1. I spend far too long fiddling with my plan for the allotments but it’s very enjoyable. I plan a row of permanent perennial herbs, groups of beds for proper crop rotation and wild flowers at the edges, to help with pollination. I hope I can pull it off in reality as well as on a computer screen.

2. I listen to an old Thinking Allowed podcast while hanging out and sorting laundry. The idea of pain as a cultural phenomenon is fascinating and my historian crush on Joanna Bourke grows stronger. She looks at such a wide range of interesting stuff – I want to be her when I grow up.

3. A row of neat whipped chain stitches in a clean mid green.

1. I make up some more test glazes and again, I’m surprised by how quickly the lumpy powder becomes a smooth solution.

1b. We’re busy chatting about allotments when my bus sails past the shop window. A quirk in the road system means I can reach the stop-after-next before the bus does – and the traffic is on my side too. I barely even have to rush.

2. My cushion arrives and it makes me laugh as much as it did in Scotland. (I’m not a cushion person but this one made me giggle so much while we were away: he’s just so earnest and those gloved hands, oh my.)

3. Just about every night, when Tilda takes her place in the hammock, she pads and purrs away to herself.

1. I’m usually so scruffy – scribbled plans on scrap paper – which makes these plans, to scale and neat, even more pleasing.

2. I take off my jacket and realise it’s t-shirt weather.

2b. The wide bed divided into neat furrows. I sprinkle them with seed and then rake the soil flat. Working with full, wide beds is as much as a novelty as neat scale drawings.

2c. The dog watches me work, enjoying the sun, and presses her nose between the fence slats when I cross to the other plot to stow away my tools.

3. Tilda visits me in the bath, just like Carla & Sili used to do.

4. Some hastily cooked vegetables on the side and suddenly it’s a full meal.

1. Lily demands tickles from R then becomes a puppy chasing a ball.

2. Cutting the courgette and chorizo on the diagonal makes it seem somehow lighter.

2b. A delicious cake for half price because it’s been slightly bashed about? Don’t mind if I do.

3. I can hear Strange’s purrs at one frequency and feel them as a rumble in the mattress as another.

3b. For a moment, all of Team Peach is together in the top room.

1. I finally start the weft. Even though it’s just cheap acrylic and my ends & packing need practise, the result is very pleasing.

2. A tray full of colourful vegetable pieces ready to roast.

3. More colour love: the muted tones of the crewel wool. I pick two blues, side by side on the colour chart, for the base.

1. A gorgeous spring day. John does chores in the garden while Lily and I supervise from the balcony.

1b. The cats and dogs – our and our neighbours – pootle around the gardens, keeping an eye on what the men are up to.

1c. I also do a little spring cleaning of my own – a bit of tidying in the dining room. A cupboard gets freed up and a carrier bag (for the charity shop) gets filled up. Then a box gets emptied and some pottery finds a new home.

2. Good friends, good humour and a good meal.

2b. Jammy John wins the game but I like that really no one cares who wins or loses, and we all help each other play the best moves we can.

3. We rarely hear our neighbours through the party wall (hurrah for sturdy Victorian construction!) but today, as we sit in silence, we hear an uncontrollable giggle. It makes us laugh in reply.