That was a lovely wedding, wasn’t it? And what weather! I’m sure the television was almost as much fun as camping out, and a good deal more comfortable. Didn’t Victoria Beckham look glum? And wasn’t it grand to see the Duke of Edinburgh walking as tall as ever, without a stick, at 96, a month after his hip operation!

I found I could perfectly well knit Fair Isle while all this was going on, and have finished the first wide band on Alexander’s Calcutta Cup vest. I’m on the threshold of the second peerie stripe – just about where I was with the first attempt, when I took it to Loch Fyne at Easter and discovered that it was far too big.

I’m glad to have knit so happy an event as this wedding into the vest. I’m sure you’ll understand what I mean.

I heard in my delicious half-awake half-hour of radio-listening in bed this morning, that Meghan was once asked, when at school,  to tick a box to say what race she was: White? Black? Other?  Her teacher told her to tick White because she looked white, but she felt that would be to betray her mother. She took the problem to her father, who said, “Draw your own box.”

You’ve got to love him for that.

I’ve made another batch of kimchi, this time with Korean anchovy sauce instead of supermarket Nam Pla. I have started worrying about water. You’re not supposed to use chlorinated. I grandly assumed that we had pure water here in Edinburgh, but yesterday I google’d it, and we don’t: it’s chlorinated. So what do I use? I bought some bottled water at the supermarket yesterday and used it to soak the cabbage – a very important first step – and also as the base of the rice-flour porridge which some recipes use and which I attempted today.

But I rinsed the cabbage from the tap, after soaking.

All this authenticity will probably produce a disastrous batch, after the success of the first one.  

Tamar, thank you for the encouraging news about Good King Henry. I did some googl’ing on the subject, but missed that one. Last year, the GKH patch was flourishing amidst the ruins of my vegetable patch. If that is still true, I’ll have a go at fermentation.