When the bar of soap gets so small and flat that as you run it over your body it looks as though your hand itself is trailing bubbles in its wake.

The sight, from behind, of a grey-haired man in a really large boxy car circa 1980, his baseball hat perched a bit too high on his head. This sight always reminds me of the only grandfather I ever had. He was in no way a blood relative but I loved him a whole helluva lot and today there was such man/car combo in front of me and one behind me while I waited for a near infinite line of lunch-bound teenagers to cross the road from school to the food court at the local mall… Two grandpas protecting me from youth walking steadily in one direction.

Playing pretend games with my son when it was he who started the game and I who was just along for the joyful ride. (He gathered pretend apples in a bucket. We ate them. He gathered pretend M&Ms in a bucket. We chose our colours and ate them. We built imaginary sand castles with a bucket. We did not eat them…)

The strangely satisfying knowledge that you’re probably going to have a good cry and it really will all be okay.

Baking. I’ve done some baking for the first time in a hundred years. Not a lot mind you. But enough to at least get the house to smell sweet and warm for a few hours in the middle of all this deceptively bright white.