Better, today – perhaps all due to my personal trainer. AND I found the missing gradient colour, and made good progress with the beginning of the EPS sleeve. It’s a good deal quicker to get round a wrist than a chest. There will be plenty of the gradient colours available for the yoke. I ought to be giving some thought as to what to do with them. Just stripes again?

Here’s a family snap for you. Christina is a keen horsewoman, long absent from the saddle. But last weekend she rode around the field for a few circuits while Hamish (now five weeks old) went for a walk with his father.

Reading

Shandy, I watched the first episode of “Doctor Thorne” last night, but I don’t think I’ll go on. What’s wrong? (Ian McShane is wonderful, as you say. Dr Thorne and Mary are fine.) It’s too fast, for one thing. Trollope’s action covers three years, in a long book. Julian Fellowes does his best – and there’s no one  better – but it feels hasty and condensed. No time to tell us, even, that the squire was in financial straits because of Lady Arabella’s extravagance.

Miss Dunstable was a big disappointment. I found it difficult to distinguish her from the other women – I found distinguishing the women difficult in general, despite having just closed the book. Miss D. was too young, too slim, too pretty for my taste – and she had mysteriously metamorphosed into an American. Perhaps that was meant to be a shorthand way of telling us that she was rough-hewn and loud, thus sparing the actress the trouble.

It would be fun to see what they do with Louis Philippe, but I am unwilling to dedicate the time.

The Sunday Times columnist India Knight is telling us her ten favourite books, week by week. This week, at No. 2, she wrote rapturously about Il Gattopardo, which endeared her to me, needless to say. There aren’t many things on her list (apart from that one) which would be repeated on mine, but for most, I could at least manage a nod of recognition.

Except for “A Legacy” by Sybille Bedford, at No. 4. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. So that’s what I’m reading now.

And I’m also amusing myself by composing my own list, which I fear will be more ponderous than hers.