I’m sorry about yesterday – I wasn’t entirely well. Perhaps the second half of the “back end” malaise? At any rate, a brief, violent diarrhoea, and a general misery all day. There was nothing in the previous day’s food consumption which could explain it.  No knitting at all, since I was last here – and this evening, again, must be devoted to Italian homework.

I can’t help with the interesting swede/turnip/rutabaga discussion. I think I have always vaguely assumed that the small round white things called “turnips” – not all that common, in supermarkets in Scotland – would grow up to be the big orange things called “swedes”. Especially because when one speaks of “neeps” here, as in “neeps and tatties”, one means a delicious mash made from swedes. Burns Night is nearly upon us, and that is an essential feature, up there with the haggis.

I don’t know what a rutabaga is. My mother was not an adventurous cook. No doubt Google could straighten all this out, if I applied myself.

I wasn’t entirely comatose yesterday. Wandering around the internet in the evening, I discovered that the Shetland Museum has recently embarked on the “Lace Project”. It sounds very exciting, and the prospect of a publication at the end makes it even more so.

I’ve had an email from the New Yorker about the digital delights available to me “as a print subscriber”. But still no magazine.