Yesterday was another successful one in this exciting week. My husband managed, in the event, to walk both to and from the dental appt (and I got a bit more Pakokku sock done). The car got its MOT – which is in the folder, you'll be glad to hear – and has been taxed. I might even get the disc by next Monday when the previous one officially expires. The nice garage not only collects and delivers, but has given the key back with a plastic fob attached on which is written the date when the new MOT runs out.

And they managed to issue an MOT certificate without one of those phone calls I have come to expect, in which one is informed, with a certain amount of sucking in of breath, about the state of one's brake pads and how much it will cost to put them right. This garage is new to us, discovered in the aftermath of that episode when the bus leaned on us. Some will remember. Our old garage was sinking into oblivion at just that time, and passed us on.

Archie is here. He survived the 24-hour cycle ride which in fact sounds a bit of a damp squib. There weren't all that many exercise bicycles so most people were lounging about most of the time. Still, he says he was awake for 36 consecutive hours. That's a lot. And he took part – that's something, too. He neglected to take any pictures of the knitting at the Royal Highland Show, however.

He is convinced that he has left his phone in the taxi which brought him from school to Drummond Place yesterday afternoon. I'm not entirely persuaded. If it weren't set to Silent, as he avers it is, we might be able to find it by ringing it up. Meanwhile I'll lend him my basic but perfectly functional one for today's travel – Belgian air traffic control is causing some anxiety with little strikes, and Archie is meant to be flying Edinburgh>Brussels>Athens. My phone is no use for playing games or reading books but perfectly satisfactory for communication.

More non-knit

I am completely persuaded that Andy Murray couldn't possibly win Wimbledon again this year, so am not even hoping. But he did look awfully strong yesterday, losing only two games in his second round match.

Knit

I finished the borders of the Unst Bridal Shawl. A solemn moment. I broke the yarn, and slipped stitches back – or forward – to a point which is not perhaps the absolute centre stitch of the first border, but which is the equivalent centre of the pattern repeat, if that makes sense. And started to cast on for the edging when the phone rang and I never got back to it. That makes our life sound a good deal more eventful that it is in fact.

I'm all right, so far, on the issue of knowing which side is which and which way I'm going – guided by the four corner markers. On right-side rounds, the green one comes up first.

It was our niece on the phone. We have tentatively scheduled a (fairly gentle) walk for Saturday the 5^th. She says that her sister F. has finished chemotherapy and now has a few weeks to recover from that before three weeks, Monday to Friday, fifteen sessions altogether, of radiotherapy. What a bitch of a disease! All this, when the lump itself had caused no symptoms other than to be present. She'll have a scan soon, during the resting weeks. She is well but very tired