You were right, Beverly and Southern Gal. I haven't heard from the bank, which means that that automated call was a scam [yesterday’s post]. I haven’t tried to phone the bank, because once last year I had a call of which I was suspicious -- that time from a Genuine Human Being -- and I tried to phone, and got lost in a maze of choices and buttons and never succeeded in speaking to anyone. I could have reached a human voice if I had lost a card, I remember. Otherwise I have forgotten the details.

But I remembered the experience. So when the automated woman said that the bank would get in touch within 24 hours, but if I wanted to speak to someone now the number to call was…: I hung up. The scam must have resided in that telephone number. Someone would have tried to extract my security details. Or maybe it was one of those £1-a-second numbers, and I would have been lost again in a maze of choices.

All I actually did was press 9 during the original call. So the Bad Men know I bank online with the Bank of Scotland. They may have known that anyway – or were they phishing? Otherwise security has not been compromised. The bank’s security system, and my own, are both pretty good, I think.

Alexander, who acts occasionally as my financial advisor, says that he always hangs up at once on an automated call thus sometimes missing genuine ones trying to check up on recent credit card expenditure. If the bank wants to get in touch, they’ll keep at it, he rightly says.

Perhaps I’ll email them, less costly in time and nervous energy than a phone call. That call was sufficiently sophisticated to be worthy of mention.

Knitting

I have reached the underarm of the mitered jacket. There I stopped last night – the situation now requires thought and counting and re-reading of instructions, not to be attempted last thing in the evening. I don’t entirely understand what I’ve got to do, either. It does seem clear that -- when I get there, as I will soon -- I must graft the live stitches to the under edge of the top border just like that, without first knitting up stitches from the border.

The stitch numbers aren’t quite right.  Maybe Glover meant business when she implied that you had to get a gauge of six stitches to the inch, or else. But I’ll try some calculations before I despair, as the general look of the thing is pretty good, I think.

The shape looks funny in the picture because the stitches are bunched together on a 24" needle. It will be easier to assess the situation if I put some of them on a much longer needle so that I can lay the thing out flat. I'll do that.

If all goes smoothly, I may even finish the body this weekend. Exciting!