I am sorry to have left you in the lurch. Perhaps it’s best to make it formal: I’ll try to be back just before the new year. I’m very glad to know that so many of you will be with me for Royal David’s City in something under two hours now.

I’ve done row 128 of the 144 needed for the centre of Gudrun’s hap. Here it is (or, was, yesterday):

And here’s a close-up of those delicious loops through which the needle will eventually be inserted:

Spring Shawl

Thank you for your help – so far, fruitless. Knitalot, no – the windows on that side of the house, looking onto Drummond Place, are never open. Shandy, I’ve tried offering Archie a Finder’s Prize, so far without success. Knitalot (other comment) – yes, that box is still under that cabinet where you noticed it on 21^st October. No luck there.

The only real hiding place in the sitting room is under the chest of drawers which I thought the shawl was on top of:

There’s room under there for a slightly flattened cat, and plenty of room for knitting -- but it’s not there. So if the cats are to blame – that hasn’t been proven – they must have dragged it out of the room.

Totally off the Subject

We had an hour on television last night about Hugh Grant. I’m sure I tell you every three or four months or so that he and James used to live on the same stair at New College, Oxford, and that James once lent Hugh a frying pan. That frying pan occupies an important place in our family iconography. Hugh Grant has probably forgotten all about it. And the TV biopic made no reference to it.

Happy Christmas, all!