Well, here I am. Many, many, many thanks for all your kind messages.

Leaving the hospital after last Friday's visit, I suddenly felt terribly weak and breathless. I got to the car, not without difficulty, drove home all right, felt no better on Saturday and decided not to visit, and to see our GP on Monday. Family and friends intervened. It was Ketki who actually phoned NHS24. An out-of-hours GP appt was arranged for the afternoon – she sent me to the good old Western General where my poor husband has been all these weeks. They did a blood test which suggested clots, and kept me.

A scan on Sunday apparently confirmed pulmonary embolism.

I was – and somewhat remain – convinced that the symptoms were entirely stress-related, as I kept telling dr after dr. They are, however, devoted to their science and the result is that I have to eschew cider and consume rat poison for six months.

I thought of a problem in the night. At the moment, I must go in every day for a blood test and an injection. Then I visit my husband, go home, watch Wimbledon, and wait for them to ring up and say how much rat poison to take that evening. This regime will more or less continue for the six months, but the injections will end and the monitoring will transfer to the GP and no longer have to be daily.

However, that's not the problem. The leaflet says that I mustn't go on a diet – weight loss will increase the effect of the Warfarin, presumably to undesirable levels. I always lose 7 or 8 pounds during lent, not drinking cider. I would expect 6 months of abstinence to trim me down by a stone or so. I'll put the problem to them this morning. I certainly don't want to resume sugar-eating.

I feel much better, although not altogether. Once I knew that Alexander had Perdita, the hospital experience was not entirely unpleasant. A neighbour was delegated to feed her, but she doesn't like cat or kitten food, and she doesn't like being alone, and I worried a lot those first two nights. It sounds as if she is having a grand time on Loch Fyne, and eating delicacies. She will come back tomorrow, when James will be here. It seemed best to wait, so that the brothers could see each other at least briefly.

James' wife Cathy came up on Monday evening – this week doesn't have enough days in it for all the events – and stayed through Tuesday night when I was suddenly released. She was a great help and comfort. She even wheeled my husband across to the ward where I was, before we knew that I was about to be set free.

Knitting

Pocket squares are ideal hospital knitting, and I have now finished the seven for the groomsmen. Matt himself has emailed to say he'd like his to be white, so yesterday, during a rain interval at Wimbledon, I ordered a skein of Baah Aspen (which I'm using) in “laPerle” from Webs. I think it will be a bit less stark than dead white. It's coming Priority Mail and should be here soon. Meanwhile there are ends to tidy and blocking to be done.

I did a little test square while in hospital with a double row of eyelets around the edge for the bridegroom and that went well.

Fantoosh and the Ladies' Semi-Finals today. Last night the television stopped working -- "No Signal" it said. But I solved that problem during the night -- switch off the electricity altogether for a moment. It worked.

Daisy, I did have my iPad in hospital – but no wi-fi. Goodness, how I missed it, next after the cat. But the great thing about electronic reading is that, instead of untidy piles of unread paperbacks here and there about the house, one has them all compactly together and I ripped through quite a few – A Passage to India, an old Ruth Rendell which I'd already read but I finished it anyway, and “Nora Webster” by Colm Toibin. Then on to "Nothing but Grass" by Will Cohu which starts well but is sagging somewhat in the middle. And I made some progress will Gillian Tett's "Fool's Gold", about the recent financial crisis.