I’ve had a good visit with Rachel and Ed. We sat on the step last night, as planned, drinking gin and tonic (cider for me). Today they came and walked me around the garden; then Helen joined us and we went to a local gallery which is having a small exhibition for which they have borrowed some of our pictures. That was fun. Then out to lunch. None of us had been on such an adventure since all this nonsense began. We had a delicious lunch at a new local restaurant called Next Chapter. It seemed well set up for plague-eating. Rachel and Ed are going on up to Kirkmichael tomorrow. I’ll see them again next week on their way back. And perhaps even join them up there, if my cruise gets cancelled.

 

And that’s the news. No knitting.

 

Reading

 

I’ve been reading Diana Mitford’s autobiography. The Mitford girls are endless. She was the beautiful one, Oswald Mosley’s wife, friend of Hitler. It is very odd indeed, and rather unpleasant, to read of the war from her point of view. I found that, despite having lived through most of the 20^th century, I didn’t really know what “fascism” was. I looked it up on Wikipedia just now, and it seems that nobody knows. “Communism” – the century’s other Big Idea – is easy enough to define, at least roughly. Twentieth century fascism is so overshadowed by its anti-Semitism, like a mushroom cloud, that it hardly matters what its other tenets were, if any. Diana M. is distinctly weak on anti-Semitism.

 

She and Mosley were interned during the war, no charge, no trial, in dirty and distressing conditions; so it is perhaps no wonder that she sees things a bit differently.

 

Misc

 

I loved your comment, Mary. If worse comes to worst, we’ll have to work out somewhere to set up a knitters’ commune. The climate on Shetland might be a bit severe for some.

 

Shandy, I couldn’t agree more with your comment. I agree with you about  Michelle – I’ve got her on a sweatshirt, my purchase for 2020. But when Hillary was the candidate, I wasn’t entirely happy that the first woman president should be someone whose name had been made famous by her husband – particularly irritating in Hillary’s case, as she had been “Hillary Rodham” until “Clinton” became more useful. And not happy that a former president should get back into the White House by the kitchen door – particularly irritating in Hillary’s case because he was so obviously looking forward to it. If the drafters of the constitutional amendment restricting a president to two terms had even remotely thought of that possibility, they might have legislated against it.

 

But still I love and admire Michelle.