Neither the cleaner nor the personal trainer turned up today. I must have had the day wrong. There is an Italian lesson tomorrow, however. I think I’ve done enough homework to allow an early bed.

As for knitting, I turned out to have plenty of long circulars in the required gauge. I have left the live stitches of the centre of the Spring Shawl where they were, adding secure point protectors. And I have slid another needle through the YO’s at the beginning of every row. Easy-peasy, and equivalent, of course, to picking up a stitch every other row, as the pattern commands.

I thought I acquired this technique from Gudrun Johnston’s hap “Lang Ayre” in Kate Davies’ Hap book. Not so, I see, looking it up, although she employs it there – I’ve never knit that one (although it’s very tempting). She must have used it in her Craftsy hap class. A YO at the beginning of a row is not quite as easy as it sounds, but one gets the hang of it. And not having to struggle with the stitch count at the end is bliss. I counted, of course, but it wasn't a struggle.

The result, needless to say, is a row of little holes along the pick-up line. No harm in that.

Reading

I’ve finished Memento Mori (and started Phineas Redux – I like it much better than the Eustace Diamonds, so far).

When I read it long ago, I got bogged down in the characters and their long-ago love affairs and their inheritances. I decided that the point was that all that really matters is the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven. The final paragraph leaves Jean Taylor pondering those things.

This time the relationships seemed perfectly clear, and the money worth having, although the point remained the same.

I was disconcerted to find that I am older than almost all the principal characters.

One very small niggle: I remembered, from all those years ago, the wonderful scene where Charmian makes herself tea, and carries it through to the fire, item by item. At one point she drops some biscuits, but retrieves them, along with the crumbs. At another, she spills something on the kitchen floor, and cleans that up, too.

What is really scary, in tottery old age, is dealing with anything on the floor. Falling in an attempt to pick up a handkerchief was a decisive moment in my husband’s downward course. He never walked again. (He was with a carer for a moment, getting dressed in the morning; I wouldn’t have let him attempt to retrieve the handkerchief.) I felt that Spark should have put in a few extra words about Charmian’s courage – or less have allowed the crumbs to stay on the floor.