Back to real life – that post-solstice, post-Wimbledon moment which has its own special quality.

First, however, a little more about Sunday.

Here are Rachel and her younger son Joe, on Henman Hill, looking rather hot:

This must be another mobile-telephone job. I'm not going to struggle to get it upright. You'll just have to turn your computer on its side.

Anyone in Britain with the mildest interest in tennis – maybe, anyone around the world – knows that Andy Murray’s mother Judy is permanently in the frame. It said in the Telegraph yesterday that Mr and Mrs Murray divorced when Andy was 10. What I hadn’t known was that Andy and Jamie subsequently lived with their father – through the whitewater years of adolescence, therefore.

That shadowy figure was at Wimbledon on Sunday, I believe. It must be his own choice to keep away from the media. Judy is everywhere, and her parents do a grandparental turn on the Scottish news when required.

I heard on the radio this morning that there is a potential problem because Andy Murray is too young for a knighthood. It will be interesting to see how the men-in-suits resolve that one. He’ll have to get one in the end, for “services to tennis”, and when he does, it will be essentially because of what he did day before yesterday – so, surely, they ought to give it to him now?

That’s good, Knitlass, about walking along the street on Sunday and hearing the cheers from every open window. But how could you tear yourself away long enough to go outdoors? I can tell you that on that beautiful Sunday afternoon, not a racket was lifted at the Drummond Tennis Club –  I know that because I can see the court from my kitchen window, and I had to go there from time to time to get another bottle of cider.

And your blog provides the perfect segue into knitting, through your reference to Be Inspired Fabrics. I’ll pinpoint it on my A-to-Z today, and schedule a visit as soon as possible. A new high-end yarn shop in Edinburgh! My cup runneth over!

Well, not much knitting got done last week. Indeed, you may feel I have been avoiding the subject. Here are the Mind the Gap socks:

It is rather wonderful, what a cheerful collection of stripes the London Tube Map provides. I had always sort of assumed that the colours were chosen for distinctness, so that you could follow your line from one edge of the city to another. But what results undoubtedly forms a jolly harmony.

Non-knit

Hat, that’s a great comfort, what you say about the Babington leeks. There is not time, now, for me to get started on allium fistulosum and allium fistulum and related problems. I used to think, until I was 65 or so, that botanical names were set in stone since Linnaeus. The truth seems to be more fluid, and more complicated.