Poor Mr Biden is a classic illustration of the old saw: Be careful what you pray for – you might get it.

 

His spokesman Jen Psaki is a friend of my nephew and his family. But I don’t know whether to feel sorry for her for having to defend the indefensible, day after day; or for believing it.

 

There was an article in this morning’s Telegraph (I think) which should cheer them all up, recounting various past American disasters and demonstrating that they didn’t have much effect on the following election unless they actually occurred in the month preceding it. I spoke to my sister a fortnight ago, the day before the Taliban overran Kabul. She wasn’t much interested in Afghanistan (no harm in that) and her main interest seemed to be in that area: what effect would all this` have on Biden’s chances in the 2024 election? I certainly won’t vote for him again.

 

Anyway, here I am. C. and I had a grand time on our cruise. And the cats are fine. We got back in time for lunch yesterday and of course the first thing I did was to check on the cats (unimpressed as they were to see me). There was wet food in one of their bowls so I threw that away and washed the bowl and opened another tin. I had bought little presents for the cat-feeders but the stairs down to the next-door flat are taxing so I just sat there and waited until Louise appeared. And when she did, I wish you could have seen my faithless cat Paradox rushing to the door, wreathed in smiles: Louise is here! Perdita is more constant.

 

C. took lots of pictures which I’ll start doling out soon. I made a good start on knitting the Coofle. It begins with 14 rounds or so of corrugated rib. Not exactly difficult but certainly trying, and I was proud of myself for getting through it after all my recent inactivity here. I even thought, for half a day, that I might get to the underarms before the cruise delivered us to dry land, and then what would I do? No danger, as it proved. Kate Davies’ Millarochy Tweed (spelling not guaranteed) is, not surprisingly, sort of tweedy and doesn’t slip through the fingers in quite the blissful round-and-round way I expect of a bottom-up yoke sweater. I am uneasy about gauge, which of course I didn’t check. I’ll apply a tape measure to it tomorrow. KD seems to expect the same gauge to be achieved for the corrugated rib and the subsequent plain vanilla st st, although according to her instructions the needle size should be increased between the two. I think I’ve hit the gauge in the ribbing, and I didn’t change the needle size.

 

We’ll see.