This has proved so very exciting a week, by our geriatric standards, that I couldn't leave you out of it altogether.

Today we should have Archie's and Mungo's GCSE results.

Today, too, my husband and Lizzie and I will go to Strathardle. The weather is glum.

That's nothing. On Tuesday, or some such day, Helen, on the slopes of Mount Pelion, recently returned from a family holiday in the Balkans, was badly bitten by a dog, plunging me, at least, into a maelstrom of worry about rabies. There is some in northern Greece, not much.

...Here are Archie's results: an A* in English Literature, three A's, in his A-Level subjects, History, Spanish and English; the rest B's except for Chemistry which was a C. Everybody is delighted. Mungo's results, from a different board, are unknown as yet.

Anyway, rabies. The dog's owners were somehow located and visited. Its documentation including rabies vaccine looked good, and Helen stopped worrying, or professed to. The owners said it had never behaved like that before, which was distinctly worrying rather than otherwise, as “unprovoked aggression” is often the first symptom of rabies a dog presents. I keep begging her, by email and telephone, to go back and SEE the dog at the weekend. If it was rabid on Tuesday, it's not going to get better any time soon. My husband fears that Helen is being fobbed off by Greek peasants anxious about liability. Helen says they're really nice.

An awful fuss about a very slim possibility of danger. But rabies can be stopped if treated with a series of injections before symptoms develop (=before the virus reaches the central nervous system). After that, there is little or no hope and death is extremely unpleasant.

Knitting: I took the Unst Bridal Shawl along to my husband's dental appt yesterday. I've left it at the end of an edging repeat, so easy to resume, and will now put it away altogether until Rames&Yowes are finished. Lace knitting is infinitely soothing, and I think the reason may be that there is so much of it that you simply can't worry about finishing. You just sit there and knit.

Rams&Yowes progresses well, more or less. But garter stitch is the knitter's absolute test, and I'm not really terribly good at it. More than that, I have never mastered the art of recovering a dropped stitch, or laddering back to a split one. I've got one of those two-headed crochet hooks. I know what the problem is. But I can't do it.

So, off we go into the Scottish gloom. See you on Monday, insh'Allah.