1. Yesterday, we’d tried watching the 2009 miniseries of Day of the Triffids but had to give up because it was so poorly done. Today, we watch the first two episodes of the 1981 series – it’s a lot slower, the actor playing Bill is nerdier and less brooding, and the budget was clearly much, much smaller – but it grips us from start. The eerily menacing mood works a lot better than flash action.

2. The woods are misty and quiet – we don’t see anyone else until the very end of the walk and even the birds are hushed by the dampness. (I keep an eye out for triffids.)

3. We have slow roasted chicken for dinner. As with all slow cooked things, it feels like an awful lot of build up but my, it’s tasty.

4. I realise that my stripey blanket is finally approaching a square. Two more stripes – mimicking the first two – to finish it off and it’s done. (Or rather, the body is done: I then need to tidy up all the ends and hook a border.)

1. By late afternoon, I haven’t seen Kaufman for about 24 hours so I head down to the office to see if he’s down there – he is, asleep in a ball on John’s chair. I pick him up and carry him, purring, upstairs. He’s becoming a huge huggable chap.

2. Amongst the vegetables, we have some sweet potato. Most of the chunks are deliciously soft but others were cut a little thin and have dried out to a crisp. They’re fun to crunch.

3. It’s somewhat of a relief when John announces he’s feeling ill: it explains his general grumpiness over the day and conversely, once he allows himself sink into being poorly, he cheers up.

1. A fry-up we’ve been anticipating all week doesn’t disappoint.

2. We try a new (both to us, and in general) restaurant for dinner. It’s a little too busy and shiny-shiny to be a mainstay but it’s surprisingly good value and we all enjoy our meals.

3. Another new game. It seems like it’s going to be too complicated – all the different pieces and phases are a little offputting – but we get into the swing of it eventually. (Though it does end up with S playing for M as well, after she falls asleep, and me playing for John because he doesn’t quite follow what he has to do.)

3b. Strange initially bolts but then returns and sits on M. Both Strange and I need to learn the same lesson really: that new people may seem terrifying at first but when you give them the chance, they’re nice, have warm laps and are willing to stroke you until you fall asleep. (Ok, perhaps the specific lesson outcomes diverged.)

1. The books – to help me with my French – arrive at just the right time (ie before I get distracted by anything else): I spend the next couple of hours reading through them.

2. The chillis smell spicy rather than sweet: good.

2b. I prepare a few tubs of runner beans for the freezer – some sliced in tiny rounds for use in soups, others at the traditional longer length. I weed out the tougher beans to save their seeds: as previously, I’m amazed by their near neon pinkness – and vibrant purple flecks – they look they were the inspiration for a line of girls’ stationery in 1989.

3. The stitches on my Ann Perkins blanket look strangely well defined after a wash and a day on the line (I wonder if it’s that they’re usually fuzzy with animal fur).

3b. I make a new string bag. The cheap cotton I use is a little too thick for the job and prone to splitting but I like how quickly it works up.

1. Tilda and Strange investigate the garden together. I tell them to enjoy the sun, to make the most of it before winter. I wonder if they’re used to the cycles yet, if they know the cold is coming and that it’ll go away again at some point too.

2. I clumsily unpick the sentences to find their meaning. It’s slow going but my vocab list grows quickly. I reach a sentence I can read without looking anything up and it reminds me that progress is being made.

3. I get a phone call: John has lost his tiny quadcopter in the horses’ field – could I help him find it? I take Lily with me (which I think again confirms her suspicions that whenever John & I leave the house on our own, we’re just hanging out in the woods or the field – because where else is there to go?) and we stroll in the sunshine amongst the clumps of long grass and drying summer wildflowers. The tiny machine turns up, then John swoops it around us until the batteries run out.

4. I finally hit 1000 on BustAMove 2. I thought the score would roll over to 000 but it doesn’t. I like seeing all the numbers squeezed into the space designed for 2 or 3 max.

1. Recently, I feel like I’m making progress on my Duolingo. For a little while, I was struggling to do anything more than just practise but now I’m whipping through lessons as well as keeping my tree a shiny gold.

2. The chillis are letter box, the goji berries vermilion, and the raspberries are so deep and dark, they’re almost verging on plum.

2b. A little bit of work – that goes by in a flash thanks to some interesting podcasts – and the paths look a lot neater.

2c. A plane charts a straight line overhead but just before it turns into a tiny dot, it turns right – quite a sharp turn, not a slow veer.

3. Just before dinner, I read something about pancakes and it makes me want not pancakes, but a waffle. After a healthy, veg-from-the-plot filled dinner, we go for gelato and waffles. It is good.