Another nice day. C. came, and we got all the way around the garden. Just keep talking, is the secret – easy, in our case, with the cruise to talk about. Steps today an acceptable 2439.

 

I’m only two or three rounds short of the heel flap, on those Kaffe Fassett socks. But I’ve got a catch-up Italian lesson tomorrow morning so mustn’t idle about knitting this evening.

 

I took this useful gadget with me on the cruise. I haven’t used it for years. Its sole function in life is to carry a sock-in-progress and sock needles, and for that purpose it is simply brilliant. I’ve long since forgotten what it’s called or who sells it. Maureen, was that you? Do you remember? One of you came to see me – fresh from Shetland, I think – and showed it to me.

 

Well, I’ve finished telling you about the cruise. There is a flatness to the narrative which feeds my suspicion that I am really too old for such an adventure. The next problem, on that front, is that another one looms: when our May cruise was cancelled last year, we moved the booking forward to this year (that’s the cruise we’ve just been on) – but we also booked a “Captain’s Choice” cruise for the end of the 2020 season – surely all this Covid business would be over by then – just to have something to look forward to. And when that was cancelled, we transferred the booking to an “Isles of the Southern Hebrides”  leaving in, I think, late August, ‘21. C. is still game. We shall see.

 

One of the many wonderful things about the experience was to sail away from Covid for 10 days. The Majestic Line had taken a lot of precautions, including reducing the number of passengers. I suspect we were all double-vaccinated. They took our temperature every morning with one of those useful machines like a stun-gun. And after that, the subject was simply forgotten except for wearing masks in the tender and when ashore. I told Alexander last week: he was surprised that we didn’t talk about it. C. agreed this morning that we didn’t, but like me, she couldn’t remember what we did talk about. There was the evening devoted to Scottish separatism. One of us was a nurse who had some highly entertaining stories about some of her professional experiences. (There’s nowt so queer as folks.) That still leaves a lot of supper-table time which passed in pleasant, but forgotten, conversation.