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 It’s officially the Festive Season – I know this because they’ve put up the tree and lit Wick’s Christmas lights, an event commemorated in some of Joni Mitchell’s most affecting lyrics: “It’s coming on Christmas / They’re cutting down trees / They’re putting up a giant inflatable Santa in Wick Market Square / And wearing leggings on their knees”. (These are some of my favourite lyrics, along with, “How many roads must a man walk down / Before he finds a public convenience, or at least a suitably tall hedge”, and “If I had a hammer / I’d hammer in the morning / But then I’d probably have to fix that wonky shelf in the bathroom.”)
 Decorated Umbrella from the Umbrella Parade It’s suddenly turned cold, at or around freezing, while the wind’s been gusting up to 50 mph with showers of sleet, which hits the window with the force of gravel thrown by the ghosts of a hundred desperate elopements. Then the sky clears overnight and everything freezes solid. The sidewalks are treacherous with frozen snow and ice, and every step makes a nasty crackling noise as though the Council was trying to save money by using cornflakes instead of grit. People walk in slow motion, as if testing the ice on a frozen lake.
 Moss-capped fencepost It’s supposed to warm up again later in the week, and we’ll swap the sleet for rain so we can tough it out for a few days – though I’m wearing so many layers for thermal insulation I’m contemplating buying comedy clown trousers just to accommodate my swelling waistline. But I must admit to feeling a little uneasy: if this is a taste of things to come, even clown trousers may not be enough…
 Next step: the yoke Meanwhile, I’ve been making good progress on the Lopi pullover, and will hopefully finish it next weekend. It’s hugely satisfying to knit something where the rate of progress isn’t measured in microns, for a change. On the other hand, constantly having to stop and switch yarn colours is a bit of a nuisance; if I had to knit a Fair Isle sweater, for instance, I might possibly lose my reason. But I plan to end the year by knitting another Lopi jumper before going back to ganseys after Christmas. (I have the next gansey planned, and the yarn – Frangipani pewter – already bought. So I’m good to go.)
 Finally, today – 30 November – is St Andrew’s Day, patron saint of Scotland. (It’s a public holiday in some parts of Scotland but not, alas, in Caithness.) St Andrew was a fisherman, and he’s their patron saint too, so it seems entirely appropriate to celebrate him in a blog dedicated to fishermen’s sweaters, and one now based in Scotland at that. But did you know that his patronage also extends to fishmongers, spinsters, maidens, old maids and women wishing to become mothers, as well as gout, sore throats – and singers?
Which brings us back full circle to Joni Mitchell. So many great songs: “The wind is in from Novosibirsk / Last night I couldn’t sleep”, and of course the classic, “I’ve looked at clouds / From both sides now / From rain and sleet, and still somehow / It’s the total downpours I recall / I really don’t like clouds at all.”
 Apologies for the short blog this week—it’s another semi-migraine day, I’m afraid. (Nothing very serious—I just feel like I aged about 30 years overnight.)
Anyway, I’m taking my traditional Christmas break from ganseys to experiment again with Icelandic Lopi Alafoss wool jumpers. In many ways these are anti-ganseys, being big and chunky and soft, as well as very quick to knit—well, you can see how far I’ve got in a week; if I’d been knitting a gansey I’d barely have finished the welt by now. (Also, wearing a Lopi jumper is so warm and cosy it’s like being intimate with an Ewok.)
 Lopi & Gansey Now, you may remember that the last time I tried this it played merry hell with my stitch gauge when I eventually went back to ganseys. So this time I’ve come up with a cunning plan: I’ve also cast on the stitches for another gansey, and every night I knit a row, just to keep the memory in my fingers of what a 2.25mm needle feels like. So far so good: the transition is always strange, but the stitches look about right.
 Sunset by the river In parish notices Judit has been busy again, this time knitting a cap using the classic Betty Martin pattern as a Christmas present. Congratulations again to Judit for creatively using gansey patterns in new ways and for producing such a natty garment.
 A grey afternoon near the castle of Old Wick Meanwhile winter has arrived at Caithness, coming via the Arctic Circle. In the last week we’ve had sunshine, rain, gales, sleet and snow—sometimes all on the same day. The Met Office temperature today had the cheerful message, “feels like -1ºC”. Even the seals in the harbour look mournful (or more mournful than normal; they usually just look at me with a sort of hopeless disappointment, like my old classics master waiting for me to give the plural of “domus” in Latin class—though there the similarity ends, for to the best of my recollection I never saw Mr Pennycook dive for fish…).
 I was thinking this week how the main characters in fantasy literature tend to be larger-than-life figures: warriors and wizards, kings and queens—or Cinderella types like Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter, orphans ignorant of their birthrights. But no one writes fantasy novels about bureaucrats; the filing clerks, or those greybeards in the Gondor archives who are so casual about where they put their candles. (It’s much the same in Star Trek, of course: when did you last see a Klingon accountant?)
Imagine how much more exciting the Lord of the Rings would have been if JRR Tolkien had made it a heroic tale of admin, paperwork and financial probity. Sauron might have been arrested for cheating on his income tax returns (hatching orcs in slime pits not being a recognised tax-deductible expense). Aragorn might have achieved his destiny by becoming President of the Society of Archivists, thus fulfilling the prophecy (From the drawer a sharpener is taken / The waste-paper basket’s not missed / Renewed shall be point that was broken / The archivist once more shall list).
In this version the Riders of Rohan could be a nomadic tribe of document cataloguers, roaming the land in search of records they can sort in exchange for food and a good conditioning shampoo. Here is their moving lament for the old days (my translation):
 Where now are the archivist and the pencil? Where is the acid-free box for stowing?
Where is the brass paper clip and the eraser, and the bald patch showing?
They have passed like mould on a log book, like rusty paper clips in a file,
The parchment deeds have all been eaten away by insects into piles.
Who shall gather the shavings of the pencil sharpening,
Or behold the arteries after the cream cakes hardening?
Well. I’ve finished the gansey, and it’s been washed and blocked by Margaret, and you can finally see the pattern in all its glory. I must say, this really is a pattern that should be better known—nice clean lines and a regular eye-pleasing design, I think it’s a classic; and remarkably easy to knit withal.
 My next gansey project will start with the new year; as once again I shall be taking short break from ganseys—though not from the blog—and knitting a sweater or two in Icelandic Lopi wool. (Two colours at once! Who’d have thought? It’s like entering the fourth dimension, as though Doctor Who had taken up knitting…)
[Postscript. The above was drafted before news broke of the appalling atrocity in Paris last Friday—otherwise I doubt I should have head the heart for jokes. As it was written I decided to let it stand; but I should like to add my voice to the rest of the civilised world, and say: Nous sommes tous Français.]
 One of the advantages of being an archivist—apart from the afternoon naps, and the respect and adulation of apple-cheeked teenagers (at least I think “top ranker” was what they were shouting) is that you see days of yore as they really were. If you only view the past from the point of view of the novels of the time you’d never know that anyone used bad language. But they really did. Rather a lot.
Take the case of Charlotte Bronte. She of course swore like a navvy and used to sneak out of the vicarage to go bare-knuckle fighting in country fairs to earn a little extra pin money. Indeed, the original manuscript of Jane Eyre is so full of swearing that it had to be heavily censored by her sister Emily before it could be published—and the famous sentence at the end of the novel, “Reader, I married him”, was originally so shocking—the verb describing what Jane did to Mr Rochester (and his dog, Pilot), so explicit—that the manuscript remains under guard in a locked vault beneath the British Library to this day.
 The Girnel, Staxigoe Well, I was reminded of this by a manuscript in the archives at Wick that we came across last week. It dates from 1753 and describes an encounter between a merchant called John Shand and the Excise. In short, Shand landed a cargo of French brandy and tobacco at Staxigoe harbour a couple of miles up the coast from here, and it was impounded. The Excise men hired boats to take the goods to Wick, and Shand, evidently a man of strong passions, at once hired a boat of his own to intercept them in the bay.
 Pigeons on the harbour wall Shouting abuse he got on board one boat and attacked a member of the crew with a cudgel, then threatened to shoot him with a loaded pistol. Luckily no one was hurt (and Shand, with a persistence that’s really rather admirable, went on to break into the Tollbooth at midnight to rescue his cargo).
But I was intrigued by a deposition by the crewman who’d been assaulted: he said Shand came on board calling him a “scoundrel son of a bitch”. (Isn’t that great? I plan to use it in my next appraisal.) I’ve never heard of anyone being called an SOB that early—it’s something I associate with Chicago gangsters or, at a pinch, my dentist under her breath whenever I break another tooth—but this dates from a generation before American Independence.
 I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Sooner or later the unexpurgated Pride and Prejudice will be published (“Petticoats of Fury” by Jane Austen: Cage Fighter), with its famous opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife who can suck the pips out of an orange without peeling it first.”
What’s that you say? Ganseys? Oh, yes. Well, as you will see, I am rapidly advancing down the second sleeve and expect to finish it sometime this week. Then it’s just a question of darning in the ends, blocking, and then I’ve got a few days pencilled in for panicking that it’s not going to fit…
Finally, thanks to everyone for your solicitude and suggestions regarding my various ailments. I now have no fewer than three referrals to Inverness Hospital—I had already been thinking of leaving my body to medical science; it’s just that I’d planned to do this after I was dead…
[P.S. You can read more about the adventures of potty-mouth John Shand on the Caithness Archives website.]
 Apart from a whole bunch of memories, I brought back from the States last week a broken tooth, which just sheared away like a cliff face exposed to coastal erosion. (This happened in an excellent Mexican restaurant in upstate New York while we were eating tortilla chips; and few things can be more disconcerting than crunching your way through your own teeth under the mistaken assumption they go nicely with guacamole.) Well, the tooth is now sorted, thanks to some nifty reconstruction work by my dentist.
 Creels at Lybster harbour But I’ve also had a recurrence of the mouth infection (ulcers and swollen lips) I suffered some months ago; it’s slowly wearing off, though it did prompt said dentist—rather unfeelingly, I thought—to ask me if I’d had cosmetic surgery to make my lips plumper, before howling with laughter and then pretending she’d got something in her eye until she sobered up. (I let it pass—my mouth was by then so numb I sounded like I was eating a mouthful of taffy; and she was the one holding the drill, after all.)
 Well. Back to business. I’ve finished the first sleeve, including the turned-back cuff to allow the wearer to adjust the length (this is my insurance policy when I’m knitting a gansey for someone too far away for me to get up close and personal with a tape measure; or someone adroit enough to obtain a court order). And I’ve started the second.
This is where my cunning wheeze of using the little bit of leftover yarn from the first cone to start the sleeve really pays off—having done all the hard work weeks ago, rather than have to pick up the stitches around the armhole (the knitting equivalent of doing quadratic equations), now all I have to do is slip them off the holding yarn and Robert is your mother’s sister’s husband, as the saying goes.
 Autumn colour in the churchyard In other news, Judit of this parish has been busy again, finding new things to do with gansey patterns and a bit of yarn—in this case, collars with hearts and mini-cables. And speaking as someone who keeps warm indoors in winter by wrapping a scarf so thick around my neck strangers assume I’ve been treated for whiplash, this seems like a rather brilliant idea. You can see the splendid results here – it’s on the third page of Judit’s gallery.
Oh, and neither doctor nor dentist could offer an explanation as to why the infection, if such it is, should have recurred. It may be dietary, they said, an allergic reaction to something I ate. My blood ran cold—quelle horreur—what if I’m allergic to coffee and doughnuts? Then there would be nothing for it but to compose my death haiku and open my veins. But then a happier thought occurred—maybe I’m just allergic to Wick…
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It’s officially the Festive Season – I know this because they’ve put up the tree and lit Wick’s Christmas lights, an event commemorated in some of Joni Mitchell’s most affecting lyrics: “It’s coming on Christmas / They’re cutting down trees / They’re putting up a giant inflatable Santa in Wick Market Square / And wearing leggings on their knees”. (These are some of my favourite lyrics, along with, “How many roads must a man walk down / Before he finds a public convenience, or at least a suitably tall hedge”, and “If I had a hammer / I’d hammer in the morning / But then I’d probably have to fix that wonky shelf in the bathroom.”)
Finally, today – 30 November – is St Andrew’s Day, patron saint of Scotland. (It’s a public holiday in some parts of Scotland but not, alas, in Caithness.) St Andrew was a fisherman, and he’s their patron saint too, so it seems entirely appropriate to celebrate him in a blog dedicated to fishermen’s sweaters, and one now based in Scotland at that. But did you know that his patronage also extends to fishmongers, spinsters, maidens, old maids and women wishing to become mothers, as well as gout, sore throats – and singers?
