John’s 36th birthday. Cor, that’s ancient.

1. I think we need to start listing “batting possible punchlines back and forth” as one of our official hobbies – we do it so often and enjoy it so much.

2. Every other bit of the cooking process has gone … not wrong exactly yet not optimally, but the cheese melts perfectly.

3. We hear a squeak from the other room – Tilda has caught a mouse and it is her, not the mouse, that is squeaking from the excitement of it. I go to rescue the little creature (Tilda rarely hurts her catches) and the Tildabeest rubs herself against my legs, proud that she has (momentarily) contributed protein to the household.

4. Lily runs up the stairs to bed and I note how much more limber she is now she is taking long-term painkillers.

0. To sleep for as long as I want/need.

1. Strange to the left of me, Lily to the right, here I am on the sofa, with (the white belly) crew.

2. Lily makes two friends while waiting for John at the supermarket and I feel bad that they see her grumpy, “I’ve been partially abandoned!” sulk rather than her usual happy self. The latter reappears when she sees John round the corner: she stands and wags her tail, delighted the pack is back together.

3. We can’t decide on what to have to dinner then John mentioned that he could make (his grandma’s) minestrone. It hadn’t even been on my radar but it is just what I want. (And it’s delicious.)

4. Lily stomps up John’s body and rests her head on his chest.

5. Dancing to the song over the credits at the end of the film.

1. The circle of leaves around the trees, orange on green.

2. The crust begins to form on the first batch while I’m working on the second one. I’ve marbled different colours together – sometimes randomly, sometimes with more control – and have no idea how they’ll turn out. How exciting.

3. The mist lingers all day. When I step out of the studio for some fresh air, the hills around Baildon resemble a watercolour.

1. To get the early train and have time to visit the shops I want to visit before the exhibition opens.

1b. Fog covers the fields on the train journey north. Everything disappears as we cross the Crimple Valley Viaduct.

2. Last year, everything felt rushed and chaotic – this year, it’s a lot calmer.

2b. It’s such a relief to see the tutor make a (tiny) mistake in her demonstration (which she immediately spots and laughs about) and, at other times, for the tutors to contradict each other: it reinforces to me that even experts have to undo stitching from time to time and that there is often no one right way to do things.

2c. I spend too much. (I made up for yesterday’s lack of spending today.) Some of it is bargainacious (lovely chunky yarn for a third of the usual price in one case, another about 20% cheaper) but other things are luxury: some hand-dyed mulberry silk tops and two pairs of proper Sheffield-made scissors from Ernest Wright & Sons.

3. The soup is so spicy that makes me hiccup. It’s very good.

1. We’ve circled the whole car park unsuccessfully but as we’re leaving – when we’re at the last section before the exit – that we find an empty spot.

2. The (construction) cranes are out of scale. It feels unnatural for them to be so large, so heavy, so close.

3. Even though the restaurant is fairly quiet (since it’s nearly 3pm, well past the lunch rush), the chef dashes around the kitchen at a hectic pace, shouting ‘rapido’ at her staff. We watch, curious about it all.

4. To wander around with no real purpose. We eat nice food and drink nice drinks but otherwise just enjoy having a day together.

4b. Something really, truly beautiful: we are both tempted to be frivolous – to buy things we don’t really need but would just like. In the end, we buy very little but it’s lovely, just fantastic, to know that we could have been spendthrifts if something had caught our fancy.

1. For once I don’t miss any buses nor do I have to run or rush for any.

2. I always rush glazing. It feels do-or-die compared to most other bits of pottery and dithering seems to exacerbate the problem (as it does with most things). Today though, after rushing some bowls (and paying the consequences), I take a small paintbrush and slowly neaten things up by hand.

2b. The white sits flat and the sponge reveals the red peaks underneath.

2c. To clear some of my backlog.

2d. I’m engrossed in an article and nearly miss my stop – thankfully someone else has rung the bell so I don’t have to rush too much. When I get downstairs, I see it is the lady who was at the bus stop on the way out too – the lady who alerted me to the arrival of that bus when I was engrossed in another article. She is clearly looking out for me today.

3. Lily has been left alone for maybe three or four minutes – not enough to get very anxious but she is distracted by her abandonment and doesn’t notice me stick my head around the door. Eventually she spots me in the mirror – her eyes widen then she turns her head to check I’m real.