I re-read  my blog posts from last summer, when I was staying at Cramond, to see if I could deduce anything about care homes. What I found was that I missed my cats — at the time I had two -  and, in one eloquent sentence somewhere, was afraid I wouldn’t recover from my lung infection in time to get home.

Well, here I am, and the lungs — I had almost forgotten about them— are better. Maybe I should just be happy to stay here as long as I can afford it. I think live-in care costs about as much as top-end nursing home care, but as long as I am here I must also pay for Council Tax, food, heating and light, and cat food. But I’ve got my dear, irreplaceable cat, and my cider. 

Being in care would certainly be a different experience once it was permanent and they started to break up this dear house.

Helen came this morning and we struggled with finance. I have three accounts here in Edinburgh. Two of them are “frozen”. We made no progress with trying to unfreeze them. But we found some money that we were able to get hold of (we think) and pay into the one un-frozen account (we hope). Life used to be easier, in some respects.

There was once when a picture by Dav*d W*ilkie was being sold in London under a lesser name. My husband was an expert, and knew. We sent James and Alexander to the sale, lest my husband’s appearance there alert anyone to the truth. We arranged in advance with the Bank of Scotland, Blairgowrie, to honour Alexander’s cheque.

And we got the picture. And when the auctioneer rang Blairgowrie to verify the check, they confirmed it in a calm Scottish voice. And then whooped around the office, “The Mileses got the picture!”

It’s still here. But banks aren’t like that any more.

No knitting yet today. There’s still time.

Archie dropped in at lunchtime. I hadn’t seen him for a while. He was in Cairo last week with his parents, where he had a good time.

Wordle: not quite so hard, today. My starters gave me three vowels, no less — two browns and a green. I struggled for a while and then thought of a really good word, but it was wrong (that often happens). I got it on the next line — so, four.

We were spread all over the place today. Two for Mark — brilliant! Three for Roger and Rachel.  My fellow-fours were Alexander, Ketki, and Theo. Five for Thomas, today’s dunce.