Not much knitting today. I decided I had finished the Machu Picchu ribbing – since I’m in EPS mode, it’s up to me; increased; knit peacefully on. I can highly recommend the weekly “Sit and Knit a Bit with Arne and Carlos”. Wednesday, I think.

 

None of this week’s impulsive buy of knit books are going to be of much use. The cable one – “Cable Knits from Nordic Lands”, by Ivar Asplund – is perfectly good, but if you want a cable book, for Heaven’s sake, get Norah Gaughan’s “Knitted Cable Sourcebook” and go on from there to her “40 Timeless Knits”.

 

But I will write tonight about a problem which envelopes us all – the danger of losing small businesses we love in the current world-wide misery. I have been trying to angle my extravagance in the direction of helpfulness. Tamar suggests keeping my expensive new clothes for the sake of their source, Toast. I will keep them in fact because bundling them up and sending them back is too much trouble, and also because I like them. But the small business I am worrying about is the Majestic Line.

 

They had maybe six weeks of cruising this summer, from late August until now.

 

They started up not many years ago when Dr Ken Grant converted two trawlers which had been put out of action by EU fishing regulations. They were so successful that he has had two more built, much the same in appearance, perhaps slightly steadier and more luxurious. He said, in the article in the Financial Times which first alerted me to the Majestic Line, that after 12 passengers you have to go up to 50 before you can make a profit again. He decided to stick with 12.

 

Mundi, I was at once so happy and so sad to hear of your experience with the Outer Hebrides cruise. I hope you’ll go in 2021! That was the one I booked between my husband’s death and his funeral. I went in 2018, travelling alone, and had a wonderful time. I was interested in their Wilderness Cruise – upper left-hand corner of Scotland, Ardnamurchan Point to Cape Wrath. I thought it wiser not to book until I had experienced a Majestic Line cruise, and by then there was nothing left for 2019. I persuaded C. to join me, for 2020.

 

We’ve rolled that one over. Then I thought, since I can feel myself getting daily weaker, that it might be nice to have something  to look forward to nearer than next May. Hence the one that has just been cancelled. They rang up today. I declined to take the money back, at least for the moment, although not at all clear what to roll it over to.

 

I’m particularly sad about our 2020 Wilderness cruise, because my sister and her husband were booked on it too. Although we have whizzed past each other relatively often, given how far apart we live, we were looking forward to those ten days when we might have sat together and talked of childhood and our parents. Alas, not to be. Probably ever.