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 Monday night is Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve. It’s also the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, or Summer’s End, the end of the harvest season and the onset of winter. Traditionally in Scotland this was the night when the boundaries between worlds became thin and porous, allowing the spirits of the dead to cross over from the other side and walk the earth.
I used to think this was as creepy as hell, and sinister, but these days I’m not so sure. After all, if I ever go back to a place I used to live I don’t threaten the people who occupy it now, or try to scare them by walking through walls or uttering unearthly shrieks; and I don’t see why the dead should either, other than for a bit of light-hearted amusement.
 Hawthorn trees by the river No, these days I think of Halloween as a sort of nostalgic coach trip for the deceased where they can wander around places they used to live, criticising the wallpaper and reminding each other that there was fireplace Annie was sick in after she ate too much cake at Auntie Morag’s birthday party. That ghostly moaning you can hear in the small hours of the night is probably just your great-great-grandmother doing a spot of spiritual vacuuming, as she’s noticed some dust bunnies under your bed.
 Installing tidal energy turbines near John o’Groats I had an idea for a ghost story about ganseys once. Imagine a Victorian boat’s crew that was lost at sea in a storm. Their spirits couldn’t rest and the boat endlessly sailed the waters off Caithness, endlessly foundering in storm after storm. Then one day someone found an old photograph of the crew all in their ganseys taken the day before they sailed, and decided to recreate the patterns. After a year or two of hard knitting the last one was finished on All Hallow’s Eve. That night the ghostly crew came to claim them…
Well, it was just an idea. Meanwhile I’m making good progress on the current project. The first sleeve should be finished around midweek, which is always a sign that the home straight is near. I’m decreasing at a rate of 2 stitches every 5th and then 6th rows (i.e., 4 stitches every 11 rows)—the sleeve will be 18 inches long with a 3-inch cuff. Like the body, the sleeves should stretch out nicely when they’re blocked.
 Open Day at the Highland Archive And as Samhain draws near I find myself wondering where I’d choose to haunt, if I were a spirit, given the chance; all the people who’ve wronged me, all the regrets and wasted years. Then I had a happier thought: it’d be a lot more fun to haunt Lord’s cricket ground and spend eternity watching cricket matches; or the Royal Festival Hall listening to concerts; or the British Library, just reading. In fact, this is my new theory as to why ghosts are seen so seldom: it’s not that they don’t exist, it’s just that they’ve got better things to do…
 Here’s a useful health and safety tip: when making a cup of coffee for breakfast, especially if you have a bit of a migraine, it’s a good idea not to let your mind wander so that you end up pouring boiling water over the hand that’s holding the mug steady.
Not only that, but when you jerk your hand violently away you should probably make sure your fingers aren’t still wrapped around the handle. This way you avoid sending the mug skimming across your kitchen as though it was a cross between a Frisbee and a muck spreader, liberally distributing scalding hot coffee as it sails through the air.
Sunset in Boston It’s also a sensible precaution—and I want you to follow me closely here—while you’re hopping around frantically shaking drops of boiling water off your hand, not to have a glass of freshly-poured pineapple juice resting on the edge of the kitchen counter within easy reach. Otherwise you end up with a cascade of sticky yellow fruit juice pouring onto the floor and soaking through your slippers (a sensation not unlike having an octopus trying to mate with your foot).
Yes, all this happened to me this week. Now every time I walk across the kitchen floor it makes a noise like Velcro.
Sunrise at Heathrow My hand is more or less fine—it only hurts when I put it in hot water, such as when I bathe. I experimented briefly with rubber gloves, since they offer protection in washing the dishes, but I soon realised that they have one major drawback: viz. that they are open at one end. I considered sealing one round my wrist with masking tape, but then I wondered what would happen if I had a heart attack in the bath and was discovered wearing it? The tabloid headlines practically write themselves: Unexplained sex death of rubber glove fetish archivist being the least of them.
No, in the end I decided to follow the example of American Civil War general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and just keep my hand raised out of the water. (In Jackson’s case this was because he believed it would send the blood flowing into his other arm, and so keep his circulation in balance, but the principle’s the same.) Granted, to anyone peeping through the window I probably look like someone swearing a lengthy oath of allegiance to his rubber duck—not a euphemism—but I can live with that.
 Oh, well. Despite finding new and interesting ways to damage my hands, my ability to knit remains unimpaired. I have finished Side B, joined the shoulders, completed the collar and picked up stitches for the first sleeve. I follow the traditional width of neck, i.e., a third of the total width of the body: so, as each side of this gansey is 185 stitches, each shoulder has 62 stitches and the neck 61 stitches. (Remember, it’s important when calculating and picking up stitches for the collar that you end up with a total that is divisible by 4, so that the knit 2/purl 2 ribbing works out evenly.)
Written in Stone: one of the ‘Babson Boulders’ at Dogtown Common, Gloucester, MA Incidentally, did you know that Stonewall Jackson’s arm has its own grave? The man himself, accidentally killed by his own side at Chancellorsville in 1863, is buried in his native Virginia, but his amputated left arm was buried at the battlefield, and even has a monument. (Memo to self: be a little more careful with my hands in future unless I want to end like Jackson, or Voldemort in the Harry Potter books, with various parts of me scattered about the landscape for the curious to collect…)
 On Friday night a storm slammed into northeast Scotland, winds gusting up to 50 mph and showers of rain and spray which stung like salty airgun pellets. On Saturday morning I went up onto the cliffs overlooking the harbour to watch the waves coming in at high tide.
 Wick Bay this Saturday… This was, I soon realised, something of a schoolboy error. I had wondered briefly why there weren’t the usual crowds lining the brae to watch, and as soon as I opened the car door I discovered the reason. A gust of wind plucked my hat from my head and sent it cartwheeling away over the lip of the brae; my shoulder bag was wrenched open and all its contents scattered, as though energetic poltergeists had decided to hold a tickertape parade through the streets of Wick.
It was worth it, though: the entire bay was heaving, the water churned to white foam, towering waves barrelling in and breaking over the quays, engulfing the lighthouse and breakwaters in great showers of spray. (On occasions like this I have to remind myself that I’ve stood at the foot of that lighthouse; it’s actually quite big.) But I couldn’t stay long: the wind was so strong it was like being attacked by an invisible sumo wrestler. At one point I opened my mouth to cough and my cheeks were suddenly inflated like Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet.
… and Wick Bay the Saturday before So I took a few photos and retreated to the car; luckily I found my hat caught on a bush a short way away. My face was wet with spray and I think if I’d let it dry I could have scraped off the crust and saved myself having to buy table salt for a month.
Meanwhile, the only certain things in life just now are death, taxes and gansey knitting. I have finished Side A, and am well embarked on Side B. The distance from gusset to shoulder is roughly eight inches, followed by just over an inch (or twelve rows) of rig ‘n’ fur for the shoulder itself. I should finish the body over the next week, and may even get the collar done.
Finally, I know you’ll rejoice with me in Bob Dylan’s being awarded the Nobel prize for literature last week. Of course, he divides opinion—the best description of his voice I read was that it sounded “like an Alsatian snagged on a barbed-wire fence”—but I can’t think of an artist who’s given me greater pleasure down the years, or whose words have meant as much. This would normally be the place to quote some of his most profound and serious lyrics, but I’m really not in the mood. People always overlook just how funny, and how silly he can be. So instead I’ll leave you with this, the final verse of I Shall Be Free, the last song on his 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which never fails to cheer me up, it’s so absurd:
I just walk along and stroll and sing / I see better days and I do better things … / (I catch dinosaurs … I make love to Elizabeth Taylor . . . catch hell from Richard Burton!)
Slightly ominous sky… Bob Dylan: catching dinosaurs for over 50 years.
 If Doctor Who had decided to give up skimming through space and time and basically showing off, and instead decided to settle down in the far north of Scotland and convert the Tardis into a cross between a pawnshop and an antiques shop, he might have ended up with something remarkably similar to the wonder that is Wick Heritage Museum.
Wick St Fergus Church Like the Tardis it is deceptively small on the outside. But once you start to explore inside you find there are always more stairs, more galleries, more unexpected levels, and each one crammed with a riot of objects and photographs. You may not travel through space—but you do through time.
I was there as part of a visit from a local school learning about World War Two. We told them about the bombings; and Harry Gray, who has lived through more of Wick’s history than I’ll ever know, told a great story about a tailor who was working upstairs in his shop when the bomb exploded—the floor collapsed and after the dust had settled he found himself standing on the ground floor, thimble and fabric in hand, but with his trousers completely blown off. Highlight of the museum for me is, of course, the gallery devoted to the fishing industry.
Smokey wonders how to get down… They have a colour film from the 1930s showing the trawlers chugging into the harbour for the season, Lerwick and Buckie and Yarmouth boats, the harbourmaster pointing each one where they should berth. Workers heft sacks of coal and carry them onboard over a single long plank that makes tightrope bicycling look like a safe occupation. And there are the fisher lassies, the gutters, gutting and packing herring faster than your eye can follow, an endless blur of knife and hand and silver fish, some of them confident enough to grin shyly at the camera while they work (something I couldn’t have done and still been able to count to ten afterwards).
 In my own gansey I have divided for the front and back, put the half-finished gussets on holders, and am romping up the back, which I will finish in a few days. The armhole will be eight inches from gusset to shoulder strap. This will be another gansey with a traditional collar, so I will not be indenting the neckline and both sides will be identical.
 Somewhere in America. (Probably.) By the way, I should issue a disclaimer: Margaret’s still in America, so cannot be blamed for any of the photos this week (with one exception—see if you can guess which it is).
Incidentally, after the schoolchildren had left the museum I got talking to Harry and told him how much I enjoyed his story about the tailor. There’s a spot of mischief in him: he said that on these occasions he usually asks the children to draw the tailor after the explosion—only for some reason they always depict him with his boxer shorts intact…
I’m afraid it’s a shorter blog this week, as I’ve cut the index finger of my right hand. I don’t mean to say that it’s bleeding so heavily that I’m faint from loss of blood—though the plaster does rather resemble the Japanese flag, and if you want to know what bath time was like just think of David’s famous painting of the Death of Marat— ‘tis but a scratch, as the Black Knight said. But it lies right across the knuckle and typing’s not altogether easy.
24 hours ago, they were on the tree… I was cooking at the time and sliced it on the lid of a tin of kidney beans. It was a few moments before I realised blood was dripping; luckily, chilli’s supposed to be red. (Memo to self: won’t need so much salt this time.)
And it’s officially autumn now: we’re past the solstice, there’s early morning dew on the fields, the cricket season’s ended and the weather’s all over the place. On Wednesday we had driving rain and winds up to 60 mph—on Tuesday evening our plum tree was heavy with hundreds of soft plums, ripe for the picking; 24 hours later the tree was bare and the gravel underneath seemed to have been smeared with plum jam.
South Head, Wick Bay But it turns out we used up the week’s allocation of wind in one day, for by the weekend there wasn’t a breath, not a cloud, just blue sky from horizon to horizon and that dazzling, thin autumnal light that tells you it’s time to start thinking about dusting off the old thermal underwear.
Still, come rain or shine, there’s knitting to be done. Somehow, without my noticing, I’ve reached the gussets and—be still my beating heart—almost finished them. In a couple of days I’ll be dividing for front and back, and then watch out. (The gussets are my usual increase of two stitches every four rows, but starting four rows earlier with a single increase of another purl stitch on the fake seam, to make the first proper increase easier.)
Incidentally, out of curiosity I looked up words that rhyme with gusset, and it seems there’s only one: russet. You can do it with two or more words, like fuss it, but that’s cheating. So, if anyone feels like writing a sonnet in praise of gussets anytime, maybe think about haiku instead
 Honour guard of sheep, Camster And now I face my latest challenge: how to knit with a plastered finger sticking out at right angles like the gun barrel of a tank; given that when I tried earlier I was about as adroit as someone learning to untie knotted rope with a marlinspike.
The other challenge, namely how I do the washing up without all the dishes coming out pink, can wait till later…
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Monday night is Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve. It’s also the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, or Summer’s End, the end of the harvest season and the onset of winter. Traditionally in Scotland this was the night when the boundaries between worlds became thin and porous, allowing the spirits of the dead to cross over from the other side and walk the earth.
