Thank you for comments; especially yours, Chloe. I feel irrationally guilty (as well as terrified) about Spending the Kids’ Inheritance on private surgery. It’s the surgeon who should feel guilty. I am reducing the NHS waiting list by one, at considerable cost to myself. I did this once before, with cataracts, and didn’t feel guilty at all. I wasn’t safe to drive. My husband had given up driving. It was go-private or no-Kirkmichael all summer. That time – it was quite a while ago – I don’t suppose I jumped the queue by more than three or four months, at the worst. And paying meant that I could stay in the private hospital overnight: that was welcome. This hip thing will be in the same place.

 

Helen will go with me on Monday, I could scarcely get there without her. But you’re right, I’ll need her as a witness.

 

I continue to read Jeeves-and-Wooster, and it’s wonderfully soothing. Bertie has problems, even worse than my problems. Jeeves solves them. My problem today is this: I knit steadily on, and have reached the next lace row. I know the basic pattern, but the configuration at the ends of each side (I’m knitting the borders) changes a bit because stitches are added at each corner every knit round. I haven’t printed the pattern out this time. I just nip in to Craftsy whenever I reach a lace row.

 

And today, I can’t get in. After email address and password, you have to attest that you are not a robot, and answer questions based on that irritating grid. Today, the grid won’t come up. The little circle just keeps going around. (Having written that, I tried on this leptop computer, and got in – they took my word for it that I wasn’t a robot. So all is well, I guess.) I’ll have to sit in here in the catalogue room if I want to knit that lace round this evening.)

 

Kate Davies’ new book is here, “Allover”. And to my very considerable disappointment, it doesn’t contain any of the interesting essays on colour, by Kate and others, which we have been reading week by week as part of club membership. Are they still on-line somewhere?

 

Wordle: Alexander turned up at lunchtime today. Curioser and curioser. It was a toughy. He scored six, as did Mark and Theo and I. Ketki and her son Thomas managed fives. My daughter Rachel came home with the only four. I am beginning to feel that she does rather well rather often.