Stilly, you’ve heard, I’m sure, of people who don’t cook? They can make tea and heat up soup that comes in a can, but they generally find ways to stay out of the kitchen entirely, such as marrying people who do cook. Or they spend most of their discretionary income on restaurants.

I cook, but I don’t sew. Every decade or so, I might replace a button or perhaps darn a moth-hole in a sweater, but that’s it. The very notion of me going out and buying baize by the metre and, y’know, cutting it to size and making a casing for elastic around the edge — well, that’s just not going to happen in this universe where the sky is usually some version of blue. Something from Amazon or one of its digital brethren will just have to do. Your mileage evidently varies.

In fact, the huge shower cap concept is about right; I have such a thing (purchased years ago from Amazon) for my inlaid mahogany tilt-top table, which is 40 inches in diameter and therefore much easier to, um, dress. But similar items intended to fit tables up to 48 inches don’t fit mine because of the apron. Phooey.

The last couple of weeks has been something of a shopping orgy conducted entirely on line. I think I need a Buy Nothing week, or two, or maybe four or five.