Sunshine again! If this goes on until Helen gets back, i’ll have to venture out. The current carer hasn’t been instructed in the up-and-down-stairs machine, so we’re stuck. I wasn’t entirely sorry not to have to make the effort today.

   Rachel rang up — on her 66th birthday. The first day of the rest of my life, if ever there was one: June 23, 1958.

   And Clare came and we had a nice time talking about tennis. I’m waiting for Wimbledon. She’s been watching the subsidiary British grass-court tournaments, to get acquainted with everyone.

   Rachel says that Roger and Aunt-Helen are consumed with anxiety about the American election, as well they might be. I wish we had talked about it more, before she got ill. The British election is bad enough, but at least Starmer and Sunak are both sane, and even Farage close enough to that state, and none of them senile.

   I’ ve been thinking about “Don’t Look Now”, a propos what I wrote yesterday about Donald Sutherland. I remember visual images — a headmaster’s somewhat battered but still authoritative door; Sutherland dizzyingly high in a Venetian church; as well, of course, as that red raincoat. And what is it that is so scary about blindness? It was directed by Nicolas Roeg. I looked that up.

   Wordle: Unbelievable! Not only did I score a two last week, bit my three was unmatched in our little group today. My starters provided the two vowels, one green, one brown. I struggled but briefly, thought of a word, typed it in — and it was right! Sheer luck. I used to subscribe to the NYT to the extent that they would tell me how many other possible  answers there had been at each stage. There would have been lots today, I suspect.

   Four for Alexander and for both Theo and Roger in DC. Five for the rest of the home team.