All continues well. Greek Helen is safely here. My anxiety now focuses on the possibility that the hospital will discharge my husband before an adequate care plan is in place, but I am assured that that won't happen. He continues better, but he's very weak and I couldn't cope.

End of War

There was memorable story in the New Yorker a few years ago by William Styron, ostensibly a first-person account of his experience on a Pacific island being prepared for the invasion of mainland Japan. It would have been awful; it is as well to be reminded. Old women would have met them in the streets with their knitting needles. At the end of the story he decides to shoot himself when the order comes to move. There the story ends. He doesn't explain why that didn't happen, why he lived to be an old man. But we all know why.

I looked Styron up after reading it. I think he never got further than California himself, about to embark. The story was fiction.

And speaking of the war, I am currently reading Kate Atkinson's new book, A God in Ruins. Very highly recommended. The thesis is a simple one, has no one done it before? (Don't worry: no spoilers here.) The hero is a good man, born in the 20's, growing up in the 30's, wanting to be a writer, knocking about Europe a bit, finally, reluctantly, following his father into The Bank.

Then the War, and he embraces with enthusiasm the chance to leave the Bank and join the RAF. Where he spends the next few years smashing up Europe and expecting every day to be his last, but none of them are. The book is about Afterwards. I think Atkinson must have talked to pilots who survived, it is so vivid.

Knitting

Susan, thank you for the link to the Dreambird shawl. Gosh, yes. And, Syd, thanks for the thumbs-up on Carol Fuller's short-rows class. I'll remember. I didn't do any knitting yesterday, but I did watch Lesson Two in my yarn course. The instructor is Clara Parkes, and she's very good – like all Craftsy instructors, in my experience.

Yesterday we did protein fibres – everything emanating from sheep, goats, camelids, and rabbits.

Life

I'm really rather pleased about the outcome of the election. It looks as if the Conservatives have a precarious but real majority – not a hung parliament after all. I wonder if it was fear of the SNP which prompted people in England to vote Conservative in greater numbers than the polls predicted. I lost my bet about Alex Salmond. Our thoroughly satisfactory local Labour MP lost his seat to a toothy girl. God knows what will happen to Scotland now.