I’m concerned about the Queen, as many of us must be. Ninety-five is awfully old. When she was in hospital overnight a few days ago, they told us it was for “preliminary tests”. Preliminary to what? The Palace usually uses language very carefully. Perhaps that was a rare example of someone groping for a meaningless four-syllable word. There has been no comment about it since.

 

I read somewhere that since then she has not been seen about Windsor walking her dogs. But of course she could have started walking them again – no one would have felt it necessary to tell me.

 

I’ve knitted peacefully forward on the Machu Picchu. I haven’t found any of the missing yarn or patterns.

 

Other

 

This morning in the Times I read one of those articles reminding us about distinguished novels of the past – “Mrs Bridge”, in this case. I bought myself a Kindle edition of it at once, as I often do in such cases. It’s a Penguin Modern Classic, no less. I don’t remember having heard of it before. And I am disappointed. I thought maybe it would be us but it isn’t. Mr and Mrs Bridge are ten years older than my parents, and there is a great gulf besides. Mrs Bridge votes as her husband tells her to. My mother was a socialist in the ‘30’s. She even had a cat named Norman Thomas but he left in a huff when I was born and my parents were more interested in me than in him.

 

That’s not a very serious critique, but I still was disappointed in the book. I guess I can see what the author was trying to do. I'll finish it. It's mercifully short.