Another slightly better day, including some knitting. Helen and her family are safely back from Mt Pelion where you can never be entirely sure you won’t be run down by a herd of centaurs. Archie and I went to the supermarket and got, among other things, two packets of Dioralyte powders, meant for re-establishing electrolytes in the blood, especially of the elderly, after diarrhoea. I haven’t taken any yet but will before bedtime.

I can remember that when I was much younger, and something could be seen to be wrong in a row of knitting, I would sometimes forge ahead with the thought that, at least it’ll be right from here on. If there’s any one thing that has improved my knitting in recent years, it has been the abandonment of that notion. I had quite a bit of trouble today, don’t know why. and addressed it by adding or subtracting a stitch as necessary and where necessary.

I’m doing the final set of lacy diamonds. There’s still a fair amount of pattern to come, and then a break row, and then four long, plain rows, and then a final row in which the stitch count is substantially reduced. But the end (of the central triangle) is in sight. Perhaps once the stitches are picked up and counted and re-counted and ready for knitting the borders, I should return to poor Thomas’ Calcutta Cup scarf.

Reading

I finished Trollope’s autobiography – excellent to the end. I acquired (it was free) his first novel, set in Ireland, but I’m not going to pursue it. He got better. Yes, Mary Lou, he says a lot about the Post Office (and mentions the institution of post boxes). He went on working for them long after he had established his name as a novelist.

I wondered for a while whether a “serious” novelist could live well on his work today, as Trollope did. But then I thought of Evelyn Waugh, who managed it in much the same way, with books of permanent value supplemented by journalism and travel writing. Of contemporaries, there are of course Stephen King and JK Rowling, who must live pretty high on the hog. Movies and television have taken over from journalism as providing the supplement. Does Ian McEwan support himself with his books? Alice Munro?