I’ve got the purl bumps picked up. It’s not a perfect job, but I’ve got the right number of them. I have since tucked the needle that holds them inside and gone on knitting the neck ribbing. Not much more to do. Kate Davies’ promised Sunday essay turns out to be about the three-needle bind-off (a fave of mine, too). I had expected feminism in some form, or the beauties of nature; it was a pleasant surprise.

 

Otherwise it has been a pretty idle day. We are busy plotting how far we might bend Scotland’s new rules, when Rachel and Ed visit from London later this week. We are not meant to visit each other at home, although it is all right to go to a restaurant together. That is ridiculous. We’ll be fine if the weather holds. We can eat sandwiches in Drummond Place Gardens. And if it doesn’t, I am much inclined to think I will invite them in. They have had to cancel their visit to the west – Ketki is now a member of the West of Scotland Health Board and is resolved not to take a Dominic Cummings attitude to the rules.

 

Good news: Christina, who broke her neck 10 days ago, has a hospital appt this week. I think it is rather clever of evolution to have given us bones which mend.

 

Reading

 

I have finished the biography of the Mitford sisters. I now want to read Nancy’s letters to Evelyn Waugh, but the book is not on the shelf. That has happened too often lately.

 

Here is another Mitford story. When Jessica and her American husband Bob Treuhaft first visited Chatsworth – where sister Debo was duchess – he was completely bowled over. “I would have known how to behave at the White House,” he said. “At Chatsworth, I didn’t know what century I was in.” Presented with the visitors’ book, he noticed that many guests had signed with a single name: “Salisbury” “Antrim” “Denham”. So he wrote “Treuhaft” and wondered why everybody fell about laughing.