1. Dozens of straw bales stacked high in a block of pleasing dimensions. As we approach, it seems like a perfectly straight line but as we curve around, we can see that it’s banana-ed.

2. By coincidence, we’re in Southport during the Air Show weekend. We arrive just in time for the Red Arrows first display, which we watch from the edge of the dunes next to my old school. (It is only when we return the next day that I realise how strange it is that everyone there gathers on the same hill, when there are plenty of equally good spots nearby.) I’m as excited about the happy springer running around in the distance as the multi-million pound planes zipping by overhead.

2b. Afterwards, we walk towards the dunes but veer off to the left, taking an easier flat walk than struggling through the sand. We pass between the golf course and the backs of gardens, before reaching the road of expensive, but surprisingly cramped close together, houses.

2c. The afternoon’s walk around town is marked by aircraft: a huge helicopter circles as we walk up past the fair, the absolutely terrifying roar of the Typhoon (made all the worse by the sound echoing around the relatively built up area) and finally the acrobatic light planes that were perfectly framed as we looked up Coronation Walk on our walk back to the car. (The latter were the only ones that it was possible to enjoy guilt-free: the only ones we saw not intended to rain down death from above.)

3. Watching through the obscured window as an excited Lily runs around my mum, saying hello and hurrah, I’m glad you’re all home again.

1. I forget to turn on the extractor fan before getting in the shower. After I’m finished, I notice a steamy cloud hanging over the bath.

2. “It looks like I’ve given myself a really dark fake tan,” I say looking at the terracotta clay flatly staining my hands; C agrees with a laugh. Later, after I’ve been playing with iron oxides, my hands look painfully bruised – but bruises that can be washed off.

2b. I learnt a new technique on Wednesday and that today enables me to finish off a project that’s been hanging over my head for months.

3. After an evening of chores, we all slump on the sofa. Lily and Strange mirror each other beautifully.

1. A long awaited cup of tea. I describe it as a cup of tea for the soul has much as anything else.

2. E*N*C*H*I*L*A*D*A*S F*O*R D*I*N*N*E*R.

3. I sit back after I’ve eaten and confess something to John: how my favourite bit about making dinner is knowing that afterwards, the person who has cooked can sit back and the other person will do the rest of the regular evening chores. John admits it’s his favourite thing too.

1. I hear my alarm but then still manage to drastically oversleep. Somehow (ie without seeing to the animals or having breakfast myself) I still make the bus.

1b. To have a good long session at the pottery studio – my first in a while. I learn two new decorative techniques, get up to date on my glazing (including trying two more new techniques), give my giant meeple a final tidy up and have a brainwave about how to enliven my basic little bowl.

2. John is leaving for his singing lesson just as I’m arriving home. He hands me the remaining half of his cup of tea.

3. The chickens have learnt the same tricks as the cats: to look pathetic and pretend they have no food in a bid to get treats. It only kinda works.

3b. “Kaufman’s down here and presenting himself for tickles,” John calls up. The little chap has been out on an adventure all day – neither of us have seen him since the night before – but he knew to come home just before dusk.

1. The misty rain feels like sparkles, ethereal fleeting lens flares, on my skin.

2. Lily flops on K in a way she rarely does on us. She demands many, many tickles.

3. K spots a hedgehog as she is leaving and we watch it cutely snuffling along the tiny thin verge on the other side of the road. It only occurs to me after she leaves that hedgehogs are nocturnal creatures and shouldn’t be out in the daytime – a quick couple of phone calls later, and I have the hedgehog in a box and my afternoon plans abandoned for a second time.

3b. The internet tells me to give the ‘hog a hot water bottle – my allotment water bottle filled with warm water has to suffice but it doesn’t seem to mind: the next time I return, its wrapped itself around it.

1. Lily is unbelievably excited to see her pop-pops. Her tail is wagging so hard that her bum bends around and she has to run in a banana-shape as she fetches him a shoe.

(Strange, on the other hand, is less pleased. She comes to find me when I’m throwing and tells me, in a very loud, long series of meows, that there is some unknown human in her garden, making a lot of noise and dust.)

2. Wispa bites are INCREDIBLY moreish, aren’t they?

3. After fixing the missing pin problem (and making other little mechanical improvements) yesterday, and working on my feeding technique thanks to Youtube videos, I spin a bobbin full of beautifully thin and even lace-weight yarn. I ply it with the slubby green from earlier experiments.