I got around the garden this morning with Daniela – that’s five days in a row. Tomorrow is my bath day so I won’t attempt it. This morning was damp and miserable, but not particularly cold. When one is actually experiencing a not-very-severe winter, it’s hard to be too disapproving of global warming. There has been plenty of snow elsewhere, but Edinburgh has had nothing worse than a few degrees of frost, not even enough to make it slippery underfoot. There’s still plenty of time for severity, but every day like this brings us one day closer to April.

 

The difficulty with the standard lamp did indeed turn out to be the electricity supply (see yesterday). It was plugged in, but the socket wasn’t switched on. So now I’ve got light. Daniela scampered up the steps which terrified Helen yesterday and did the overhead light. That was a good thought of yours about fuses, Tamar (comment yesterday). Yes, there is one in every British plug. I know how to change them, and have often done it, but can’t remember what has caused them to need changing. In this house when a light bulb fails it almost always takes a fuse down with it, meaning that several other lights – but not electric sockets – go out too. For many years I had to call the electrician every time. Finally he put in a modern fuse box and I can now go and flip the switch myself. It happened last week, when the overhead light in the sitting room failed. I can’t remember a socket, or set of sockets, ever giving up, except when the whole street was afflicted with a power cut.

 

I did a bit of knitting, too. Time to measure again.

 

There’s a picture in the Times this morning of a knitting group at Dumfries House. The Prince of Wales – the Duke of Rothesay, actually, when he’s north of the border – is standing there looking benevolent, but not knitting. The actual knitters, at least the visible ones, are children, and not very good at it. The article doesn’t make it at all clear what is going on.

 

I’ve just searched the blog for “Dumfries House”, using the facility at the top of the right-hand sidebar, and came up with nothing. Maybe I’ve never told you about the time we had lunch there, in the days before it belonged to the Duke of Rothesay. Perhaps I’ll do that soon.