The dr couldn’t find anything wrong with me, indeed seemed to think I was doing rather well for 85 except that I should cut back on Weston’s Vintage Cider. I am trying to think of a post-Lenten discipline which I might be able to stick to. I am to have scans of liver and heart.

So perhaps I should just rise above weakness. I have looked out my knitting belt and long needles, to take to Shetland to be instructed in their use. It took a while to find them. I have got every knitting-associated gadget in Christendom, including a whole set of those two-headed crochet hooks. Under it all was the belt.

I’ve finished the front and back of the baby sweater, pinned the shoulders, and picked up the stitches for the first sleeve. And I’ve been thinking about fine lace. Hellie’s shawl – the one Archie and I blocked recently – has been safely conveyed to London and is now in the hands of this year’s bride. She has sent me an email of extravagant thanks, prompting me again to wonder if I have the oomph for one more. Amedro’s Sheelagh shawl might be a bit easier than Sharon Miller’s Spring Shawl which seems to be a mini-Princess. Not very mini, at that. On the other hand, a huge triangle (Spring shawl) is probably a more useful shape for a wedding shawl than a big square.

And I’ve finished “Daniel Deronda”, thank goodness. I need something now with few words, and no machine transcription. I’ve gone for “Black Mischief”. I haven’t read that for a while.

I tried to send an email to some of my children this morning containing the word “Kafka-esque”. The iPad was determined not to let me, and kept supplying more and more preposterous corrections, changing the word I had typed. I think my Kindle DD suffered from that sort of thing – the scanner getting things wrong, and a spell-checker making them wronger.

My email was about Perth County Council, which has put a 100% “unoccupied” surcharge on the property taxes for our house in Strathardle. There are clearly-worded government websites which make it clear that a “second home”, if used for 30 nights a year, doesn’t qualify as “unoccupied”.

I wrote them a letter when I got the original bill, about a month ago, enclosing a copy of an electricity bill in evidence that the house is well-used. They didn’t reply, and took the full (= doubled) instalment on the 1^st of April, the beginning of the Council Tax year. So today I struggled through a Kafka-esque telephone call and they have agreed that I am right. We’ll see.

Shandy, you’re right about Compton McKenzie.