Archie’s results weren’t quite good enough for the place Glasgow had offered him. It happens, and sometimes the university will bend a bit, but not in this case. I think the family had a fairly awful morning, compounded by the fact that Greece is two hours forward, so it will have been the middle of the morning for them, as we were struggling out of bed.

Here’s Helen’s account:

“After much waiting (the school's computer system was down), calling (they weren't answering calls), texting (some of Archie's friends were on site) and confusion, we finally know that Archie got ABC, with the A being in English. This is less than he needed for Glasgow so there was another round of frantic calls, being on hold, emailing and advice flowing in from Alistair on Instant Messenger before finally it was concluded that he will go to Lancaster to study English. We are rather pleased because it's a campus university and nice and northern.”

The University “clearing system” computers seem to have held up fine. Don’t miss Knitlass’ comment yesterday, either. Alistair is Archie’s cousin and good friend, James’ and Cathy’s eldest. He has just finished his second year at Glasgow, doing computer science. I think his own A-Level results fell short of the mark, so he has lived through such a day.

Archie phoned me with the news not long after 9. I told him to read “The History Man”, but on looking it up afterwards, I’m not sure I’ve read it myself. I was remembering the brilliant BBC series from the 1970’s, with Anthony Sher, filmed largely at Lancaster. It turns out that the BBC have, relatively recently, released it as a DVD. I ordered it for him.

After all that, I phoned London, and spoke to Rachel herself. She didn’t yet know her actual results, but she knew that they were good enough to secure her place at Leeds.

So all is well.

Mary Lou, thank you (comment yesterday) for the reference to the Beaver who “sat making lace in the bow”. I had forgotten him.

Knitting

I’ve done the heel flap of the second Vampire, and turned the actual heel – I’m ready to pick up those stitches and knit the gussets.

And I’ve done a bit more Uncia. I’m mired in one of those instructions: “Repeat rows 92-93 a further 7 times”. I’ve done four. So I’ve reached row 101, I think.

I hope this link works. It’s a brilliant YouTube video about Shetland lace. I was surprised, though, that it suggested that J&S’s newish heritage lace yarn isn’t plyed.

The internet is entirely silent about the Vintage Shetland Project, as far as I can ascertain. There’s a thread in the Susan Crawford group on Ravelry which has excited anticipatory messages until about a fortnight ago.

Non-knit

There’s a grammatical point I want to explain to you – I have baffled and offended many a friend with this one before now. But I feel I owe it to Ross and Thurber to say it in public, because the error which provokes my remarks this time is in the New Yorker itself. But that’s enough for today.

Perdita misses her chair. She wouldn’t come out of hiding for a whole hour when I got home from the hospital yesterday.