1. When writing flows – both the individual sentences and the segues between topics.

2. Leftovers for lunch. Cold roast chicken tickles some deep memory – I don’t know what but it’s a good memory.

3. Lily helicopter-tails into the kitchen as soon as she realises one of her friends is in there. She does like it when her friends come to visit her.

1. More of my recent book purchases arrive, including one the author signed with the note “be splendid!”. What a splendid choice of words.

2. I offer to sous chef for John, washing and slicing the kilogram of runner beans I brought back from the plot the day before. As he watches my pleasantly repetitious actions, I think he regrets my help.

2b. The smell of slow roasted tomato sauce.

2c. I take a load of veg scraps down to the chickens. I notice one of the birds particularly likes berries so I pull some neglected tiny redcurrants off the bush near the seed trunk. She quickly collects them all before anyone else gets a look in.

3. I dig through my box, sorting out my WIP projects and things that need framing. I’ve forgotten how good some of the pieces are, and how little is needed to finalise them.

3b. Tilda has a wappy five minutes attacking my t-shirt and my hand.

1. The tinkling of a small cat’s bell.

2. A plethora of potential pumpkins.

2b. We sit in the shelter for the worst of the rain. I snap some photos of Lily, posting my favourite to Twitter. Later, I use it for my new phone’s lock screen and keep marvelling/awwing at it all evening.

3. My Jamaican fish stir fry made mostly from veg from the allotment: onions, garlic, mange tout, carrots in two colours and the mandatory courgette.

1. It rains all day, which puts a decided crimp in my (allotment) plans but makes the cats wonderfully clingy. After I move him from my chair, Kaufman hangs out on my desk all morning. Later, when he and I are stretched out on the bed together, Tilda minkles around the bedroom meowing (the only time all day she leaves her chair in the living room). And later still, Strange has lap hugs while we chat to P: as she kneads the air, her paw pads are bubblegum pink.

2. Now that I don’t have to write all day every day, I enjoy the process so much more. My fingers need a burst of top typing speed exercise like a horse needs to gallop every now and then.

3. I often eat lamb (or lamb mince) curries but wanted something perkier today. The chicken handi is light and fragrant.

1. A marvellous post delivery – beautiful books that I was expecting later in the week and two rebates (totalling £250) that I wasn’t expecting at all.

2. The woods are gorgeously still and sun dappled. The leaves seem to relish the light – it’s like they know they’re approaching their last hoorah.

3. After a light, healthy summery dinner, we fancy the opposite: a hearty winter pudding. We have our first (jam roly) poly in years and it doesn’t disappoint.

1. As a(n undeserved) break from my WIPs, I crochet another shopping bag. It ends up being a bit of a bodge but I like the outcome. It takes me longer than I thought to get through it but then I reason that the last one had lasted us about eight years so far so an afternoon and evening’s hard hooking isn’t too bad.

2. Tilda has taken to the chair again now that John has moved some boxes. She looks so very black against the colourful blankets.

3. We shrug off more sensible dinners and have some long awaited burgers instead.