All well. I’m slightly more than halfway through row 23 of the Spring Shawl borders – what’s that? Two rows in advance of yesterday? Better than nothing.

Non-knit

I am riveted by “The Prime Minister” and find it hard to believe that I have ever read it before. Could I possibly have forgotten Ferdinand Lopez? (No spoiler there – he’s in the first chapter.) I’m sure we read our way through the Barchester novels. We must at least have embarked on the Pallisers – I remember Phineas, and Mrs Goesler. I’ll search the archives.

I heard from Sharon today – she who has been so useful on the matter of the pocket square pattern – about the new “Lampedusa: a Novel”. It hasn’t yet been published over here. I got all set to order the kindle edition nevertheless, only to be told that it won’t be available until February. Why ever not?

-- Ah! Perhaps because by then it will have been published here.

I am slightly suspicious of it, on the grounds of poetic-ness and also because of reading in the descriptions of it that Lampedusa adopted Gioacchino Lanzi in order to pass on his dukedom. I think Gioacchino had a dukedom of his own. I’d better look it all up. That glorious day when Archie and I went “Cooking with the Duchess” at their palazzo in Palermo, I sat next to Gioacchino at lunch (!!!!!) but mostly talked to his son, on the other side. Never mind dukedoms – I asked why Gioacchino wasn’t the Prince of Lampedusa, although he was the author’s adopted son. His son didn’t know. I said that there are titles in GB which can’t pass by adoption. I think that’s true.

My Italian homework this week is to take a paragraph or so of current text and re-cast it into indirect discourse. I have spent a bit of time (not much) with RAI – the Italian BBC – without finding anything. I cannot go to bed without at least defining the task. I think religion might be my best hope. The Pope speaks excellent Italian.