Not quite so cheerful and energetic today – on with real life.

Beverly, do include Duddingston in your next Edinburgh visit. It’s picturesque in a way that Scottish villages so often aren’t, and it’s practically in the city.

I am determined to try to find out from the hospital today, how they see our future. My husband still needs two nurses to move from chair to bed. I tried to find out yesterday, and was told that they were having a meeting at that very moment – consultants, drs, physiotherapists. It’s a rehabilitation ward. They won’t put up with him forever.

And – Beverly, again – your thought was mine. I got in touch with Gosia, my Polish friend and former cleaner, and she’s coming for a blitz at midday on Sunday. I’ll leave the spare room for her, and line up other jobs. The mattress on our bed needs turning, for instance. She’s no longer working nights at Morrisons, but instead at Costa Coffee in Edinburgh Airport. Is the airport open all night? Even if it isn’t, there may be sandwiches to be made.

And Greek Helen is coming this evening. I stumbled across a rather wonderful-sounding recipe yesterday for roasted aubergines, onions and peppers wirh a tahini sauce. I’ll have that ready for her to pick at.

Still no knitting to speak of, although I may finish the ribbing for the first Whiskey Barrel sock today. A gent’s sock involves so much ribbing – 50 rounds, over 64 stitches – that it’s no use even thinking about finishing; you’ve just got to sit there and do it. With the result that it seems to get done with less stress than the lesser knitting on a lady’s sock.

I discovered with great pleasure yesterday that there’s a new Twist Collective available. There’s even an article in it about loss of mojo, but I don’t think that’s my problem. I’ve got a fair amount of mojo, but no strength.

I wondered, thinking back over life, how closely connected are television and knitting? I’m not watching any at the moment, and therefore not knitting.  But that’s not it. We came to television relatively late, to our children’s distress: in the early 70’s. And I was knitting away, long before then, isolated of course from the world.

I can remember finding Odham’s Encyclopedia of Knitting in the Leicester Public Library (in the late 60's) and equally remember the friend who told me that what I needed was Mary Thomas’ Knitting Book. It was from the latter that I learned how to hold yarn in both hands for Fair Isle. I own both texts now, and they will make the cut when the house is broken up.  I often think with admiration-beyond-expression, of EZ, even more isolated but calmly ploughing her straight furrow.

So the problem isn’t lack-of-television. “Life is a moderately good play with a badly-written third act.” Truman Capote.