The press consensus so far seems to be that the Coronation was a great success. I’m glad. I might have tried to stagger out to a street party today if I had known of one nearby, but I didn’t. Rachel and Ed went to one in London. The weather is still not very jolly here, but at least dry with occasional glimpses of sunshine. Alistair and Amy came by – Alistair is James and Cathy’s son – and left a lovely apple tree on my doorstep, in full bloom. They are moving house and no longer have a garden for it.

 

And I knit resolutely on. I think I’m beginning to relax a bit, about the border pattern, but I’m still not ready to attempt listening to a podcast. The pattern doesn’t number the border rows. I’d like to be able to count down. (I could always count them, of course.)

 

I have been somewhat tempted by Kate Davies’ “Colour Compass” but I think I will resist. I have much enjoyed in recent years having her last few books in instalments through the darkest days of the winter. No book this year, except at e-book at the end. This time it’s an Advent calendar with a little ball of Milarrochy Tweed for each of 24 days and then you get a ticket for the e-book which has patterns for the little balls of wool – not Fair-Isle-type, rather stripes and intarsia and such. It has its tempting aspects, but it’s expensive and the last thing I need is 24 little balls of wool.

 

Comments: One of you asked recently why I am so down on Mr Biden. I can’t entirely answer. I voted for him – that involves getting someone to drive me up to a post office and standing in line (I could still do that, three years ago) and paying for air mail postage. I doubt if I’ll do that again. We got off on the wrong foot, he and I, when he signed a directive on inauguration day requiring masks of everyone on government property, and then was photographed a few hours later at the Lincoln Memorial with a substantial crowd of his family and not a mask in sight.

 

At the first subsequent press conference, someone asked – very gently and politely – how that could happen, and the new press secretary more or less laughed at him. The president can do what he likes on inauguration day, was the substance of her answer. (Whereas “I don’t know. I’ll find out and get back to you” would have been the right answer.)

 

Now I’m afraid I’m going to hold his non-appearance at the Coronation against him, too. Mrs Biden seems to be lingering on, at least for today, with the Sunaks continuing to shoulder the burden of hospitality.

 

Wordle: I got another three! My threes and fours now have equal score lines. Most of the rest of us had an easy time, too. Ketki and her son Thomas took four, and Mark needed five. Threes elsewhere.

 

What I wanted to say yesterday was – you see, I have remembered – that my starters gave me brown R, A, N, and E and I was tempted, given the day, to type in REIGN but it was too much of a Jean-word even for me. N wasn’t allowed in the final position, and I had already been eliminated, and there was no job for A.