We’re going to Glasgow today, to see Alexander and Ketki and their new flat and, in my case at least, to visit K1yarns. I had a stash-enhancing visit to Edinburgh’s own HK Handknit yesterday with my friend Helen, but I will postpone a report of those excitements in favour of getting started on the day. We’re going by bus, travel by which means is free for the elderly in this socialist paradise (=Scotland). Not as good as Ireland, Janet, but a start.

So, no blog tomorrow. And for today, just comments.

The Dark of Summer

Mel, Pamela: If I have persuaded two people to read it, I haven’t lived in vain. No, Pamela, I wouldn’t pay $75 – although I wouldn’t go so far as to say it isn’t worth it. Try Abebooks: it’s there for a fiver. An American fiver.

Fishwife, when I was being gloomy on the telephone to Rachel the other evening about the funeral we will soon go to, she said that she had been to a “good” humanist one recently. I’m sure you’re right, that what matters is a real connection with the deceased and that what is awful is an embarrassed clergyman trying to talk about someone he – or of course she – didn’t know.

Kate, my friend Margot, whose wonderful funeral I went to in Birmingham last summer, was buried in the sort of place you describe as your mother’s resting-place, not a “churchyard” or a “cemetery” at all, but a hill in the country, with views. I had not known of such places. It was good.

The other Kate: I agree with you, I’m afraid, about not caring much for “Lace Style”. I’m a great admirer of Pam Allen, and of “Scarf Style”, so it was a disappointment. I’m glad to hear you got out to a movie without the enchanting Tilly. In the twinkling of an eye, she’ll be going to movies without you.

We got an LCD television – I can just about handle that question. “Plasma” screens seemed to be for the biggies. But I don’t know what you mean by a “bent screen”. Our present, second millennium, one is sort of square.

Janet, at the risk of sounding priggish, part of my routine when I’m F’ing an O is to gather up the notes and envelope-backs and pattern-leaflet if there is one, and add some scraps of yarn from the pile on the floor where I’ve been doing the finishing, and put it all in a folder. With date, and (ideally) finished dimensions. I used to add a photograph later, but that practice has sort of slipped in the digital age.

When the folder gets too full, every decade or so, I move the contents to a box file and start again.

I keep being surprised at how often I look back at these records, despite digitalisation.