It has been another quiet day. Helen is gone, and will be away for three weeks. The installation of my new kitchen looms, and inspires dread. Still, it won’t happen this week.

I find I have reached the final pattern repeat for the centre of the baby shawl, rather to my own surprise. I might be grafting tomorrow – when the knitting is finished, the stitches are grafted to the live stitches of the fourth border. Fortunately, I love grafting, although I’ll have to look up how to do it in garter stitch. And I could be blocking by the end of the week.

Archie is coming to lunch tomorrow. Today’s Mindful Chef – smoked trout and quinoa in a sort of kedgeree – would have been plenty for two. Broccoli cropped up again. Tomorrow is a monkfish curry. I think I’ll see if I can get a bit more monkfish, just in case; and perhaps some more black rice from Health Food opposite the fishmonger there at the top of Broughton Street.

That will do for tomorrow’s walking. Today, inspired by (or, under pressure from) Mary Lou, I walked twice around Drummond Place Gardens. I tell myself that it’s a quarter of a mile per circuit, but I am probably flattering myself. It was sad to remember how recently I used to speed-walk four circuits in the morning before going to get the papers.  

No, I haven’t seen your French detective series, Shandy (comment yesterday). My Italian one is called “Maltese” and is all about the Mafia. The first episode was on Channel Four one Sunday, but since then it is not being broadcast anywhere and one has to summon it up from somewhere in the bowels of the television set. One of Alexander’s sons showed me how to do it. It’s good, but rather unpleasantly violent.

Half-asleep, I heard a Syrian girl from Aleppo on the radio this morning. She has cerebral palsy and could not get out at all, therefore no school. She had learned English by watching American television, and spoke it brilliantly. I don’t think Maltese (or anything else) is likely to have such an effect on me. The girl is now in Germany and somehow or other, there, manages to get to school, where she is doing well.