Another beautiful day. Helen was here for a scratch lunch, and has now gone to Kirkmichael. Her youngest son Fergus is about to celebrate his 21^st birthday there – with a marquee and a caterer.

 

I knit the next pattern row, and am absolutely determined to finish the subsequent plain-vanilla row before I go to bed. That will leave one more pattern row in the main body of the borders, followed by three plain-vanillas, followed by the end bit, eight or ten closely patterned rows with no plain-vanillas in between. I ought to be able to do it in the fortnight before Cramond.

 

Kirsten, good apple juice is indeed worth considering as a cider-substitute. I’ll have a look, the next time I’m putting in a grocery order. Waitrose sell a rather good low-alcohol cider, but I doubt if my advisors would approve. I usually drink bitter lemon when I can’t have cider. Presumably my new carer will cook. I’m rather looking forward to that. I hope it’s an activity she actively enjoys. The idea is that she will work four or five hours a day, and be here at night.

 

Wordle: I scored a peaceful four this morning, along with most of the others. Alexander and Thomas were the clever ones, with three. My sister’s problem (anonymous, Thursday) is not competitiveness per se, but (she says) the fear that I would beat her. There was no persuading her that some days I would, and some days she would beat me, and some days (probably most) we’d be equal, and anyway it didn’t matter.

 

Yesterday was BALSA. It was the day I had often feared, while engaged in a Wordle struggle: a word I didn’t know. I got it in six. By then I had ???ALSA, and I had eliminated SALSA. It was a matter of picking something pronounceable from the remaining letters and keeping fingers crossed. My winning streak now stands at 59 and I would have been sorry indeed to spoil it.