1. John is playing with the dog while I’m waking up. The game involves him throwing a sock on the bed and her overly-excitedly bounding over to pick it up. The sock lands on my belly and she lands on my legs with a heavy thump to pick it up. After a few throws elsewhere, the sock lands on my face: she plods up my body, legs straddling my chest, then extracts the sock with the gentlest precision manoeuvre. The hairs on her chin tickle my cheek.

2. A perfectly proportioned tree just coming into leaf.

3. Neat new pointing in between the rough old stones.

4. As I sit on the cold concrete block outside the abandoned building, I regret changing our plan: instead of getting the bus home as usual, I suggested John (and Lily) pick me up on the way home from his mum’s (her grandma’s) house and we can go for a walk in Bingley. I have to wait more than half an hour but it’s worth it in the end: we have the park around the river to ourselves — well, except for some ducks. Lily paddles in the water and we walk around in the fading evening sun, catching up on our afternoons apart.