I’m sorry about yesterday. All is essentially well – Helen is safely back from Perthshire, is the main thing. She found it pretty cold. Her husband David is here from Thessaloniki. Tomorrow is the slightly premature 60^th birthday celebration. I have still done no knitting, but I sincerely hope that once I have assumed my festive costume tomorrow morning, I will sit and knit while I wait for my chauffeur. Archie and Mungo and Fergus are responsible for the lunch.

 

David and I share a birthday, and – almost better yet – he is 30 years younger than I am. So my 90^th, in August, will be his 60^th. Madhur Jaffrey, a favourite cook, shares my birthday, year as well as month and day.

 

Kate Davies has produced a brilliant essay on the colour green for the “Allover” club. Green has unfortunate associations because of the poisons once used to produce it. When I was young and carefree (never), sharing a flat in Glasgow with an Irish girl in the mid-50’s, I knit a small garment in green for Oberlin friends back in the US, and Anne told me that green was regarded as bad luck to knit for a baby. This seemed to me at the time an odd superstition for an Irishwoman. But it fits right in with KD’s essay. I have long since lost touch with those friends, alas, so I don’t know what became of the baby.

 

Wordle: I scored three yesterday and somewhat recovered self-respect. Everybody else did pretty well too. Today, we were all over the place again. I scored an undistinguished five in which I was joined by Little Rachel. Thomas – and he’s clever – needed six, which made me feel better. A scattering of fours. Ketki, Mark, and Big Rachel were today’s stars with threes.