange stretches out between me and my keyboard, then later in the giant bean bag I made for Lily (but which was re-named the B-bag, after Boron’s love for sleeping there); Tilda timidly hovers at the edge – on the steps to the corridor – so she can make a break for it if necessary; and Kaufman reclines, stretching out his full long length on the sofa.

3. John looks up alarmed. He taps his non-existent watch and asks me if I know what day it is. I race through all the possibilities – birthdays, stupid anniversaries and mundane stuff like the recycling schedule – but I can’t think of anything. He eventually puts me out of my misery: it is (suddenly) the day that we need to go for gelato. But of course!

3b. “Would you like to try any of them?” yes, yes I would. It’s just as I’d hoped: a strong punch of orange but, almost like marmalade, enough of a bitter edge to take the edge off the sweetness.

3BT – middle class/just right, croque monsieurs/simply delicious, leaps

1. I set the fire in the logburner using a Fat Face catalogue for tinder. It is possibly the most middle class thing I’ve ever done.

1b. The stove in the office often runs a bit hot but today it plutters along perfectly: never roaring but never on the verge of going out either.

2. The bread is almost stale so we make croque monsieurs for lunch (though with salami because we don’t have any ham). They’re deliciously greasy (more delicious than greasy).

2b. I throw around some fancy ideas for dinner but I settle on the simplest: pasta with chorizo and vegetables. It is also delicious.

3. Lily leaps around like a puppy, chasing the bone she freely gave up for the game.