This is a departure. I’m back in the Catalogue Room, trying to write to you on my aged mobile computer. After all these weeks, it seems slower and stiffer even than I am, and (so far) I can’t load Freecell. I always liked to start with a couple of hands of that. It’s bliss to be back to an actual keyboard.

      Not much to report, either. I’ve successfully plotted “TheCalcuttaCup ‘24” and done a bit more knitting. I think I’m nearly ready to plunge in, and have decided to knit the motif only once, and to keep the knitting circular by cutting the contrast yarn after every row.

     I’m feeling a certain amount of mental sludge. Hard to express, but a sudden awareness of diminishing acuity.

    Comments: You may well be right, Catdownunder, that Prince William was absent from his godfather’ memorial service because of the sudden death of Thomas Kingston. How is he (Prince William) related to Lady Gabriella? (This will sound like gibberish. See yesterday’s comment for a starter.) My mother was brilliant at relationships and could spot a second cousin twice removed at fifty paces. I enjoy it, but can’t, in this case, be bothered to figure out exactly where Prince and Princess Michael of Kent fit into the scheme of things.

    The whole point of being back here in the catalogue room is to show you pictures. I’ll skip great-grandchildren for the moment to show you snowdrops from Helen’s recent visit to Burnside.

   And a picture of Paradox having a nap in her new home in the south of England. There is no doubt that both she and Perdita are much happier cats now that there are hundreds of miles between them.

   Wordle: another day of predominantly fours. Alexander had a five (I didn’t think it was all that easy, either) and Mark a three. Theo was another four, in DC, and, as has happened before, we haven’t heard from Roger yet.