Not much to report in the way of knitting, so it'll have to be Life again. I'm about halfway through what I have decided will be the last Tokyo stripe for a while. There's hope for a pocket square this weekend, therefore, before I resume the Sous Sous. It's wonderul to observe how multiple-Wip-ery makes everything go slowly.

Life

I think I mentioned that the plastic lens in my right eye has gone all cloudy – or so the oculist says. And she also says that laser treatment should clear it up. In February, she referred me to the Eye Pavilion, and yesterday, at last, I got the notice of the appt.

It's for early May, at 4:45 in the afternoon. All my life – not just in old age – I have been sharper in the morning. I felt a twinge of unease at the idea of someone shooting lasers into my eye at the end of his long, hard day. And then I thought of a new source of anxiety – the specialist's name suggests that he might be a Muslim. Will it be Ramadan in early May?

The answer is no – Ramadan doesn't start until June. (A June Ramadan must be very difficult indeed for Scottish Muslims; it scarcely gets dark.) But it left me with the general question – what does a devout Muslim do in Ramadan, who has other people's lives in his or her hands? A surgeon? An airline pilot? I know that fasting can sharpen the mind, or seem to. I'd prefer to rely on a respectable level of blood sugar in critical situations.

I've shown you pictures of my happy week in Athens – but nothing of what was going on in London at the time. Here is my husband on a visit to the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace (while we were cavorting in Mediterranean sunshine). Those dinosaurs are one of the Sights of London.

They didn't attempt a trip to the Dulwich Gallery. After a lifetime of gallery-visiting, my husband couldn't face looking at pictures from wheelchair-level.

When we were in Beijing in 2003, he had a jacket made. Since then, he has worn it to death. Think of rags and tatters, with soup stains down the front: the reality is probably worse than your imaginings. It occurred to him that cats like wool, and that a Chinese cat might like to sleep on Chinese wool, so he took the horrible old thing to London and gave it to Mimi:

While we're at it, here they all are celebrating the Western Easter (to judge from the drink on the table). C. wore a horizontally-striped tee while we were in Athens, and here's Cathy in one. I'm sort of tempted.

Alistair, for whom the sweater with his name in binary is contemplated, is in the red tee shirt, on my husband's;eft.