Gloomy news: Dame Edna Everage has died from complications arising from a hip replacement. He was just my age, too. I don’t suppose the newspapers will tell me what went wrong. I don’t suppose it matters. The operation was the result of a fall.

 

A grey, chill day.

 

Knitting continues to move forward nicely. I’ve finished the eighth pattern repeat for the centre of my new shawl. Fourteen are required. I think I should manage some more this evening. It stubbornly refuses to get much easier.

 

I’ve found “Brideshead”, and largely re-read it. It is one of my desert island books, the other being “Il Gattopardo”. I also located “Black Mischief” in another pile, so the Waugh shelf is somewhat replenished.

 

Wordle: I got KAYAK in time. My little winning streak is intact. I agree with you about the trickiness of repeated consonants (comments yesterday). I wish I could remember the progress of yesterday’s struggle. My two starters gave me only a brown A. I found a legitimate word for line three. It added a brown Y. At some point during the morning Rachel rang up to tell me about her new grandson. She had already solved it, and she said something which, when compared with her successful grid, told me that the A was in second place. (Cheating?) My word for the fourth line gave me AY green in slots two and three. I wish I could remember that word – it may have been a Jean-word, that is, not a possible answer. That’s where I was when I wrote to you yesterday. When I went back to it again, despite nap-less-ness, the answer was easy. It always seems easy, once you've got it. 

 

Four for me today. We were all threes and fours on this side of the pond: Alexander and Ketki were the threes.  The USofA fared less well: five for both Theo and Roger.