Hoarding/cleaning – Hat, Judith, Shandy: this relates to all three of yesterday’s comments.

I cleaned another tranche of the sitting room. No discoveries, same glow of virtue.

My husband always carries a slim engagement diary, and tucks it away in a drawer when the new year and new diary supplant the last one. Recently, I replaced a drawer-ful of them in the dining-room sideboard, now back from the furniture restorer with a beautiful smooth top. I found myself with 1957 in my hands, and looked up the day we met – February 23. Sure enough: it says “party”.

I went on to the day of Rachel’s advent into the world, the following year. That day says “RMM” in big letters. I didn’t look up anything in between, or beyond.

This is relevant to your comment, Judith, because he has mislaid the current one. Perhaps left behind in Strathardle? It must be somewhere.

I liked your phrase about the dining room being thoroughly “bottomed”, Shandy. The problem there – not yet anywhere near solution – is a number of tin boxes containing older Miles family documents. They were in the cellar in Birmingham. When we moved here, we managed to store them on a top shelf in the capacious cupboard off the hall.

One day years ago – I wasn’t even present – my husband said something to his sister about a torn-up letter that might or might not have been in one of those boxes. She wanted to look for it, and try to piece it together. She kept on at me about the subject in the months that followed. Eventually we had a son-in-law here; he got the tin boxes down and ranged them around the dining room.

Nothing more was ever done. My husband wasn’t willing (even he) to let his sister rummage in those boxes unsupervised, and we never got around to doing it. She has been dead for nearly two years. The top shelf in the cupboard off the hall has filled up with other things. The tin boxes are very neatly stowed in the spare room (in which one can, as a consequence, scarcely move) since the day earlier this year when Rachel’s son Joe came up from London and cleared the dining room for us.

My husband and I are equally resolved that they mustn’t go back into the dining room. They can’t stay where they are. Watch this space.

Knitting

The Reversible Cables are moving forward, although not much was done yesterday.

We’re hoping – no, that’s not the word – to go to Strathardle tomorrow. I’ll take the brioche scarf, as the Cables are too near completion. And this morning I stumbled across this potentially useful  free gauge-less hat pattern. Gauge-less because you start at the top and see how it goes. That could fill one of the awkward gaps in my Christmas list, if there's time.

I’m scared of going tomorrow, of darkness and my husband’s frailty, and wouldn’t mind at all if the Good Lord cared to intervene with (say) a storm or the discovery that we’re short of Lisinopril.