I have been much moved by all your messages. Thank you.

This is very sad news, about Susan Crawford’s cancer. I feel that frisson of guilt one has, when something terrible happens to someone one has been bad-mouthing. I wish her nothing but well. Bugger the book.

It has been a tough week here, but things are looking better. My husband had hip-replacement surgery late on Tuesday (having fallen on Monday morning). He is, at last, pulling round. He hasn’t been able to swallow all week, but yesterday he did, and they were going to try to get him up in the evening.

Helen came from Greece, James from London. They’ve gone away again, but Rachel is coming today.

Soon we will be thinking about rehabilitation, and the “care package”. He fell when under the care of the council carer who had come to get him up and dressed, as every morning. I was in the kitchen. They can hardly refuse to reinstate the “package”, I hope, when the fall was largely if not entirely their fault. My husband bent over to pick up his handkerchief. I wouldn’t have let him do that, if I had been there. I suspect the carer wasn’t at his elbow as he should have been.

Meanwhile Archie is here, and it is a comfort to have him. We were talking about movies over supper last night – he is an expert in some fields, naïve in others. He said he had never seen a Woody Allen film, and I suddenly thought that he must see “Zelig” – so I ordered a DVD, and it will be here soon. We’ve got a videotape of it, but that’s not much use any more. My father has a bit part in it: a great-grandfather Archie never met.

I haven’t see it for a long time, and it will be very odd to see it again. My father, as I remember, has two short scenes, full-screen, utterly himself. Allen wanted what my father was, a retired newspaperman who could (pretend to) reminisce about the ‘30’s. I don’t know how they got together. My father (counting on fingers here) was a bit younger then than I am now. He had a lot of fun shooting those scenes, and happily dined out on the story for some time thereafter.

There is disappointingly little to say about knitting.  My husband is in the Royal Infirmary this time, a long journey. I could drive, but the thought of finding space to park and then struggling with the payment machine is too much for me. The bus is slow and bumpy, but pretty well door-to-door. Still, a certain amount of sock-knitting is not impossible.

I’ll return to the subject soon. Maybe not tomorrow, what with Rachel being here.