All set, once I’ve done some ironing and watered the plants and made some sandwiches for the journey and got my husband up and breakfasted. I am feeling cheerful and confident about the driving, for what that’s worth. We’ll double back to Arrochar this evening for Stations of the Cross, having missed the Good Friday liturgy.

We hung the picture, no small task but not as bad as the last one. It’s not hung as high, and the wall is sounder.

It is a watercolour by Ian Fleming – not the progenitor of James Bond, and not the contemporary artist (who paints pictures of nothing and remarkably like, to borrow Thackeray’s comment on Turner). “Our” Ian Fleming was born in 1906 and died in ’94. We have another picture by him. There are three in the national collection.

And they had plenty of Weston’s Vintage Cider at Tesco’s.


I’ve reached row 25 of the border of the Mourning Shawl. I started just over a month ago; I’ve done roughly a quarter of it – so I couldn’t possibly finish before July, even if I neglect my vegetables. That will mean I must decide whether or not to lay it aside to do an Aran sweater for the Games. At least I know how things stand.

(The computer has been very bolshie this morning, and while I was sitting here waiting for it to pull itself together I clicked on a previously-unnoticed icon at the bottom of the Word screen called “Reading view”. It produced the current text in a format which is precisely the way I want “27 Wives” to look on-screen. How to persuade Word to do it?)

It’s no use wishing you all a happy equinox, with it nearly a month behind us. So – have a good weekend.