1. I sit on Kaufman’s window seat and crochet chevrons. The yellow leaves hanging on the very ends of branches keep catching my eye.

2. Leftover noodles for lunch. Yum.

3. John points at an oak tree on the other side of the cutting: four squirrels pause in their chasing to watch us cross.

3. I keep trying new variations on the idea – the yarn is so pretty that I don’t want to waste it on something substandard. The initial turquoise is rich and shiny, the yarn itself a squishy single.

1. Lily likes having small humans visit – they drop crumbs and bits of cheese for her to hoover up. She also likes having a bigger pack for her walk – she runs along with Z and when a small terrier approaches, she is happy to play.

1b. Everyone laughs when she jumps in the beck and wallows in the water.

2. Spooning on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon.

3. I roughly stitch together the two crochet strips as a proof of concept – not only does it look as I’d imagined, it works together easily, neatly and quickly. When all the hooking is finished, I’ll have to join twelve strips rather than 144 motifs – brilliant!

1. We almost stumble upon the first tapestry – it’s outsized, the wrong scale for the room, even in a vast house with ridiculously high ceilings. The colour are blindingly bright but – as we notice – not pure, not flat. The amount of detail – both in the amount of stuff featured and the precision of the work – is also dazzling.

2. The springer puppy desperately wants to meet Lily: it eyes us longingly from the other table.

2b. The man in the tuxedo and the woman in the ivory bridesmaid’s dress walk through the courtyard puddles in their wellies.

2c. Lily gets muddy on the walk up to the Little Temple and I suggest she has a dunk in the stream on the way back to the car. John’s right though – the stream bed is muddy underneath the leaves and clear water. She sinks down into it and flaps a happy tail on the surface. Later, she turns a towel black and the water in the shower runs a coffee-brown for just ages.

3. We’re all on good form.

1. John’s hungover. We decided fish butties from the fish and chip shop with be the magic remedy and by and large, they are.

2. Kaufman opens his mouth when he purrs which amplifies the rumble.

2b. I delve into the storage footstool, disturbing my furry little man on the cushion above: he has never looked more like his sister than when he stands, legs wide, grumpy expression, to ask what I’m doing.

3. We try to summarise what we talked about on the walk and the easiest way to do it is to repeat the word ‘niche’ multiple times and perform it like a barbershop quartet (well, duet).

4. There is a mention on springer spaniels in a cartoon we’re watching and I poke Lily to alert her to a breed shout out. She wakes with a start, her mouth skew-iff, and am expression that asks “whhhhhat?”.

4b. We assign colours to each cartoon: The Simpsons is yellow, for obvious reasons; Bob’s Burgers is white; Family Guy is green; Archer is grey-blue – and so on.

1. Hot buttered bagels.

2. A plate packed with colourful vegetables offsets the fat sausages.

3. I finished, for the second time, my colour block scarf. The new pattern is far more interesting and the dimensions are better too: it’s the perfect length to loop twice around my neck and still have decent dangling bits.

1. Lily clomps up the bed and rests her head on the pillow. I cuddle into her and she watches us hugging in the mirror.

2. R pops around to join me for Lily’s walk. I tell him spoilers for bad films and he tells me about mysteries of ancient Egypt.

3. John picks up Lily and her whole body wags with excitement.