1. Since it’s a bright day, I spend the morning in the garden. I plant out the dogwood at the bottom of the garden and a cheapy shrub in the silver birch bed. The chickens mingle outside while the cats (including next door’s R-kitten) sit patiently inside the run. Up on the patio table, I find the most gorgeous leaf skeleton and in the chicken coop, I find four surprise eggs – the first they’ve laid in months.

2. I bang the mat on the wall: there is a faint hiss as the heavier particles fall onto the wood below but the rest float away silently in the breeze. (This becomes a more satisfying thing to repeat once I realise the direction of said breeze.)

3. The obscured glass breaks the orange streetlights and the blue lights from the neighbours’ garden into cubist angles.

1. We have to go out at lunchtime to buy chicken feed – which means we’re just a minute away from the lovely Italian deli in Saltaire. I enjoy my favourite salami and their bright green olives.

2. A whirlwind of little things leaves me tired and grumpy in the late afternoon. Then a message from an old (but sporadically long-lost) friend cheers me up again.

3. The chunky yarn makes a blanket more squishy than normal. The novelty is fun.

1. We watch a large crow try to find balance on the spindly birch branches.

2. A walk in the woods with our lovely neighbour, K. At one point, we meet two dog walkers and their pack of dogs – all off lead. The dogs surround us in a group and I tickle each one. I tell K and the dog walkers that I’m in heaven.

2b. John’s laugh when I tell him K’s son F’s favourite joke of the moment (which involves a big green pool noodle).

3. The last message in my chat conversation with my friend S is about Lily dying. He sends me a picture of a tiny calico kitten – just because he says it makes him sad seeing that as our last message. A very sweet kitten and a very sweet gesture.

1. We didn’t see Kaufman last night so the first thing I do on Sunday is look for him. A telltale tail behind his curtain gives away his location.

2. Buttered noodles with pepper and chilli flakes have become my new dicky-tummy food.

3. The headlights and brake lights dissipate and sparkle on the bumpy glass.

3b. The two dogs wander around the pub, hoovering under all tables, oblivious to the performances taking place.

1. We find a great little place for lunch.

1b. Looking up at the crossing, we see the variation in the buildings along the street.

2. We go to the strange shop at the back of the arcade – I know it stretches back further than one would expect but I’m surprised by how far it extends upstairs too. There is all sorts in there.

2b. We could sit on the corner but instead, we walk a bit further to sit near the lake. A quirk of perspective makes it look like little tiny cars are driving at the people walking down the pier. Later, as we walk around the water on the way back to the car, I get a dog hug – all the others we’ve seen have been on leads but this one is allowed to come over and when I bend down to talk to her, she licks my face.

3. Crumpets with cheese and chilli sauce.

1. We make slightly better time than we thought so we have time to meander into the city via my old haunts instead. It’s funny how familiar and yet strange it at the same time: it feels like a lifetime ago now. (And I suppose it is: I was 18-20 when I lived there, and that was nearly 18 years ago now.) As we drive up my old street, I’m thrown for a second but then the next building confirms it. We drive back down and I laugh heartily when I realise that my final year home has been demolished.

1b. John points out something that largely escaped my attention while I was living there – and my mum’s attention to this day – how elaborately decorated the pubs are in the city. Through over-exposure, we’re quite numb to Victorian architecture but these buildings from slightly earlier, that somehow escaped bombing and redevelopment, are breath-taking.

1c. Out of the car, the size of St George’s Hall also blows me away for the first time. How many times I have been past there? How many times inside? I even spent a full day carrying boxes of “Welcome to Liverpool!” pamphlets up the steps – and yet I never noticed the vast size of the columns, the bulk of them so high above us.

2. Inside the museum, we look at banana-coloured beetles eating fruit and the shadows of ants carrying leaves along a rope. Then we touch ancient rocks and massive shells, and stagger under the weight of an elephant’s tooth before John tries the amazing microscope and we look at much, much smaller things instead. We also enjoy all the specimens in the drawers – not quite knowing what will be inside.

2b. The warren of a cafe.

3. The sunset behind the docks and the man who stops to explain the strange window in the ground.

3b. The restaurant is further up the road than I thought it would be – right up, near my old university building – but it gives me the chance to see the extent of the regeneration up there: I tell John of how it was near abandoned, how we’d walk further out of our way rather than going down there – and now look at it, with its stately painted homes and trendy restaurants.

3c. The best Mexican food we’ve had in a long, long time.

4. We don’t stay at the gig for that long but I’m glad we make the effort to go for even a short time: I’m glad to see another pocket of regeneration and also a drooling dog that walks its tail when I say hello.

4b. We drive up to Southport along the old Dock Road. Again, we marvel at the scale of things – the ships, the silos and the old warehouses.