1. We bump into a couple from down the road – and their big fluffy dog – at the start of our walk. We haven’t seen each other in a while and are all relieved to see both the elderly canines are still doing well. E-dog seems pleased to see us too – she snuggles into both mine and John’s legs in turn.

2. My purring over the blanket has changed focus – as I finish the coloured stripes and start on the blue border, I keep stopping to marvel at how the border will pull it all together. I don’t even mind that after hours of work I’ve only done three rounds because oh doesn’t it look nice.

3. I’m reading ‘I Capture the Castle’ very slowly in French – looking up any word I don’t completely understand and making a note of it to help me take it on board – but I’ve decided to take a different approach with another (‘Prep’) – reading as I would do a book in English at bedtime, getting the gist of sentences rather than the precise translation. I’m surprised how much I can follow without even thinking about it and keep surprising myself by spotting words or phrases that I have explicitly learned recently. I’ll have to read the book a second time to enjoy the nuance that I love so much but for now, the immersion is fun and confidence building.

1. Lily and I make a poorly timed visit to the allotment – it starts drizzling as soon as we get there and continues getting heavier and heavier as we wait in the shelter. I don’t realise at the time of course but we abandon the visit at the peak of the rain – when it’s hammering down and the cambers of the roads have been turned into fast flowing rivers to jump across. I’m as soaked as I’ve ever been by the time I get home – so wet that it crosses over from being annoying to being funny. Later, when I’m dry, I open the living room window to listen to the roar of the beck.

2. With the day of bad weather, the cats are stuck inside. From as soon as I wake up, Tilda is more clingy than normal while Strange cuddles into her favourite round hound for various stretches of the afternoon and evening. Kaufman spends much of the day on his favourite cushion but at one point, he plays with his sisters – twice in a row, he leaps in the air, passing at the peak of his arc through the dining room door and out of our sight. John comments that for all we know, he kept flying and that’s why he did it again.

3. The soup is sour with vinegar but in a good way. Later, the sauce on the main dish is a balanced combination of tangy, sweet and spicy – perfect Peach comfort food.

1. Yesterday, we’d tried watching the 2009 miniseries of Day of the Triffids but had to give up because it was so poorly done. Today, we watch the first two episodes of the 1981 series – it’s a lot slower, the actor playing Bill is nerdier and less brooding, and the budget was clearly much, much smaller – but it grips us from start. The eerily menacing mood works a lot better than flash action.

2. The woods are misty and quiet – we don’t see anyone else until the very end of the walk and even the birds are hushed by the dampness. (I keep an eye out for triffids.)

3. We have slow roasted chicken for dinner. As with all slow cooked things, it feels like an awful lot of build up but my, it’s tasty.

4. I realise that my stripey blanket is finally approaching a square. Two more stripes – mimicking the first two – to finish it off and it’s done. (Or rather, the body is done: I then need to tidy up all the ends and hook a border.)

1. By late afternoon, I haven’t seen Kaufman for about 24 hours so I head down to the office to see if he’s down there – he is, asleep in a ball on John’s chair. I pick him up and carry him, purring, upstairs. He’s becoming a huge huggable chap.

2. Amongst the vegetables, we have some sweet potato. Most of the chunks are deliciously soft but others were cut a little thin and have dried out to a crisp. They’re fun to crunch.

3. It’s somewhat of a relief when John announces he’s feeling ill: it explains his general grumpiness over the day and conversely, once he allows himself sink into being poorly, he cheers up.

1. A fry-up we’ve been anticipating all week doesn’t disappoint.

2. We try a new (both to us, and in general) restaurant for dinner. It’s a little too busy and shiny-shiny to be a mainstay but it’s surprisingly good value and we all enjoy our meals.

3. Another new game. It seems like it’s going to be too complicated – all the different pieces and phases are a little offputting – but we get into the swing of it eventually. (Though it does end up with S playing for M as well, after she falls asleep, and me playing for John because he doesn’t quite follow what he has to do.)

3b. Strange initially bolts but then returns and sits on M. Both Strange and I need to learn the same lesson really: that new people may seem terrifying at first but when you give them the chance, they’re nice, have warm laps and are willing to stroke you until you fall asleep. (Ok, perhaps the specific lesson outcomes diverged.)

1. The books – to help me with my French – arrive at just the right time (ie before I get distracted by anything else): I spend the next couple of hours reading through them.

2. The chillis smell spicy rather than sweet: good.

2b. I prepare a few tubs of runner beans for the freezer – some sliced in tiny rounds for use in soups, others at the traditional longer length. I weed out the tougher beans to save their seeds: as previously, I’m amazed by their near neon pinkness – and vibrant purple flecks – they look they were the inspiration for a line of girls’ stationery in 1989.

3. The stitches on my Ann Perkins blanket look strangely well defined after a wash and a day on the line (I wonder if it’s that they’re usually fuzzy with animal fur).

3b. I make a new string bag. The cheap cotton I use is a little too thick for the job and prone to splitting but I like how quickly it works up.