My favourite day (although April 12 runs it a close second) – because it always comes as a slight and delicious surprise that May has 31 days. I’ve just re-read my blog entry for May 31, 2008, and find no mention of this. I’m sure it’s there in years past.

Little to report. I’m nearly halfway through Repeat No. 52 of the top edging of the Princess. I’ve thought of a possible variation on Cynthia’s Plan: namely, to work on the Princess every day until I’ve finished a repeat – yesterday, that was achieved before lunch – and then switch to the Surprise. It has also occurred to me that I can take the Surprise along to Strathardle (although certainly not the Princess) -- thus supplanting my husband's socks, which in turn have supplanted the real Strathardle knitting, a dusty pink Araucania sweater for myself. We shall see.

I had decided anyway that today and tomorrow will be transposed, knitting-wise. Today will be June 1: start (again) on the Child’s Surprise. Tomorrow will be May 31: the last full day of Princess-knitting for the time being. That is because Sunday is cider-drinking day in my Lo-cider, No-sugar regime, and while I remain capable until bedtime of walking in a reasonably straight line, my unaccustomed liver finds it tough these days and the combination of tiredness and fuzziness-of-mind in the later hours of the day is not conducive to lace knitting.

(Weight-wise, you will remember that I began daily weigh-ins early in Lent at X stone 12. I’m now a stone lighter, and have reached the point where I can feel fairly confident in the morning that the answer will be W stone Something – I think we’re past the stage where the numbers went up and down from day to day over the X stone marker. [A stone is 14 pounds.] On the considerable other hand, I doubt if I can expect to see off more than another five pounds before the wedding, at the best, and stomach-size is still horrendous. Time, perhaps, to start shopping for Restraining Underwear. A further element in my regime, besides the restrictions on cider and sugar just mentioned, is to contemplate myself in profile in a full-length mirror while getting undressed for bed. Ugh!)

Next Sunday, however, will have to be passed in complete sobriety in order to “bank” the day for the following Tuesday, laser-surgery-day on my left eye. I want to come home from the Eye Pavilion to a refrigerator-full of cool, cool cider. I got a most depressing set of instructions and warnings from the hospital yesterday.

A gloomy and self-centered post for May 31! Carpe diem!