Fine day, into the daylight and picture.

1. On this fine day, I've taken some time off to walk and talk in the autumn air... and in a café and round the table and waiting at the station.

1b. He comes downstairs into the daylight, and while we are not looking directly at him because we're unpacking the supermarket order, explains his photographs to our guest.

2. I ask the teacher for help and discover that thinner paint makes a finer line.

3. At the end of the evening, we take a selfie with our drying pictures as we are waiting for the train. I love the eccentric crop and our wine-shone faces (we were complaining about our aging appearance, but we look so proud and pleased with ourselves and our pictures).

Pears, jay bird and guacamole.

1. I took a kilo of disappointing pears out of the fruit bowl and baked them with ginger and dots of butter. Now they are definitely not disappointing, being sweet and sticky as toffee and gingerbread.

2. When you see a jay picking acorns, there is always the hope that you might find a blue-striped feather.

3. All the little shop had was the guac that is twice as expensive as the own-brand -- but it actually tastes of avocados, which seems like a good reason to spend a little more.

Hoarders, flowers and technology.

1. In a low voice he reels off the names of the muscles where I have been hoarding all this tension.

2. He comes home with posies of flowers -- late cosmos; hydrangea drifting between pink and green; midnight purple salvia -- to take to school for his photography class.

3. We've been listening to Hugh Bonneville reading Sherlock Holmes on Radio 4, and it's odd to think that  in Conan Doyle's world, you can ride on the London Underground to visit an opium den and then get a horse drawn cab back; that a submarine represents a weapon to end all wars; and if you want to tell someone something quickly over a distance, you have a choice of telegram, postcard or messenger urchin.

Pods, live music and quick supper.

1. 'I'm remaining calm under fire,' says Nick of the cracks and pops coming from my paper bag of sweetpea seed pods that are bursting in response to the dry, warm conditions in the house.

2. Cozy afternoon pub, live music, tasty beer and some good friends.

3. Supper is quick to make: reheated stew, rice and a few microwaved greens.

White grapes, gothic novel and predictions.

1. This week's grapes are particularly good -- a little hard so they burst well, and then both sweet and sharp. 

2. Before Nick comes up to bed, I read aloud the hot mess that is The Castle of Otranto. We are twenty pages in (including a long section we skipped, which seems to be assuring us that Horace Walpole isn't making this up because it's from a genuine found manuscript) and already someone has been crushed to death on his wedding day by a giant falling helmet; someone else has been falsely accused of black magic; and an isolated young woman is being pressured to marry her almost-father-in-law. 

3. Nick and I read our horoscopes and the predictions for the nation in Old Moore's and then get our monthly telling off from one of the children for imagining that the movement of stars has any affect on our lives.

Ginger tea, gothic novels and red moon.

1. Hot ginger tea encourages me back to my desk after lunch.

2. She is studying gothic novels at school and temporarily lives in a world of malevolent dead wives and plots to bundle her off to an asylum. 

3. We angle ourselves at the attic window view the large red moon sitting low in the sky.

Hoping for blue sky, late-running and ready for morning.

1. We are fairly sure that even when we've slogged up the hill, we won't be high enough to look down on the morning's mist lying in the valley and in the town's bowl -- but we can still hope.

2. Of course, as soon as I put the lunch on, the late-running boiler man taps at the door.

3. The night before food tech: bright portions of vegetables packed into boxes and stacked in the fridge, and dry ingredients waiting on the breakfast table.