“Krapp’s Last Tape” was good – just the right length, plenty to remember and think about and want to see again. Archie and I both thought that Krapp had a lot in common with my husband – Archie said it first.

Last night we were meant to see “(LIES)”, a presentation, one might say, by a Dutch theatre group about the wickedness of international banking. We all sat at gaming tables such as one might find (I imagine) in a casino, with one of the cast presiding over each table as we rolled dice and made money. Until it all went wrong.

Alas, Archie in his bus got stuck in traffic at St James Centre – they are tearing it down to construct another one equally awful – so it was just me.

That is probably the end of my Festival, but there is a review of something in today’s paper which might tempt me to one further venture.

Meanwhile, Miss Rachel’s Yoke progresses well. I was right in supposing that it would be bliss once the ribbing was finished. I finished the first skein today. Anyone with a houseful of yarn – all of us, I presume – will recognise the thrill when a discrete item amongst the total is actually disposed of.

I am certainly not going to knit the gauntlets KD has designed, but might well knit the first few inches of them into the sleeves themselves, just above the ribbing. I must look at Ravelry – I can’t imagine this idea is particularly original.

I’m nearly finished with Minoo Dinshaw’s biography of Steven Runciman. In the later pages, he often refers to our Birmingham Byzantinist friend Anthony Bryer. To know Bryer was to love him, so that is something Minoo and I have in common.

And a dear Edinburgh friend rang up yesterday to say a) that Candia McWilliam (Minoo’s mother) is now a near neighbour here in EH3, after having absented herself from Edinburgh for much of her life; and b) that Minoo’s paternal grandparents are near neighbours, and friends, of my friend’s parents in Italy. Small world dep’t.