1. Getting back just before the rain.
2. Smearing filler into wall holes.
3. We have had a collection of empty Prime bottles for a while now because when this influencer-powered energy drink first came out, the children were sure they would be valuable one day. But now thinking has changed, and I get permission to put the lot in the recycling.
1. Unexpectedly, a chance for a coffee and a gossip. Our slower times have converged again.
2. I make a short (and rapid so I'm not noticed) diversion through the park and to see Bettany and friends playing on the swings.
3. In my absence, the bank has become covered in spring flowers -- violets, primroses in various shades of yellow and ochre, and anemones, and even some early bluebells.
1. Squirrel! Little skinny thing with a bottle brush of a tail crossing the snow to a twisted latch.
2. Where the snow was yesterday, among the bruised winter grass are yellow genapy flowers and white anemones and others that I don't know.
3. Up high where there's nothing but snow, rabbit tracks.
1. Today the ski instructors are wearing greatcoats against the falling snow.
2. At the food market, an English man without much French explains to the cashier that he is leaving tonight and that he is grateful for all her help.
2b. We go home a rather long way, despite the rain, wandering among the chalets. I catch the scents of wood smoke and of goats.
3. There is a spot from where, by some quirk of mountain acoustics, I can hear the piste bashers working far above us and over the valley.
1. To look up and see snowflakes falling from a blue sky.
2. Among the dark pine branches icicles shine, thawing and freezing, thawing and freezing.
3. My niece tells me about sleepily listening to my sister sing 'Feed the birds, feed the bag, tuppence a bird.'
1. Waking up to a dusting of snow down in the village -- just enough to brighten the drab winter grass and the pines up the mountain.
2. To find that the children have the same instructor as last year and that he remembers us.
3. We take the passage facile, still covered in powder snow, cut only by pair of ski tracks.
1. Finding treasure in the Oxfam bookshop. I only popped in to look for a card.
2. Bettany doesn't wear makeup out and about, but nonetheless her palettes are worn to holes from practice, practice, practice.
3. The change in sound quality when Nick switches on the Bluetooth speaker.