Not much activity – I was waiting in for two deliveries – but otherwise not a bad day. A fair amount of knitting, as I advance through the gradient stripes. I won’t really know how this is working until I finish them and return to the basic colour. It’s harmonious enough, I’m sure, but will it embrace the stripes as friends?

It’s nice to be knitting something like this which eats up an appreciable amount of stash per day. Appreciable but useless, considering how much stash I have recently added.

The world seems to be getting back on its feet. I hope so. C. and I have hopes of going on our cruise in May, ’21, but – apart from the necessity of my staying alive that long – it won’t be possible if we’re still trying to achieve social distancing. It’s not exactly crowded, on the little boat, but we all eat together – that’s half the fun – and sit shoulder-to-shoulder in the tender as we go ashore.

Thank you for your comments about the wee video on Instagram of me knitting. Mary Lou, I use both hands for Fair Isle, and have never entirely understood why I can’t therefore “knit continental” carrying the yarn in the left hand alone. I think I tend to point my left index finger heavenwards and pluck the stitch from the taut yarn. Arne says that it’s important to keep the finger low.

Chloe, no, if there was a cat in that video, it was Paradox. My situation is (paradoxically) that Perdita whom I love desperately is a remote and disagreeable cat, who almost never purrs. (I googled that problem once. All Google could tell me was that some cats don’t.) Poor Paradox who is ever at my side, day and night, perhaps doesn’t get the love she deserves.

And, Mary Lou, tell me about Gerard Manley Hopkins’ translation of Horace. (Or I could try Google.) I think they are my two favourite poets in the universe.

Jeanfromcornwall, your note reminds me (although not strictly relevant) how my father insisted, something short of 80 years ago, that I type with both hands, instead of pecking with one finger of one hand.