1. We laugh and call over each other, suggesting new punchlines or improvements, until my throat hurts.

2. I stand to move a couple of books to a vacant shelf but end up shuffling books around for a couple of hours. I’ve had to split my history section between upstairs and downstairs (which is upsetting) but I hope that old, forgotten books will leap at me from their new homes – already I’ve seen half a dozen which have jumped up my reading list again.

3. Lily desperately wants her (food-dispensing) cube but the evil box has it in its grasp. She sits, just inches away from it, staring and whining.

1. My first at-home cyanotype experiments don’t quite work but they do, essentially, prove the concept and I know how to make them better next time. So that’s something.

2. We go for a second dog walk at the golden hour. I show John a shortcut through the woods: when we reach the edge of the trees, the field opens up in front of us, carpeted in gold and green.

2b. My cute boyfriend calls certain scratchy things as feeling “sparkly” (for example, his beard’s bristles are sometimes “sparkly” when they need a trim). It perfectly describes the nettle stings on my calves: the tingling pain feels like light from a disco ball reflecting on my skin.

3. As happened on Monday, something I wrote a few years ago in an IM conversation with a friend makes me laugh out loud today. I always feel a bit of a wanker when I make myself laugh but I can justify it to myself these times because it was so long ago: I’m not the same person I was and PastLouisa made the funny, not me.

(The thing that made me laugh today was this conversation/impromptu poetry slam, which I found again while putting together a list of my favourite blog posts.)

0. There seems to be a tacit agreement in the UK: everyone knows that there are many acceptable ways to make tea and it’s simply a matter of personal taste. But equally, everyone, at any given moment in any given situation, is ready to engage in a light-hearted argument, jovially but staunchly defending THE ONE RIGHT WAY TO MAKE TEA. I had the same conversation twice within about an hour on Saturday.

1. With the chill in the air and the mist still clinging to the hills, it feels much earlier than it is. Even the horses aren’t really up and at it yet.

1b. She’s acting older than she is but something he says makes her laugh – well, a confident giggle – and she relaxes. When they stand, she holds onto him playfully.

2. My mum keeps telling me she can hear the birds tweeting over the phone. How could those birds comprehend that their conversations can be heard 100 miles away?

3. The word “mealy” pronounced in a Scottish accent. (Specifically, see King Creosote & John Hopkins’ Bats in the Attic.)

4. Sometimes, just sometimes, our goofy dog looks like a springer in an old painting, a disciplined and faithful field dog.

1. Looking for a photograph to illustrate my letter, I find the transcript of a fun IM conversation I had with A a few years ago. The broad grin on my face while I read it is only disturbed when I laugh out loud at one of the lines.

1b. I find a description of John from early in our relationship: “He is butt weird but lovely.” It is still true.

2. The little black cocker runs around us so fast that it seems to make Lily tired just watching him. Later on, we meet a handsome springer too. A good day for seeing spaniels.

3. The lamb is thick and juicy. I am generous with the mint sauce.

1. Without the dark curtains framing the window, the room looks brighter and bigger. Later, after they’ve been washed and hemmed, we re-hang them and I remember how much they pull the room together.

2. I spend the afternoon writing something fun. No music, just wind in the leaves and bird song as a soundtrack.

3. We walk around the woods in the golden hour. We enjoy the low, warm sun on the bluebells, the new fresh green leaves at the end of holly branches and, as we’re passing the big houses in Apperley Bridge, the faint smell of bubblegum on the breeze.

1. To have time for a good breakfast, chores and our own “artistic” pursuits before leaving the house. This seems to be a pattern for the day: we do lots of little fun things.

2. I let Lily off the lead as soon as we arrive at the house. She charges right through – to the kitchen where people usually gather then to her real goal, the garden at the back where she finds her beloved Pop-pops and some grass to chew.

2b. The small room full of bold paintings. (It’s the room where I saw an artist working a few weeks ago.)

2c. I find just what I want at the first charity shop.

2d. Delicious pastries, which we eat in the deserted skate park.

3. The park is busy with colour and joy.

3b. The little boy strokes Lily through the fence and later, a small crowd of small people gathers to do the same.

3c. My suggestion isn’t as successful as it should be – the ball doesn’t catch in the conifer every time – but retrieving it with the sticks and the nets is so much fun that he laughs constantly anyway.

4. We are alone in the woods: from the moment we enter to after we leave, we don’t see another person or dog. The undergrowth rustles with birds and squirrels, and I sing to myself as I walk.

4b. Lasagne.

4c. I tell John about a conversation from the day before, when A and I caught ourselves accidentally giving agency to evolution and joked that humans were designed by one Mr Edward Volution. John gives him a middle name, and together, at the same time, we give him Irish ancestry. Mr Edward Vernon O’Lution.