Sorry about yesterday – I wasn’t very well.

There has been a major development on the kitten front. Thinking along your lines, Moorecat (comment, Wednesday) – Mystery Kitten-A-Long: I love it! – but not wanting to have anything further to do with the woman in Glasgow who betrayed me, yesterday I wrote to Perdita’s birth mother.

I remembered her name, Esther. I hadn’t the vaguest idea of her owner’s name, but “Esther” is a rare enough word that I easily found the email address I needed by searching my email archives for that. I expected that she would be dead, or spayed, or just wouldn’t answer.

But there was an answer this morning. Esther is alive and well. She had a litter of kittens on August 12 (the day before my own birthday) among whom are two callico’s. They haven’t been advertised yet; I can have my pick. Talk about kismet.

“Hermione” is a lovely name, but I sort of feel I used it up on those Glasgow kittens I’ll never see. I’m thinking of reverting to the family tradition of names-beginning-with-P and calling Perdita’s sister Pandora. There’s one more possible character in the Winter’s Tale, Paulina – but is it Paul-eye-na or Paul-ee-na? Whichever I chose, the alternative would haunt me.

Knitting continues reasonably well, except that I think I have seriously messed up a recent row. Tinking is not easy in brioche. Perhaps the best course is to adopt Marchant’s advice and address the problem in the morning.

I went to see “Victoria and Abdul” this morning with our niece C. It is a lavish spectacle. There’s not terribly much story. The Shetland shawl we were interested in makes only a very brief appearance – most of the lace the Queen wears is needle lace.