At home, trying to keep busy and not think about the reasons for being at home and trying to keep busy.

A few days ago this piece of embroidery fell out of its ancient plastic bag in the cupboard where I had been hoarding it since we moved in in 1986, and demanded to be finished. What a good idea, I thought. I had started it in 1976 – I can remember going with my mother to one of the Oxford Street department stores after I left university, and choosing the canvas and the wools and her paying a great deal of money for the whole caboodle. It was – is – a big canvas and I took it with me everywhere I went for a long time. Until I had children, in fact, when time suddenly became a premium. Nevertheless I put it aside and thought I would finish it some day.

Well, some day came yesterday. I took it out of its bags, laid it out, found a section I could work on relatively quickly and them came the Eureka moment, the crossing of the Rubicon, the epiphany , – I had run out of one of the wools and cannot match it, even with the wonders of the internet.

So yes. ” Eureka!” I said to myself. “You know what. I am not going to finish this. Ever. For three reasons at least. One – I haven’t got the wool; two what on earth would I do with it if I ever did finish it? and three?

Three . I don’t like the pattern. I really don’t like the colours. I just don’t like it.”

So, having sorted it all out in my mind and channelling my inner Marie Kondo, I have decided to ditch forty-four years of embroidery. Unlike Penelope, I do not need to unpick it and start again as my personal Odysseus is safe and sound at home.

What I will do, though, is buy another one which hopefully I shall enjoy.

Please, if anyone out there would like to relieve me of this oeuvre – enough is completed so it would actually make quite a good sized cushion cover, if you like the tastes of the seventies; then let me know. It will be winging its way to you in a jiffy (bag!)