Filthy weather, and I was glad not to get out. My physiotherapists came, anyway; I couldn’t have walked. However, the main excitement this morning was not bad weather but the fact that Daniela didn’t come. She wasn’t here yesterday because of taking her son Daniel to hospital for a straight-forward procedure to correct his tongue-tied-ness. I knew about that. But I thought she’d be here this morning. And eventually she was, and Daniel is OK. But meanwhile I had time to think about life without her, and it was not a pleasant prospect. Helen and I, and perhaps the others, live under the constant shadow of my next medical crisis – a fall, a chest infection, a stroke, whatever. I will be 90 next summer. One has to think of these things. But perhaps we haven’t been giving enough thought to Daniela.

 

Anyway, all is well. For now.

 

And I got a good deal of knitting done. The latest measurement – a good one, on the kitchen table – shows me 1½” short of the target. It is a 16-row pattern, centered on a huge six-over-six cable. I’ve just finished that round, and once I’ve calmed everybody down I can start thinking of where-to-break-for-the-armholes in terms of every-other-round. Helen is worried – and so am I, slightly – because the total product looks too narrow. But there are four cable panels, each 32 stitches or so – I’m not going to go look. They’ll expand. Norah Gaughan in her indispensable cable-pattern book, gives equivalent gauges.

 

Wordle: I was in the vanguard today: three. Joined there by Ketki, Mark, Daughter-Rachel, and Theo. A rather large vanguard, but at least nobody did any better. Alexander and Granddaughter-Rachel got four. Thomas and Roger needed five. Roger will soon be here and we can do it together over the breakfast table – not conferring, of course.

 

There was some Wordle-news in the paper this morning. HOMER has been proclaimed word-of-the-year by someone, because lots of (English) people looked it up. I don’t remember that one The NYT says I have played it 286 times. How far back does that take us? I don’t think I would have had much trouble with HOMER. My starters would have produced two greens – HO – and two browns. And I grew up with the Detroit Tigers. I know the word.