1. Lily lies on her back, all her paws in the air; her mouth hangs open and her tongues loll. As we’re listening to the track at the time, we declare this to be the Magic Position.

2. R walks by, offering some plums, as I’m preparing my clay. We chat about growing at home and allotments, then he sees the clay and gets rather excited. I show him what I’ve been making at home and at Hive, and he starts coming up with ideas of his own. I will pull him into my addiction yet!

2b. The hollow metallic thud of M’s tail banging on the car door as he and Lily say hello.

2c. F is unsure about holding out the first treat but soon gets into the swing of things. He seems like he’d be quite happy to feed her treats all day, and Lily being Lily would be equally quite happy to accept them.

2d. I slip my hand into the bucket and am amazed: the dry pieces of clay – the remains of what I threw last week – have slaked down in just a few hours. I’ll be able to reclaim it soon and can start the process again.

3. The beef is a tiny bit too rare when I slice it but cooks to perfection in the hot soup.

1. I notice Kaufman watching the washing machine go around and around. He’s in profile but I can tell by his pose that he’s pulling a derpy face. When he starts to chasing something behind the glass, I laugh and laugh.

1b. We open the gate for just a moment but it is long enough for the dogs to swap gardens.

2. I pop over to the allotment for a few hours. I weed and dig: not exactly fun tasks but made all the more enjoyable with a interesting podcast and some warm evening sunshine.

2b. On the way over, our friend R grabs me to show off his fantastic summer squashes – I accept the offer of saved seeds for next year – and one of his neighbours introduces herself, and we chat about what a wonderfully little community we have on our streets.

2c. The park is busy – the bowling club is packed, the basketball court a whizz of energy and happy dogs run back and forth on the grass catching balls. (Even our happy dog runs about a bit and she smells ALL THE THINGS.)

3. I’ve been plodding away on a crochet blanket that’s turned out to be more fiddly than I’d like. Yesterday, I finally realised that since I’m not enjoying it, I should put it to one side for now and remember how much fun crochet can be. I whip up some stripes squares before bedtime: I’ll use them to learn some new (carrying yarn/joining as I go) skills.

1. There is a cloudy blob of clear glaze (which A points out looks a bit like bird poo) and it has shifted from round to oval but otherwise, I’m happy with my Feisty bowl: the outside, with all its different colours and textures, is just how I’d pictured it. It is “un-me” but I very much want to do it again!

1b. A slab-building project reminds me of my early drop-in days (when someone was making a Barbara Hepworth inspired piece using a similar process). It’s nice to think how far I’ve come since then – and how reasonably straightforward this was to make.

1c. We disagree about the pronunciation of “clanger” – specifically how clearly the “ng” is voiced. It finally occurs to me to check the background of the different people around the table – unsurprisingly, the person who agrees with me is from Liverpool originally, while the other side are all from Yorkshire.

2. John shows me a flashcard app on his phone, knowing that I’ll get addicted to it. It’s not a game as such – no one is keeping score – just a revision/memory aid. John is testing it to learn his times tables once and for all, and by the end of the day, I’ve installed “shared” decks of cards on art history, chemical symbols, European capital cities, Victorian history and forageable/edible British wildflowers.

3. Singing the Mario theme while making dinner, I discover that holding the WarPan* in front of my face creates a lovely resonant variance for the bridge.

* the WarPan was named thus after my university housemate used it to tenderise some still-frozen chicken. The chicken came out of the battle unharmed but the pan acquired battle scars that are still part of it some 16 years later.

1. The White Bellied Crew stretch out on the sofa and enjoy a lazy morning. Kaufman dreams on his footstool in the sun.

1b. Lily’s fur, and especially her ears, are so soft at the moment that we can’t help but think of her as a grunting, pooping teddy bear. It also leads John to give her yet another new nickname: Teddy Not-so-svelte.

2. The damp spots on the tray in the oven slowly shrink away to nothing.

3. A glimpse of the bright doorway in the dark glass – it never looks quite like our house when it’s reflected: it always looks nicer and more magical.

4. Tilda purrs loudly to keep drawing me back to tickle her.

1. I try to turn the pots I throw on Thursday – some of them are a bit too wonky to do it properly so I use them to try out my new tools, but a couple of them turn beautiful. My little low cylinder is given a curved hollow and my fat bellied pot gets a lovely rounded bottom, rubbed smooth by a rubber kidney. I can almost here the “ding” that signifies that I’m levelling up.

2. Lily loves visitors. She runs back and forth, fetching shoes for everyone.

3. I pick up a beech nut – its evenness feels unnatural – and John picks a (magpie?) feather, which is black with a streak of shiny petrol blue.

4. Sometimes putting on a bra is the best, most supportively wonderful, thing in the world; other times, taking its pinching annoyingness off is also the best.

1. John feels better than he did the night before.

2. We laugh at Strange – falling asleep while sitting up. (She wakes up just before she faceplants.)

3. I stop by the allotment – the rain had kept me away this week – and am pleased to see my anti-slug measures are working: the weather has been perfect for them but my beans and courgettes haven’t been touched.

3b. The goji berry bush looked close to dead when I took over the patch – just one single branch in leaf. But now I’ve given it a bit of space and a bit of encouragement, every branch is green.

3c. We usually walk anticlockwise around the park but today I go in the opposite direction. The vista – Yorkshire stone houses in the foreground, wooded hills beyond – is made even nicer by my favourite combination of dark clouds and sunshine.

4. A handful of chocolates while we watch a film.