I thought perhaps I should write about knitting today, for a change: but nothing comes to mind. Nothing on-line seems of any interest. I should finish the snood this evening, and make at least a good start on Kitchener’ing it to itself. I look forward to a bit of sock to follow, before starting the Tulip Cardigan.

I forgot to do yesterday’s Sky Scarf stripe in st st, to mark the change of month. So I’ll have to do it today and tomorrow instead.

I tried to think of a knitting treat I might promise myself, when the dining room is restored to its former glory. But I am so self-indulgent in the normal way of things that I can think of nothing just-out-of-reach I could make an exception and get.

Ah! Not knitting, but what about a Thai takeaway, if I’m here on my own the evening of the day the ceiling comes down?

The furniture was taken off (expensively) into storage yesterday. I tried and failed to establish a date for the Event. Today I’ll leave that one and try to get an estimate from the furniture restorer who visited last week. Then I can pass it on to Upstairs’ insurance people and begin to discover whether we have a fight on our hands.

Upstairs has a distinctive surname. I think he told me once that he is the nephew of the well-known Edinburgh financier of the same name who is =27 on the current list of Scotland’s Richest, if you still have yesterday’s paper. Name begins with G.

Joe will be here tomorrow, to help wrestle the last few things out of the dining room. He can only stay one night, as he has a job interview on Friday. He couldn’t come sooner, because today is his girlfriend’s birthday. One night should be enough. It’ll be great to see him.

I shall tell you about the books I’m reading. Kristie thought there might be a way to knit a scarf based on the type of book one had read in the past week. Wouldn’t work for me, who seem to read nothing but escape these days. I  have three on the go at the moment, an indulgence I wouldn’t countenance in knitting.

First is “Fear in the Sunlight” by Nicola Upson. It is what I think would be called a pastiche, with real characters – Alfred Hitchcock, Josephine Tey – mixed up with presumably fictional ones. I am having some trouble keeping the minor characters straight, and am halfway through without anything much having happened. But I’m not quite ready to abandon it.

Next comes “Tony and Susan” by Austin Wright. This one is good. A woman is sent a mss by her ex-husband from 25 years ago. He always wanted to be a writer. She reads it. So you have a book-within-a-book. The mss turns out to be a thriller, and a gripping one. Every so often she stops reading and we hear about her current life which is uneventful so far. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish this one.

But the actual page-turner, at the moment, is “The White Lie” by Andrea Gillies. It has all I most enjoy for a setting – big house, lots of family, overgrown rhododendrons, faded upholstery. With plenty of love and death and unusualness, well constructed. Amazon suggested it to me a couple of days ago. It is unnerving to think their algorithms are that good.