We had a bit of sunshine today. It does help. I got around the garden with C., very slowly.

 

I ate a little green salad from my salad machine. C. brought me two Seville oranges, and I used one of them to make a vinaigrette for it. Very tasty.

 

And I knit. It’s still agonizingly difficult, the more so now that it is divided by three steeks (armholes and v-neck) so that one has to figure out where one is in the pattern three times per round. There are two rounds in which nothing much happens, evenly all the way around. The following round, in each case, is still very difficult for me: the pattern is two lozenge-shapes, squares tipped on end. One is always expanding while the other contracts, and at the mid-way point they change places. It is important, after those do-nothing rounds to be sure I’ve got it right, which is which and where am I. It seems to involve a lot of time and a lot of unpicking.

 

But I remain confident that I’m going to get it done in time. I only need about three more inches, and the circumference is much reduced by the steeks.

 

Current Events

 

It’s hard to say why I feel sorry for Prince Andrew, Tandah. When our Cardinal O’Brien was disgraced, I felt sorry for him, too. For a while it looked as if he was going to assist the parish priest in a small town not far from Edinburgh. The priest and the congregation were eager to have him, but somebody – presumably the Vatican – said no, and he went into idle exile in England. A friend of his remarked, “He’s lost everything. Isn’t that enough?”

 

Your point is a good one, Cat, that Prince Andrew seems to have been singled out because of who he is. Clinton and Bill Gates have both been mentioned in this sad story – nobody’s suing them. A columnist in the Sunday Times today makes a good point which hadn’t occurred to me: namely that London 20 years ago was full of lovelies who would have welcomed an overnight invitation to Buckingham Palace. Did he really need to have one flown in from Florida? It should be noted that 17 wasn’t (and isn’t) under-age for sex in Britain.

 

But apart from that columnist -- Jeremy Clarkson – the tone today was very hostile and anti-monarchy.