Time to start the Strong heel, I think – 70 rounds done, 7 ½”.

I have exchanged emails with Sophie, who commented here – the snood knitter who is also Grandson Joe’s girlfriend’s mother. She’s just started her own blog. There seems to be only one girl in the family, making it easy to find the lovely Becca in the group picture.

I spoke to Rachel yesterday, a confirmed non-knitter. She says everybody’s wearing snoods, boys and girls alike.

And that’s all there is to say about knitting, this morning. So on to

Life

Archie phoned from Athens yesterday to invite me to a drinks party for New Boys’ parents at his Edinburgh school (Merchiston) in late August. I accepted with alacrity.

Today’s jobs are to pursue the people who are going to knock down the dining room ceiling, to find out when they are going to do it; and to arrange for the car’s annual obligatory fitness test. Also my driving license needs to be renewed. I got into trouble with the insurance last week by leaving things like that in a Guilt Pile instead of attending to them.

The forecast is for slightly warmer weather – at last. So choosing a date for our next trip to Strathardle also belongs on the to-do list.

Annie and Shandy, those are perfect suggestions for Kristie’s Radio 4 listening. I might add, now that you’ve set the ball rolling, anything with Libby Purves or Sue McGregor or Neil McGregor.

“Desert Island Disks” is a brilliant programme. Each week the invited guest chooses ten records to take along to a desert island, and is then allowed to choose one book (besides Shakespeare and the Bible – or other religious text, at choice) and one luxury. The interviewer is gentle and utterly non-confrontational, and by the end you know all about the interviewee.

I tried it myself yesterday. The list is so relentlessly low-brow that I am embarrassed to tell you. But by the time I had got done explaining each of the choices, you would know my life story:

Beethoven’s choral symphony

If I can’t have all of Gilbert & Sullivan, I’d go for Bunthorne’s song “If you’re anxious for to shine…” from Patience

“The Spaniard Who Blighted My Life”

“Brush Up Your Shakespeare”, from Kiss Me, Kate

Handel’s “Messiah”

“Take Me Back to Constantinople”

 “Get Me to the Church on Time” from My Fair Lady

“Lily the Pink”

That Bob Dylan one with the refrain “But I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now”.

“Flower of Scotland”

The book would be Middlemarch or Mansfield Park or Il Gattopardo: very hard to choose. And the luxury, of course, an endless supply of yarn and needles.