The weather has gone into mourning for Her Majesty. (That’s called the Pathetic Fallacy.) Daniela and I got across to the garden this morning, but not very far past the gate.

 

I have added a broad stripe and a narrow one to the body of the Evendoon, and am about to embark on the terminal ribbing for the second time. However, the big knitting news is the arrival yesterday (yesterday?) of the package from Amsterdam. There are five skeins – two each of the two main colours, and a single skein of contrast. I promptly wound one. C. and I did another this morning. I hope to do a third tomorrow. I feared there was a real danger that Cast-On Day would arrive and catch me with the winding undone. These skeins are lengthy. Photograph soon – I’m very happy with the colours.

 

Royal Thoughts: I had been so looking forward to Tuesday’s hand-kissing (as one Prime Minister departed, and another was installed) as a fresh, recent photograph of the Queen was bound to be involved. And so it was, the last we will ever see. She looked in fairly good shape for 95. A Church of Scotland minister who stayed at Balmoral last weekend – he was preaching at Crathie on the Sunday – says she was in sparkling form. Boris Johnson said in the House of Commons today that the same was true at the hand-kissing. Even allowing for hyperbole, the end-of-life bit must have been short. A great blessing.

 

I followed the news on the radio all day, except that there really wasn’t any. A slightly mysterious medical bulletin at lunchtime, and the news that the Queen’s four children were all going to Balmoral. I wasn’t hugely concerned. But apparently there were rumours in the street. Helen arrived at 5, with David and Archie and an old friend and their dog Farouk. She brought me three bottles of cider –  Helen, who deeply disapproves of my drinking. We watched the news together for an hour and a half, a magnificent display on the part of the BBC of stringing out the saying of nothing. There was an increasing sense, however, that the rumours were true. Most of the reporters were wearing black ties. There was no six o’clock news, just on and on with pictures of the gates of Balmoral. Then at 6:30, the announcement.

 

Her absence feels very odd.

 

Wordle: The Times resisted the temptation to set QUEEN. We all seem to have found today on the easy side, anyway. Rachel and Ketki scored two, Thomas and Mark and I three, Alexander four.