1. I get the same taxi driver as I’d had the day before. I get to hear the sequel to his sandal-finding saga.

2. I don’t think I need to sand the mitre cuts or the sides – it’s smooth enough as it is – but once I try in one corner, I realise it wasn’t very smooth at all. Now it’s like satin.

2b. While we’re tidying, I watch the countdown on my phone tracking the progress of the once-an-hour bus as it approaches my stop. The minutes counter drops lower and lower until it’s been and gone. Before I have time to contemplate alternative arrangements though, I get a text from John offering to pick me up.

3. To accompany his mum’s lasagne, John makes a lovely little salad. The dressing is sweet, tangy and slightly spicy, and a sprinkling of seeds adds texture and roundness to the flavours.

4. I catch Tilda’s eye around the table leg and she blinks at me.

1. Lily doesn’t notice when I first get up – buried under the duvet, she doesn’t even wake up until I’m back in the bedroom. Then suddenly she sits up, a nose nuzzles out from under the cover and a startled face, surrounded with bed hair, follows, asking the dog equivalent of “wtf? What time is it?”

2. The coils, thin stripey shavings of wood, litter the workbench around the mitre trimmer. (That, by the way, was beautifully the right tool for the job. The band clamps and v-pin tool were perfect too.)

2b. Finally getting the angles right so that it fits neatly together.

2c. I’m disappointed with nearly all my pottery to pick up but there are some nice bits too – the black and turquoise Egyptian paste round beads and the glaze test pendants, with some of the most interesting glaze effects I’ve ever managed to produce.

2d. I tag-team taking someone down over a self-deprecating, but sexist, comment about not being able to use a tool: even though it’s complicated and we’re just seeing it for the first time, she says she can’t use it because “I’m such a girl”. I start the protest with a generic “it’s nothing to do with being ‘a girl'” but my partner-in-crime picks up my baton and runs with it, saying: “you might think you’re just putting yourself down as a joke, but actually by saying that, you’re putting all of us down and you’re keeping us down.” Well said. (Plus, I love it when I’m not the only one protesting. And especially when my teammates are people not so obviously bolshy like me.)

3. I’m not sure it’s legal to eat macaroni by stabbing it en masse with a fork – each tube has to be threaded onto a fork tine and consumed individually, right?

1. I tidy the garden for winter (or rather, tidy a bit of it, what I can manage in my cold-hampered state). As I stack terracotta pots in the greenhouse, I find a hidden cucumber amongst the limp leaves. I split it open lengthwise, and with my fingers, scope out the core to check if there are any seeds worth saving inside. It smells fresh and bitter at the same time.

2. We’re all struggling thanks to lingering illness. When we reach the top of the climb, we have to stop to catch our breath then we walk on slowly, heads low. I say that we must look like a little bunch of zombies, staggering along without direction or chatter – but we’re all too tired to raise our arms for the joke.

3. We walk down the road for fish and chips. One of us could have gone alone but instead we go together. There is something about walking through the chilly night, getting cold cheeks and fingers, then warming up again as we open our steamy, vinegary parcels.

1. That super short blissful moment after a sneeze, when the pressure in my sinuses reduces a little before it regroups again.

2. To return to a beloved old game and to remember the tricks to playing it.

3. We’re too sleepy to do anything other than cuddle up on the sofa.

1. Next door’s cat – and her magnificent tail – trots down the path. She’s some way away from us but her crisp black and white fur stands out against the autumnal browns and fading greens.

2. A dog suddenly appears at the top of the slope – it’s Friendly Black Dog. It rushes over to say hello then darts off on its way.

3. The cats, well our cats at least, have been out less than usual because of the cold weather. They wrestle and chase each other around the house instead – never any animosity, it’s just for fun. We watch with smiles.

3b. Every now and then, a paw shoots out of the box to grab one of the toys I’m trailing along the lid.

1. Another just-for-the-daylight visit to the allotments. I listen to stories of pampered geese and wild turkeys on the attack as I potter, digging up weeds and sowing a few seeds that’ll overwinter, providing us with sweet smells and tasty beans next spring.

1b. On the walk back, I look over the valley to the houses hidden in the trees on the hill beyond. A view I’ll miss if the developers have their way.

2. Little tiny birds flit between the bare branches and in the leaves below.

3. The taste of the lime juice lingers on my fingers.