Stringing fruit together is about the most straightforward thing I can come up with at present.

As I write, the man of the house is up on a chair behind me, prising bits of plaster from the ceiling and letting water into a bucket as he tries to find the source of The Latest Leak.

The dog lies at my feet with the question (mine) hovering over her: will she (beset with tumours) make it to her 15th birthday at the transit of Venus on the 6th of June? On Sunday her low spirits had me thinking this would be the week to embrace ‘the privilege of offering her a peaceful end’ as one correspondent so graciously put it. Today she is again hungry, active and curious.

As for the rest, all is shadowed dappled by questions: Should we go on trusting the financial shoestring on which we apparently dangle? Will life go on providing what we need, as long as we go on doing what it seems good to do — whether or not it has an explicit financial outcome (and most of it doesn’t)? So far so good but who knows if we’re not about to plunge into a great sinkhole of naivety.

Are my current spiritual explorations off the wall/planet/radar of good sense? And does that matter, as long as I find the subject matter fascinating and the mental exercise helpful?

Does it matter (to myself, to anyone else) whether I finish the three or four half-written manuscripts that I’ve scarcely touched in the last two years? Will anyone buy our house? Am I capable of knitting a baby blanket by spring?

How active should any of us be in response to the precarious state of affairs at Fukushima, besides signing petitions for international cooperation, and scanning dodgy-looking websites for information? Should we in the south try to lure our northern offspring home; stock up on lentils, rice and grains before their growing territories are contaminated? The questions around this one are enormous and not readily grappled with. Who wants to entertain a siege mentality when levity and delight are so much better for us all than fretting and fear?

Enough questions? There are plenty more where these came from. That said, I’m not unhappy. There’s no shortage of useful, enlivening ways to spend the hours and days, each of which delivers its quotient of wonder and cause for gratefulness. There’s a towel stuffed in the ceiling. The dog’s eager for her dinner. You and I still share this one life on our beautiful Earth.

So far, one way and another, it’s all holding together.