Bad news from the carpet cleaners: Three rugs so badly damaged as to be unsalvageable. My favourite, the big green Bokhara, is one of them. The Chinese runner that came from my grandparents' house and one of the red-and-yellow Afghan runners Edmund brought home are the other two goners. I'm holding out hope for a bedroom-sized bluish Kirman that Edmund bought in the Kabul bazaar; that was what I was looking for when I started pulling the lot of them off the top shelf.

The choir's Annual General Meeting is tonight. It will be my swan song as the Secretary of the Board and, therefore, my last set of minutes. What a relief.