The downstairs lavatory is nearly finished, to the great relief of all. They have done so much cleaning up after themselves that I have done no knitting — the connection being that when they run their industrial hoover I can’t hear my iPad reading “The Dutch House” to me, which is how I like to knit at the moment.

  So I read a great deal of Lady Colin Campbell’s (hostile) book about the Queen Mother. I should be ashamed of myself. 

  Helen came, but I don’t think we achieved anything. 

   It’s time to plant some new lingots in my salad factory. They have at last produced empty lingots into which you can plant your own seeds — I’ve ordered two of those, for tomatoes and sweet peas. And two ordinary ones, lettuce and arugula (=rocket). And I’ve ordered tomato and sweet pea seed. 2024 is under way.

  Wordle: yet again, my starters produced two browns, one owel and one consonant. After a brief struggle I abandoned all my high principles and typed in a Jean-word (=couldn’t be right because it re-used one of the letters eliminated by my starters). It served brilliantly— I now had two greens and two browns, and romped home in line    four.

   Roger was today’s star with three. His son Theo was the class dunce with six.The British contingent were evenly divided between fours and fives.