Countdown, storm day and butcher.

1. The first thing I say is "Ten days." Nick says: "What? No, it's eight days."

2. The bowl of town is smeared and blurred by low cloud. It looks so different that I stop to look for a moment in the rain and wind.

3. Conversation in the butchers:
- Now if you'd bought enough for two, you could have cooked me dinner.
- Don't you have someone to cook dinner for you?
- Yeah, but I won't tell 'er.
At this point, the other butcher put in: "Madam, you shouldn't have him round. He's not housetrained. You have to open the back door and let him out in the garden."

Pay, my time back and new book.

1. At the front of the queue, a father tells his toddler to "Give the lady your pound coin." The toddler stands on tiptoes and reaches up, then goes back to rattling the boxes of Tictacs.

2. I have come to the end of my medical secretary course, which means that I'll have the week running up to the wedding mostly to myself.

3. I choose a new book from my To Read Pile -- a fat fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay. I'm getting to the bottom of The To Read Pile -- there are things down there that I'd forgotten I had. It's like getting entirely new books.

All quiet now, quick chore and seeing friends.

1. I like to pour all the chatter in my head on to three day book pages. When Nick comes in for breakfast, I stop writing and close the book.

2. I do the washing up. It doesn't take long.

3. I like to go out to dinner with old friends. We drink too much wine, and talk about things that happened years and years ago. At the end of the evening, because we have drunk too much wine, and because they can't come to the wedding, Nick and I recite our vows for them in the street outside our house.

Stay here, no rush and paging Dr Thomas Bowdler.

1. The alarm goes off. "Let's have a lie-in," says Nick. So we stay in the warm dark for another half hour.

2. I saunter down the hill to the station -- going against the commuter flow -- and think how very different my life is these days. I'm particularly thinking this because while I was working, it was always a mission to get to Tim's for Tuesday Knights -- I finished at 6.30pm and if I wanted to catch the train that would get me there on time, I had 10 minutes to make the 15-minute journey to the station.

3. There's a certain bawdy undercurrent to the evening. Innocent sentences are interpreted in creative ways. I'm wondering what exactly went on at Nick's stag do.

Field trip, sun and off the path.

I have a short piece about biscuits up at Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits.

1. The park at 10.45am is full of girls from a school on the other side of town. They push into the ladies, turning sideways to accomodate their shoulder bags. They are all coatless on a chilly morning, as if they have suddenly been called outside for a moment, and the wet grass soaks their white canvas shoes. They cluster at the top of the hill, looking hungrily down before running shrieking and sliding into the dip. Their teacher (hat, scarf, coat, boots, clipboard) calls out: "If I can hear your voice, it's too loud." They modulate back: "Sorry, Miss."

2. Light comes through the round door glass and through the warm orange curtain. Indoor sun.

3. I leave the path and walk on the grass because I want to shuffle through wet beech leaves.

Mess, spice and first in.

1. Nick looks at the mass of books and paper on the coffee table and says: "Do we need another little table?" Time for a bit of tidying up.

2. Opening a new packet of cinnamon sticks -- the scent is so strong that it seems chemically and un-natural.

3. To get into bed (between new sheets) first and sit among the pillows reading while Nick is in the bathroom.

Errors, the pictures and cake.

1. To check my work and find a few errors.

2. We meet the photographer to check out the wedding venue. Round the back, we find leather sofas on verandas, lunchtime sun shining on warm stone walls; the lemon yellow leaves of a small vineyard and drifts of coppery beech leaves.

3. A soft, damp cake containing large and crunchy pieces of walnut.

Glazed, in this edition and revision.

1. We pick up our creations from my hen do. The glaze has deepened all the colours. Pastels have become jewel shades.

2. The mother drops a free paper down on the table. "They gave me this. I've been carrying it around all morning. Do you want it?" It's the edition with my first arts feature in. We jump around the kitchen.

3. While Nick is having his stag do, I revise for tomorrow's assessment. I'm glad I scribbled all the medical definitions in my course book.

The tip-off, is it ready and the warning.

1. The man at the job centre says: "A wink's as good as a nod to a blind horse, if you know what I mean." And I do.

2. I like pushing skewer into a cake to see if it's done - the crust on top resists, and then it slips into the soft crumb.

3. My back registers a protest at the cold weather, a month of missed yoga sessions and long hours of writing and medical secretary practice. I spend time stretching and relaxing. It feels great.

Mystery tour, end of the day and the voice.

1. She says that she had no idea where they were going. "We drove west, and I thought we were going somewhere like Cornwall. Then we got to Heathrow and I thought it must be a domestic flight. Then when we got to the terminal, I got my boarding pass and it said were going to Geneva. We got a car there, and I thought we were driving to the hotel, but I suddenly thought, we've gone a long way from the lake, and it looks very rural."

2. I click shut the binders and close the folder (flumph), pack everything into my bag and go home.

3. Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Everything Is Illuminated has a brilliant voice. The translator Alexander has got hold of a English thesaurus, and gone for it in the way I secretly envy. His English is 'Premium' and he spleens his mother by disseminating too much currency.

That happiness, working clothes and olive oil.

1. Talking to a wise man who has met Nelson Mandela. He tells me about "that happiness he has."

2. To come home and change out of a pair of jeans that are stiff and heavy after a dash through stair rod rain.

3. The taste of particularly good olive oil - there's a bitterness there, and an earthiness.

The choice, soup and game on.

1. In the bakery, listening to the girls behind me deciding which cake they would like to take back to the office. "I couldn't eat a whole one of those. I'd have to cut it in half." "I'll have one, but for later."

2. A pan of orange vegetables (pumpkin and carrot) cooking for a wintery soup.

3. Nick is very pleased with himself because has bought a new game. When I get home, he has spread all the maps out out on the floor. On one of them, the British Empire is still pink. "There are more than a thousand counters," he says. He's anticipating a happy evening of pressing them out and neatening the rough edges.

A storm, the changes and a list of promises.

1. It is a day of wind and rain. A maelstrom of leaves twists at the crossroads. The common vibrates, as if the gale has got in underneath it. The land feels alive, wild and joyful.

2. In the afternoon the sun comes out. We stand on the top of Mount Ephraim and look over our town, checking for storm damage. It's all still there, but the lime trees are now leafless, and we look between their smallest branches at a shattered view.

3. We sit at the kitchen table and write our wedding vows.

White, compliment and secrets.

1. My aunt brings me a white potted azalea. "It's bridal colours," she says.

2. One of my friends (a teacher) tells another (a mother-to-be): "You're going to make a wonderful parent."

2. While we are being taught how to paint ceramics, the man from Timeless Treats brings us a box of cupcakes. In pantomime, I take delivery and pay.

3. I like to see most of the women in my life sitting round a table.

3. There are an awful lot of secrets -- Rosey won't let me look at a large dish that everyone is working at; and there's a mysterious book going round that everyone is writing in but me.

3. We sit up late watching a film made about an expedition of 60 schoolboys (including my father) in Norway. It's the year Nick was born. All the boys are wearing woollen trousers, and the leaders wear tweed. There are a few bright cagouls -- "Horrid things. They were so sweaty you might just as well have not been wearing them." Every time he comes in shot, the mother tells us how handsome he was.

Dawn, copies and pumpkin.

1. The driver says: "You should have seen it first thing this morning. It was dark, and then suddenly the sky was red and streaked with black."

2. I like they way a pile of new photocopies burns my fingers.

3. The crack-cut of a knife splitting pumpkin rind, and the first sight of the hollow space inside.

Work, arachnids and coming to help.

1. I interview the director of a play for a feature. It feels good to do some work knowing that I'm going to get paid.

2. I like seeing all the pea-sized spiders this year. There is one on our porch, one in the flowerbed opposite (invisible until it drizzles) and one on a traffic sign that I pass on my way to my secretarial course. I wonder if they are starting to recognise us.

3. I start the washing up. The tinny TV cheering in the sitting room stops abruptly, and Nick comes in to help.

Blueberry cake, come home and unseasonable.

1. She brings half a cake. A thunderhead of blueberries masses in the cut edge.

2. We think of our men coming home, and the party scatters into the evening.

3. Unexpectedly warm evening in October half term. Teenagers sit cross-legged in huddled rings on street corners.

Cleansing power of fire, moon and light through leaves.

1. Games night: We manage to escape Tim's dungeon without dying; and my character sets fire to the main monster with a strategic lantern to the face.

2. The shy moon peeps at us through a tangle of silvered clouds.

3. At the end of our drive, a streetlight shines through leaves.

The Mother-in-Law, bread of heaven and deal done.

1. I go out leaving Nick in bed, and come home three hours later to find him and my mother working on the table plans. The flat is very, very tidy.

2. It's hard to walk home right before lunch carrying a baguette that is too long for its bag. It would be so easy to break off a fragment of red-gold crust and cloud-white crumb.

3. The mother (who loves flowers more than anything) leaves the florists triumphant: "I've got more flowers for less money." I'm just happy to know my bouquet will be waiting for me when I arrive.

Just a shower, time out and five o'clock whistle.

1. I'm pegging out the day's third load of washing, and I can feel dots of rain. I take the sheets in (they're nearly dry). As I come round the corner of the house, I see that the sun is shining out in the street: green gold light hatched with shining lines of rain. It won't be a long shower.

2. It's so quiet: I have the flat to myself for the afternoon and evening because Nick has gone out.

3. It's half past ten, and I'm still working. I hear crunch-crunch-crunch on the gravel outside and that means I can stop.

Cake, carwash and parsnips.

1. A text message from Rosey reports: "I made a very special cake today. It was so big I had to make it in the washing-up bowl." She's talking about our wedding cake!

2. We pass a drive where a man is washing one side of a car. On the other side, two tiny blonde children dressed in matching raincoats help out with sandcastle buckets of water. They are not much taller than the wheels they are scrubbing.

3. My parsnips have welded themselves to the bottom of the pan. "I'm never putting honey on them again. They're sweet enough as they are." He says: "You always say that, and they always taste so good with honey."

Catching a lift, bushman and wedge of geese.

1. I'm waiting to catch the hospital bus home when a patient transport arrives. The driver asks what I'm up to. I tell him. "You've just missed it. Are you staff?" I tell him I'm a volunteer, and he offers me a lift along with his patient.

2. Caroline has managed to rustle us up some tickets to a lecture with Ray Mears -- so we enjoy an evening hearing the great bushman talk about forgotten paddling birch bark canoes across Canada. "There's a completely different smell with birch bark. And the cedar they use. It smells like a cigarbox." Later, with a rather distant expression, he talks about the paddlers "walking differently" -- it feels as if he is still trying to process the experience.

3. I wake in the night and hear geese calling as they fly over.

Elevenses, revision and core.

1. A cup of tea and a sticky bun.

2. Discovering that I've done the right amount of revision for my assessment.

3. Digging the core out of a cooking apple and stuffing it with brown sugar and raisins.

Red coat, quality of light and in the old days.

1. Seeing a friend's bright red coat at the far end of the street.

2. Yellow gold light has hit the building opposite -- I feel as if I have been greeted with a huge smile.

3. We go to a lecture on what the Weald would have been like in the Cretaceous, when Tunbridge Wells Museum's iguanadon would have been alive. Swampy, apparently. The lecturer puts up a picture of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and says rather sadly: "I've never been there, but I'm told that's what it would have been like." I have been there -- so all comes to life for me. I can imagine the wet heat, and the forests of horsetails growing half in, half out of the water where the dinosaurs come down to drink.

The volunteer, gleaming pavements and filing.

Two new faces on the Roll of Honour: Jewellery maker Louise has beeng 3BTing at Tooting Squared and Jennifer, who is watching her offspring discover the world at Cultivating Contentment. They both emailed me to let me know about their blogs.

1. He says: "I'm going to cook supper tonight."

2. I emerge from a two-hour training session to find gleaming wet pavements and gentle rain.

3. I like filing my notes because it says: "job done" and I know that I can find them again if I need them.

Backroom, sausage and roar.

1. In the office of the town museum, they have on the wall a 10ft by 6ft picture of a chap in shorts and a solar topee lounging on a lawn in front of an exotic palace and palm trees. A dusky lady sits just out of reach and smiles at him.

2. Slitting a sausage's soft underside, squashing the two halves flat on the pan and waiting until the meat is brown and crisp.

3. I like to lie in the bath and hear Nick roaring at a football game.

A greeting, sweep and shake.

1. In the shopping precinct, a toddler is off at a run. His parents try to catch him, but he veers right to wave at a stoney-faced elderly man who is sitting on a bench. The man's waxy face breaks into a joyful smile.

2. I like to sweep the kitchen and the bathroom floors and to feel comfortable walking on them again.

3. Shaking out and straightening the doormats.

Steak sounds, Bramley and cold weather.

1. The chunk-chunk-chunk sound of the butcher dicing our stewing steak.

2. Stewed Bramley apple -- sour-sweet, syruppy and fluffy.

3. To sit under a rich red duvet reading a book about Antarctica. (Sara Wheeler's Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica is very good, by the way. She has a wonderful sense for selecting annecdotes; and a great eye for a weird landscape.)

Snoring badger, mint and nougat.

1. Nick comes home from work a bit miserable. He had recorded a football game to watch this evening, but then saw the score in the paper -- so all the joy has gone out of this idea. Instead, we tune in to Autumn Watch. They have footage of a snoring badger. Its neighbours in the next chamber are lying with their paws over their ears.

2. A taste of homegrown mint in among the dark green kale.

3. We eat the last few slices of cherry nougat.

Damselfly, dem dry bones and circle.

1. She recognises me by my snail brooch from Sheer Sumptuosity -- it was Ruth who co-owns this company far away in York, who introduced us down here in Tunbridge Wells. She has for me a box containing an electric blue damselfly brooch, which I can't wait to wear.

2. I am learning the bones of the skeleton for my medical secretary course. I like making up mnemonics for each limb.

3. After the show, we sit in the bar. The actor takes the sofa and we shyly pull up chairs all around him. Caroline says: "No-one's sitting next to George, and that's a shame." She sits down on the other half of the sofa to even up the circle.

PS: Ruth is a dedicated 3BTer, so take a look at her blog.

Greenwood, owl and someone else did it.

1. On the common, the smell of cut green wood where workmen are clearing the banks. It's a like a carpentry workshop, and a like a cold day.

2. There is so much to love about the Warner Brothers' short I Love to Singa -- the story of a little owl who dared to sing jazz against the wishes of his classically-trained parents. The mother owl's distress always puts a little lump in my throat, and then the cartoon hits me in the face with the 'No we didn't, lady" gag. If you've got eight minutes, give it a viewing.



3. Nick normally hauls the bins up to the road once a fortnight and grumbles about how he always has to do it. At 5pm, I hear the old rrrrollll-scrape of the recycling bins trundling up the drive, and think for a moment that Nick has come home early. He hasn't -- but when he does get in, he's very pleased at not having to do a chore he dislikes.