Today is the solstice — the word means something like “the standing-still of the sun”. We’ve done it again! Although we won’t really experience the advancing light until somewhere around Groundhog Day. 

There is little to report. I’ve knit industriously on. I think I’ve knit even more industriously these last two days, since ordering the hat kit. But I’m in one of those troughs, familiar to us all, when the more I knit, the less I seem to achieve.

There are still three more days for the hat-ingredients to arrive in, if I am to knit it in the Back End, unless the Royal Mail has more strikes scheduled. Attention has been drawn away by NHS strikes and, to a lesser extent, the rail network. It’s not worth worrying, as long as one can keep out of hospital. 

Wordle: Anonymous Janet in Seattle — you’re absolutely right that ease-of-solution is at least as important as score, if not more so. I do it in the morning, first thing after reading my emails and before starting on the papers, and much prefer the days when I can wrestle to a fall briskly, and don’t have to leave it behind while I tackle the headlines.

Like this morning. My starters gave me four browns. I couldn’t think of anything. I finally put in a Jean-word, which at least turned one of the browns, green. Then I had to leave it.

But C. came, and we went out for a short walk, and when I returned to the problem all refreshed, there was the answer! My favourite four! 

Theo, Thomas and Mark: three. They are the clever ones. Ketki and I: four. Alexander and his sister Big Rachel: five.