Slogging across row 9. Today’s knitting should be different, at least – rows 10 and 11 are the half-way point where everything gathers itself in and starts off again in the other direction. Picture soon. I’m pleased with what I’m getting, but I’ll be awfully glad to get back to what might be called real Princess-ing.

Miscellany

Knitting, first. Go Knit In Your Hat says that Jaeger Yarns has gone belly-up. Google knows nothing about this, nor do I. Does anyone? She also mentions RYC yarns as if one should know about them, and I don’t. But I’m sure Google could help there.

Stash Haus, there will certainly be Games Day pictures of me in my Dolores sweatshirt, with or without Sam’s winning card. Games Day pictures should carry us all the way through September.

It’s not just Sam. I will be entering the “Three Potatoes” and “Collection of Four Vegetables” classes. Small children – the Thessalonikis and the Beijing Mileses – will do things in the children’s section. “Plasticene model” “Cardboard picture frame”, that sort of thing. Son-in-law David (a Thessaloniki) is planning to attempt “Mint and Rosemary Jelly” and I think granddaughter Lizzy is going to do a “whiskey cake”.

(Strictly, you are supposed to be a resident of the show area, or a child, to enter classes in the Home Industries tent – which, strictly, would disqualify me. I wrote to them some years ago explaining about Lizzie, and she was allowed through. I’m not going to tell them about David: his wife is a part-owner of our broad acres, and I think that suffices. Theo’s girlfriend wanted to do some baking, too; I wrote to the secretary about her, and didn’t hear anything for weeks so we thought it was all right. But she has been disallowed, and we all feel rather sore about it.)

And then there are the field events, open to all: races and Tilt the Bucket and the Pillow Fight and Musical Cars. My brother-in-law worked out the secret of the Pillow Fight – a savage sport – and came second a few years ago, against competition a third his age. I hope he’ll pass his secret on this year to granddaughter Hellie’s excellent boyfriend Matt. I’m not telling.

(In the background, meanwhile, real Highland Games unfold, with beefy gents in kilts tossing cabers and a piping competition and endless children's highland dancing.)

In ’04 we amused ourselves by taking pictures of various subsections of our party – “people wearing Kerry-for-President tee-shirts” “People named Edward”, etc. I don’t think we’ve ever taken a Winners picture. Maybe this year.

The afternoon ends with Musical Cars. We’ve never won, although we’ve notched a couple of Seconds. It is our supreme ambition. Cars drive round and round the field while the music plays, and when it stops, the passenger leaps out and runs into the centre and seizes a stake. There are fewer stakes than cars. Passengers are meant to keep both hands on the windscreen while the music plays, but some of them don’t. The passenger door is also meant to be securely shut, but some of them aren’t. A lot depends, too, in the final stages, on whether the music-stopper-and-starter likes you.

I am impressed, and touched, that you (Stash Haus) have read your way through my archives. Someone – Graham Greene? – wrote a short story in which a life was told backwards, beginning with the mournful journey home from the cemetery. Reading a blog in reverse order (if that’s the way you did it) would be much like that. Sometimes I’m tempted to look back in Annie Modesitt's blog for the first signs of Gerry’s illness, but I don’t. I am in awe of her strength and courage.