Never mind the world’s problems – I’ve got my own. My husband is coming home next week. Can I cope? Watch this space.

I had a pleasant evening in the kitchen yesterday with Perdita, watching an assemblage of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock on BBC iPlayer, and then, inspired by it, discovering that I could watch “Frenzy” from beginning to end on YouTube. I didn’t know that sort of thing was possible. My late sister-in-law often told me that "there's lots you don't know".

I was surprised (as often, reprising films) how brief were the three scenes I so vividly remembered –

a) the delay before the scream, as we watched someone entering a building where someone else had just been raped and murdered. In the cinema, that first time, the pause seemed endless.

b) the moment where the Bad Guy stands between two Tretchikoffs; nowadays, perhaps, Hitchcock would have gone for Vetriano.

c) the moment where the detective’s gourmet-cooking wife (he’d prefer steak and chips) snaps a bread stick.

All the British actors are in that film – Richard Attenborough, Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Alec McGowen. I was disappointed at myself for not having spotted McGowen – he was the detective who preferred honest cooking. My mother and I went, once, in London, to his recitation of the Gospel of St Mark. It was impressive.

We had lunch, or tea, or something, in the theatre restaurant beforehand, and during one of those lulls which occasionally happen in a babble of surrounding conversation, I heard someone mention “…the best gynaecologist in London…”

And there, half an hour later, was McGowen telling us (Mark, Chapter 5) about the woman who “had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered…” How could I have failed to recognise him last night?

OK, knitting: I was most encouraged to hear from your comments yesterday that reversal-of-the-order-of-colours between balls of self-striping yarn, is not unknown. I think I’m about half-way through the ribbing for the second sock. Perhaps a picture tomorrow. If my husband is indeed to come home, this will be the last pair of socks for a while, but I should be able to make a good deal of progress in the next few days, and this is the second sock.

And I made a very good start on a sleeve for the half-brioche sweater while watching Frenzy.

Julie, I loved your comment yesterday about swamps and alligators. I hadn’t heard that one.