1. We walk in the woods for the first time in a little while.

2. The salad looks super healthy until I tip the homemade croutons on it. I very much enjoy the crunch.

3. The sharp contrast between the clean and dusty parts of the lampshade.

1. I go back to sleep and when I wake up the second time, thick fluffy snowflakes are falling from the sky.

2. I don’t think the scrap-stuffed envelope will light then suddenly, the whole thing goes up in a “whoompf”.

3. A return to an old favourite – the silliness of 30 Rock.

1. The top of the fence smells like warm wood in a sauna.

2. I’m going upstairs in a minute so I’ll just listen to this selected one track, not a whole album. Oh and this one. And this one. I end up listening to a dozen favourites.

3. Stacks of neatly folded paper.

1. Somewhere along the line, I became someone who loves the heel of the bread.

2. Falling down a research rabbit hole.

3. Our neighbours’ cat A waits sweetly for me to finish with her brother and put out their food, then she jumps on my knee and we have a long cuddle.

3b. Our neighbours’ underfloor heating.

1. An early (for me, for a Sunday) phone call has me up and hunting for strayed horses in the woods. I track hoof prints in the mud and identify three different types of poo, proving that both foxes and deer have been around recently (as well as the horses). I also spot one of our cats – Tilda I think – on Wood Hill, a fair way from our house and I get a hug from Friendly Black Dog when I met her out on her morning walk. We don’t find the horses (they finally turn up in the afternoon, a mile away) but it’s sunny, and warm for February, and that makes the search enjoyable all the same.

2. The restaurant turns out to be better than we thought – I give the cook free rein on my soup noodles, ending up with a mix of flavours I’d never have picked but love.

2b. Jewels of jelly wobbling.

3. We go to see Circa Tsuica – a circus group from France that combines acrobatics and brass band music. It’s silly, crazy and awe-inspiring – we grin solidly for an hour at their exertions.

3b. We make stupid puns the whole way home. And exchange clumsy, awkward side-on high fives to celebrate the dumbest of them.

1. It’s lovely to see everyone’s zines coming together – neon pamphlets with serious messages, little fold-ups on mental health and feminism, and muted colours & pages from old books gathered together into what looks more like a gorgeous artbook. Mine feels silly and frivolous as I knew it would but I’m still happy with it when it finally comes together. I have a lot of compiling and stitching work to do this week but I decide I want one finished before I leave the stall. When I get home, John says it feels like a proper book.

1b. It’s been a great little course – learning about letterpress, bookbinding and all sorts of collage/layout techniques – but the most important lesson I’ve learnt was probably in the first week. Someone said that we – as people, as women – need to learn to take up space. A few times while I’ve been making my zine, I’ve thought ‘who would want to read this?’ but the point isn’t to sell to a million people: it’s to reach a dozen or so people who nod along because they experienced something similar or are interested because they didn’t. Nearly all my favourite comics/graphic novels are by indie biographical artists – I just like reading about their everyday lives. And, most notably, they nearly all started out self-publishing zines – daring to put their work and themselves out there, to say ‘I’m here, I have a voice to be heard’.

2. I need something to eat but not too much because we’ll be eating dinner early. I grab a hot sausage roll from a bakery and you know what, it’s pretty good. It’s salty and greasy, and deeply nostalgic of when I used to eat hot sausage rolls, while waiting for my mum in the old post office in Crosby.

3. To Leeds. A smooth hot chocolate and a wander around the shops. MyThai looks like it’ll be full again but the friendliest waitress in the world invites us inside, saying there is an empty table right at the back. A table also opens up for us at North Bar, where I spin my little straw around my coke glass, and I get John to lean in to me, then burp loudly in his ear. Finally, we go back up the road to the Grand. We haven’t really heard much by either the support artist (Fuzzy Jones) or even the main band (The Shee) but are won over by both. Specifically, I enjoy the complementary sound of the two guitars and the warmth of the bass over Fuzzy’s vocals, and am impressed with the fullness of the sound particularly in the last song. And we just don’t know where to look during The Shee – each instrument and voice just beautiful in their clarity and passion.

3b. John looks around to see if we know anyone there. I doubt him but then he notices that we’re sat next to his mum and dad’s neighbours.