1. I’m still not feeling great. It’s very much a day for cuddling up on the sofa, wrapped in the spare quilt.

2. The mince grows and grows as vegetables and flavours are added. It’ll feed us for eight meals now.

3. I’m looking at buying some fruit bushes for the allotment and I wonder who would buy blackberry bushes when they’re so easy to forage – and both the allotment and our garden are plagued by unwanted blackberry brambles. Then I realise that not everyone is as lucky to have a woodland full of brambles on their doorstep.

4. Tilda sees Lily at the other end of the corridor and does one of her trademark excited head wiggles.

4b. We’re watching an old Futurama – an episode about cats and their diabolical scheme to destroy the world. Strange watches it, transfixed, from the cat tree then as soon as the credits roll, she turns away and goes to sleep.

1. Two pieces of toast next to each other on a plate: one slathered in glistening orange, the other in sparkling red.

2. An unexpected punchline on a podcast has me laughing out loud in the woods.

2b. I draw John into watching funny videos: I only started watching them while he was making dinner but I have to pause them so he doesn’t miss out.

3. We have been given lots of tubs of leftovers by a friend: there is just a few spoonfuls each of each dish but I prefer variety to quantity any day.

4. One of the scents is Olbas Oil is the same as one of the oils used at Harrogate’s Turkish Baths. Memories stir as I’m trying to go to sleep.

1. Tilda is such an odd little cat. When she wriggles on her back on the bath mat – batting at hands, feet or towels that pass her way – she does so unlike any cat I’ve seen before. It’s very cute.

2. The linguine is a delicious sauce delivery mechanism.

3. I’ve still got quite a way to go on the blanket – a third of the width – but still, finally deciding on a length and finishing off some of the strips at that length gives me a good sense of completion: the end is in sight (if still a fair way off).

1. Green shoots poking up in our neighbour’s front garden. Later, I go down to the chickens and see we have our own signs of spring: three clumps of daffodils making themselves known.

2. It’s pouring with rain and there are 30mph winds but we check in on the allotments during our walk. (I’ve not been for about a month: I’m concerned both about weather damage and whether or not my broadies are growing, and maybe getting trapped under their soil-warming glass panes. There is only very minor damage and just one early rising broad bean was bent from hitting the glass.) With all the weeds having died back for winter, all the plots look neater and raring to go. I can’t wait to get started again either.

3. Sweet chunks of lamb and a fluffy white naan. And since we’re not bursting full at the end of the meal, we all have room for gelato around the corner too.

4. We’re all starting to get into the rhythm of the game and levelling up on our playing skills.

4b. We play with the cats while awaiting our turns. They dart around after the weighted thread, jumping up to catch high dangles and pouncing when it’s on the floor (and/or somebody’s foot).

1. Daisy-cat jumps up onto my knee without hesitation. Yes, he wants food but also, hug please?

2. We watch birds from the kitchen window while we wait for our lunch to ping. (We start watching Strange hunting something in the undergrowth but when she goes behind the elder tree, we switch to watching the birds.) In the middle distance, there are jays, magpies and collared doves, and upclose, amongst the fruit trees, there are robins and tiny tits. A giant crow flies overhead.

3. Aeroplane trails streak the sky. As we’re looking up at the older ones – the ones weaving between each other at some incomprehensibly (to us, right them) high altitude – a new plane enters our field of vision: it’s a lot lower (which reinforces quote how high the others are) and banking, having just taken off from the airport just a few miles away. John starts marvelling at the technology – how just magically it is – and I declare that there are more people flying over our heads at that moment than we have communicated with all day. We both have a little “mind … blown” moment then laugh.

3b. There is a deflating helium balloon caught in the undergrowth. We throw it around for Lily – who gets over her usual balloon fear to play. It takes her a while to understand the new physics – she jumps far too early, expecting it to fall at the speed of everything else she encounters, and faceplants, then, on another go, she hangs in the air mouth open for what feels like tens of seconds (but is probably just a couple) waiting for it to descend. Finally she readjusts and successfully chases it back and forth. We bend double with laughter.

4. Tweaking the formatting of something again and again until it’s juuuuuust right. It’s a little annoying but a lot addictive.

1. I wake to a magnificent golden pink sunrise – well, either that or Leeds is on fire. Whichever, the bedroom is stained the colour of a grapefruit’s flesh.

2. I throw (clay on the wheel) for the first time in about two months. I try not to think about it too much, to just let my muscle memory do its thing, and I’m rewarded with a series of even and thin cups.

3. The grenadine bottle makes a very pleasant glug-glug when I upend it into the tumbler.