Wimbledon imploded yesterday. Murray’s painful hip (we’ve been worried all along) gave up on him. It is to his credit as an athlete that he was able to do as well as he did, and to his credit as a man that he stuck it out, and lost in five sets. I couldn’t bear to watch much of it, and mostly switched over to see Mr Muller losing to Celic on the other court. Painful, but less so. And then Djokovic withdrew with a sore elbow, after losing a set.

Federer’s match, after all that, was a draft of cool water in the desert. He’s got to win.

I shall be cheering for Venus today. (And, Peggy, I agree: the way she carries herself is an essential part of her beauty.)

As for knitting, I got a couple of feet along the sewn bind-off of the top edge of the Northmavine Hap. The instructions for the sewn bind-off say to start out with a piece of yarn which will go the distance three times. That’s obviously impossible, in this case, and even if it were otherwise, I have read recently that drawing an over-long piece of yarn again and again through the loops, abrades and weakens it.

I have already finished the first piece of yarn and started on the second, and I don’t think the break is going to do any harm. There’ll be more. I’m not halfway yet.

Still loose ends to come, and blocking, but I’m beginning to think about the future.

Especially because I had a text message this morning (!), just like a grown-up, to say that my new passport will be delivered today between 8am and 6pm. At least, I hope it’s my new passport. Maybe it’s the old one, rejected. It's something, from the American Embassy in London.

But that should mean that the world is my oyster. I have been searching websites in the last few days, for places I might go. What a lot there are! Petersommer.com offers cruises around the coasts of Turkey, Greece, and Italy in Turkish “gulets”, small boats like the ones that will take me around the Hebrides next summer, but in warmer waters. Somebody called Flavours offers tempting-sounding cookery holidays, also in Italy.

The trip to Thessaloniki this autumn, and then the drive back through Italy and France with the Drakes – for that is the current plan – will let me know whether I am really strong enough to contemplate any of this.