1. Leftovers dollops of curry.

2. Chatting to friends, old and new, online.

3. Before it gets stuck up a tree and worries me, I enjoy the cat’s warm grey fur.

3b. Lily has been dragging her heels at the start of walks recently but her speed picks up once we’re in the woods, then continues to increase as she smells more and more exciting things.

1. I finish my cup of tea just before the bus arrives.

2. Another full day of lectures, another day of people who are passionate about their specialism and are doing fantastic work within it. I’m deeply envious.

2b. The amplified splosh of water poured into a glass, with the mic still live by its side.

3. The city in the sunlight, children playing in City Park, a bus waiting for me.

1. When we had a larger group of chickens, it felt like there were a couple of cliques or an assorted rabble, but now it feels like the remaining trio are friends. It’s sweet how they move around together.

2. The pumpkins are growing strikingly, consistently orange.

2b. After a summer of monocrop gluts, I come home with a varied bag of fruits and vegetables.

3. Another British Science Festival event – this time at the Society of Dyers and Colourists. We explore their interactive museum, spinning patterned wheels to see how our eyes fail to keep up.

3b. The amazing detail on the textile printing blocks. The contrast of the intricate swirling designs and the cold, dark metal.

3c. We are in awe as she shows how cutting-edge chemistry can reveal the true colours on faded ancient garments. Later, we enjoy hearing how someone has teased information out of texts to interpret how colours were seen in the ancient world.

1. Long awaited bacon butties for lunch.

2. Tilda sits on my desk – a very rare treat indeed. She pads uncomfortably amongst the papers until I fetch a cushion. When I pick her up she complains but her whine switches to purring when I place her on the softness.

3. We visit a new pub in the “independent quarter”. A lovely herringbone floor, rich blue woodwork and simple pine chairs. It feels clean, light and fresh.

3b. The music – specifically the woman’s voice – draws us in. As we watch them perform, we see others being ensnared in the same way.

3c. More herringbone – this time grey tiles made stylish rather than public toilet-esque.

3d. Lily’s favourite chair. Her pop-pops complains that she’s been playing him as usual.

The British Science Festival is on in Bradford this week – lectures during the day and other events in the evenings. Fun!

1. Frustratingly, we can’t find anywhere to park (there are buildings on our usual car parking spot now – which shows it’s a while since we were last in that part of town) and by the time we remember the place behind the library and cut back over to the university we’re too late for the first talk. Instead, we retrace our steps and go to the National Media Museum – it’s a while since we’ve had a look around. We nearly shrug off the “Life Online” section (since we know how the old interweb works) but then we see all sorts of relics from our own computering pasts. Upstairs, we learn about cameras and projectors – from the oldest to the new and experimental – and get a headache from the room illustrating colours in light. Back downstairs, we enjoy the fantastic cake selection in the cafe.

2. The first talk we get to is about Neanderthals. The speaker takes a while to get to the meat of the matter but once he gets there, it’s fascinating. My favourite things: how we can tell (or suspect) where they had bedding areas in camps and imagining the landscape (which is now) under the Channel near Jersey.

2b. After lunch, we learn about Turkey Red cloth dye – how the method has been lost to time but how it’s being rediscovered using cutting edge chemistry – then I go to a talk on doggy DNA. I enjoy that dogs’ eyebrows/mustaches/beards etc are collectively known as “furnishings” and am fascinated by some animations showing how much dog breeds skull shapes have changed in the last 150 years only. (John learns about the creation of blue (and thus white) LEDs instead and it blows our little lay minds about people working with individual atoms.)

2c. We finish up with a talk on information that can be gathered from medieval manuscripts – not from what is written on them, but what they’re made from (animal skin parchment) and what lives on them (giving every document a microbial signature). It absolutely captures our attention from the beginning to the end – not just ours either, everyone in the room seems electrified by it: a perfect blend of history and science. I love that they came up with a simple, effective and non-destructive method for collecting the proteins – a Staedtler eraser.

3. I sit on the rug and hug my lovely soft dog.

1. It’s ages since we had pain au chocolat for breakfast. We bake them until the pastry is light and crisp.

2. A surprisingly sunny day. I hang the winter duvet on the line for a few hours and when we gather it in again, it smells like fresh air.

3. It’s only afterwards – when John gets called away for the whole evening, after being out all afternoon too – that I realise how glad I am that we got a walk together in the middle. We walk through the horses’ field – it’s unusually dry – and John notes that the sky above the line of beech trees is so uniformly blue that it looks like a special effects screen. Later, we walk along the side of the beck and talk about how the path has changed in the six years we’ve lived here. (On Friday, it was six years since we bought the house, though we only started walking in the woods regularly once we got Lily the following March.)