I am touched at, and grateful for, your concern – but there’s no need to worry. I have an electric Aga and I would as soon turn it off as sell one of the cats. I don’t know yet how much it’s costing me this winter, but it means that the kitchen is always warm and dry. These days, I find I tend to stay in there from lunchtime onwards. The house itself is comfortable, too. In the days – they must be more than ten years ago, now – when my husband and I were able to go to Kirkmichael at all times of the year, we always turned off Aga and central heating when we were away and always found, when we got back, that the house, although of course cold, was never as bone-shatteringly cold as it might have been. 

C. has suggested that if I pushed the kitchen table a bit closer to the window, there would be room for a big comfortable chair. It’s an idea I must investigate. Meanwhile I find the wooden kitchen chairs very comfortable, and suitable for knitting.

 I’ve progressed a bit further. Today I finished a ball of yarn – always an event – but while I was winding the next one, Perdita appropriated the knitting itself, lying on the kitchen table. So I’m stymied. If it were Paradox, I’d just swipe her off.

 Wordle: I wonder if our scores have ever been so spread out. I scored five, my least-liked result. My starter words gave me four browns and I wrestled with the anagram for a while, and found an answer, and sat back – but it was wrong. Still four browns. I found another one – and realised, too late, that it was a Jean-word. One of the browns was in a position it had previously occupied and therefore inevitably  wrong. But, like many Jean-words before now, it was useful. Two of the browns turned green, and the position of a third could be deduced. That was the fourth line, and then I got it.

 My brother-in-law Roget scored six. His son Theo got five, like me. Alexander, Mark and Thomas got four. Three for Ketki and Daughter-Rachel. Today’s star was Granddaughter-Rachel, with two.

 Today would have been my husband’s 97^th birthday, I think.