We had some welcome rain in the night. C. came and we got all the way around the garden – the first time I’ve done that in a while. She was tired but very happy after a week of grandchildren – a London-based set as well as Hamish and his brother Quinn.

 

Not much knitting. Again, I hope I’ll do some more this evening. It now just needs a little push and the job will be done.

 

I’m afraid I did sign up for Stephen West’s MKAL. I sort of hoped there would be a message from one of you this morning saying, oh, go for it; but there wasn’t. There was just a message rather disapproving of the whole idea of knitting something when you don’t even know what it’s meant to look like. I’m not worried. It’s a shawl. West is a good designer, and he works hard on this annual event. We’re meant to start and finish in October, but I can presumably stretch it out a bit. November and December are the months when I need colour and encouraging videos from Stephen West.

 

What I forgot to say yesterday is that the news that the Queen stayed away from the Braemar Gathering this weekend is, I suspect, far more indicative of a decline in her health than the fact that she’s not going to London to welcome the new Prime Minister. Braemar must be what the Royal Family mean when they refer to “the Games” – just as we mean the Strathardle Highland Gathering which is always held the week before. Or maybe she just got tired of it all. She has to sit in a sort of three-sided hut which keeps the rain off, and just watch. Whereas the fun is walking about and meeting old friends and catching up on a year’s gossip and drinking whiskey out of the back of each other’s cars.

 

Wordle: Rachel and Ed are in Portugal with Alexander and Ketki, and Alexander has succeeded in adding Rachel to our little group of solvers. Posting daily results is easy, once you’re in. I did rather well again today – Thomas and I scored four, Alexander five, Rachel and Mark six – and Ketki failed. The problem with a lot of people was that they got the last three letters and then kept guessing wrong; the old familiar Wordle swamp. I got all five letters as browns in my two starter words, and my second attempt at a complete anagram was right.