Happy Birthday to the Queen. She is doing a good deal better than my husband is, at 90. And her husband, rather underestimated, I feel, at 94, is doing better yet.

My husband, however, within the given parameters, is doing pretty well, and may be home today. He is off oxygen, and saturations are good. Antibiotics have been reduced to pills, I think – we can manage that at home. He had a catheter yesterday. I would have to be told how to manage that, but it couldn’t be very difficult.

I was there when a dr came around yesterday, who more or less said that he could come home. My husband had gained a different impression from a different doctor in the morning. The thing about the Assessment ward – I was there myself last summer, with my pulmonary embolisms – is that sometimes you see the specialist assigned to your problem, and sometimes the Omnium Gatheruzxmsa[asw=[- -- what does Perdita want? – the Omnium Gatherum Assessment doctor. Yesterday’s exemplar didn’t entirely seem to grasp the multiple systems which have to be put in order when someone with my husband’s multiple problems is discharged.

So this morning I sit tight, waiting for the telephone. I had allowed myself to think that if this ordeal dragged on as others have, I might desert my post and go to Strathardle for a two-nighter, with my cat. The weather is beyond blissful, as Knitlass has indicated. That is probably not to be, and it is far better for my husband to be at home.

James will be here tomorrow, to give a talk at Archie’s school, Merchiston Castle, about matters Chinese. It will be good to see him. He’ll go south again on Saturday.

And, oh yes, knitting.

I found the Sous Sous pattern. It had migrated out of the sitting room to a position in the catalogue room which it couldn’t have reached either by the agency of a carer or of a cat. Oh, dear. I went on with the half-brioche, however. Only one more complete pass remains – first this way and then that, with first this colour and then the other.

And during the hospital visit, I did finish the first yarn cake and did attach the second, from the middle.

I’m sort of catching up with Craftsy. I’ve got an awful lot of half-viewed courses, and have added more recently. I am much taken with Bruce Weinstein on Combination Knitting. He promises greater speed. He is the designer of the sweater I knit for Archie a year or so ago, so I feel we are acquainted, although I am disconcerted to learn that he pronounces the two syllables of his surname differently despite the apparent similarity of the vowels.

But he is persuasive. Maybe I’ll even take an evening off and do a swatch for him.

Non-knit

I loved this, from this morning’s Scotsman, in an article on dementia: “Smoking, drinking excessive alcohol and eating less sugar are among the actions we could all take to help make our brains more healthy…” I don’t smoke, but otherwise…