I’m sorry about the gap. All’s well, but Christmas presses, even in my reduced state. Maybe it would be better to log off now until sometime next week. Merry Christmas to all. 

  Rachel came and went from/to London yesterday. She had trouble with delayed trains — much stress but fortunately not too much delay. Essentially she was here for a long lunch. C. and Helen came. We had kedgeree and a green salad. At the end, Mungo joined us, home from Cairo for the Christmas holiday, looking well. Wafa says his spoken Arabic is remarkably good. He doesn't know what he wants to do with it.

  Virtually no knitting, always a bad sign, but I am nevertheless only one wrong-side row short of the point where I leave the sleeve stitches behind. 

   And it’s less than 48 hours until the solstice.

   Wordle: lots of threes and fours lately. Today over here there were two twos, Mark and Thomas; two threes, Alexander and Rachel; and two fours, me and Ketki. In DC, a distinguished three for Roger and a most uncharacteristic five for Theo.