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 There’s an old saying that an English summer consists of three fine days and a thunderstorm, and it’s usually a similar story here in the north of Scotland, apart from the three fine days. But this has been a golden summer in which the Earth, to use one of my favourite analogies, has baked like an apple in its skin. Only after weeks of hot, unforgiving sunshine are things finally dissolving into heavy thundery showers.
 Evidence of Circus I was delighted to discover that there’s a word for the smell of fresh rain on dry ground: petrichor. It’s a made-up word—well, of course, all words are. But this one was coined in 1964 and comprises two parts: petro (relating to rocks—hence the Apostle Simon “The Rock” Peter and possibly, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, or then again possibly not); and ichor (the fluid that runs in the veins of the gods in place of blood). In other words, it means a heavenly scent associated with rocks. Though I don’t know if it will catch on: it feels more like the answer to a crossword puzzle than something you’d actually use in conversation (“I say dear, the petrichor’s unusually strong this morning”; “Well, you should rub on that cream you got from the chemist’s”; etc.).
Duncansby Stacks But I do like the idea that this is an experience that has somehow slipped through the linguistic net: we don’t really need a name for it, any more than we need a precise medical term for the back of the knee (something which I read years ago doesn’t exist and I’ve never wanted to pursue just in case it’s not actually true). There are other concepts I’d rather have a word for: e.g., the feeling of crashing disappointment you get when England, about to win a cricket match after five days of desperate struggle, suddenly throw it all away and lose with half an hour to go. Or the wave of pure joy that washes over you when you discover that, contrary to expectations, there’s another layer of chocolates under the cardboard insert.
 Thistles at Nybster In gansey news, it’s make-my-mind-up time: the end of the plain knitting on the body and the start of the gussets and the pattern. But which pattern? I can’t decide—as the old joke goes, I used to be undecided, but now I’m not so sure. The ball can only bounce around the roulette wheel of fate for so long however, and sooner or later it has to drop into a slot; the wheel is slowing even as I type.
By the way, French and German have both adopted petrichor, which is rather pleasing. I’m surprised at the Germans, mind you: they have so many words for which there isn’t an English equivalent you’d think they’d have their own for this. Still, my favourite such German word is Kummerspeck, literally “grief bacon”. This charming phrase means the extra weight you put on by emotional overeating—though as a vegetarian, maybe in my case it should be “grief tofu”…?
 This is going to be one of those good news/ bad news sorts of things; though which is which will of course depend on how one feels about it all.
First news first: this blog has just passed its tenth anniversary—on Friday last, in fact. Ten years! It’s practically a whole decade. We’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since it started; for example, I used to have enough hair to justify a haircut at the barber’s. And in that decade I’ve knitted—well, I refuse to go back and count them, but it must be in excess of thirty ganseys; and Margaret and I have published almost 500 blog posts.
Bird-laden rocks near the Castle of Old Wick Now, supposing each post contains on average some 500 words: that’s getting on for 250,000 words. To help put this in perspective, scientists around the turn of the last century developed a scale for measuring verbosity, the Proust Scale. Marcel’s great work À la recherche du temps perdu famously contains some 1.5 million words, which gives it a perfect score of 100. My mere quarter of a million gives me a score of 16 on the scale, or one-sixth of a Proust. (Ten thousand thunders! as Proust’s Baron de Charlus is fond of exclaiming, unless I’ve got him mixed up with someone else.)
Lines and Curves To celebrate the dawn of our eleventh year a-blogging I’ve started a gansey in a colour I haven’t knit before, Frangipani cedar. In what is possibly the gansey equivalent of Stockholm syndrome I always end up thinking whatever colour I’m working on is the best, and it’s happening again. I’ve always liked green—though I recognise it was considered an unlucky colour by many fishermen; I’m hoping to escape the curse however by avoiding any body of water deeper than a puddle while wearing it—and as so often there’s an iridescent thread running through the predominately matt strands which gives it the sort of electric shimmer I associate with tropical beetles, or the helpful sort of radiation that gives you superpowers.
I don’t know what the pattern will be yet. It was going to be one taken from the Johnston Collection of photographs of Caithness fishermen; but a closer inspection showed that to be rather less straightforward that had appeared at first sight, so I’ve decided to postpone it for future consideration. After all the cables and diamonds of Flamborough this will probably be one of the simpler geometric patterns, such as The Lizard or Staithes.
The circus comes to town. Again. Finally, a big thank you to everyone who checks in each week to read the blog, look at the pictures and watch the ganseys grow in real time, like a time-lapse of trees in a forest. Now, when I started the blog I made a promise with myself I’d keep it going for ten years, or till I reached sixty, depending how it went. Currently over a hundred people a day on average visit this site; which is about a hundred more than I expected back in 2008! So of course I’m going to carry on. But it seems only fair to point out that I am now in my 58th year.
All the same, “Man proposes, God disposes”, as they say; or to put it another way, If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. So who knows? For now, let’s all just take it one stitch at a time…
 Strange how the mind works, isn’t it? Last week’s blog on Camster Cairns and the human remains found inside them put me in mind of something, and someone, I haven’t thought about for twenty years or more, a true story I thought I’d share with you.
Many years ago, when I worked in an archive in Mid Wales, I had a—how shall I put it?—rather impressionable young lady for a colleague. County Hall was brand new, built on the site of a former hotel. The archive was off to one side, behind a high stone wall and a fringe of trees where the old stable block had stood. It was a single-storey modern building: the strongrooms formed an extension to the rear, covered by a flat corrugated tin roof.
ref=”http://www.ganseys.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/18Flam180714-1-2.jpg”> Breakwater, Ackergill Harbour[/ca The point is, there was nothing unusual about the archive itself, except possibly the exaggerated sense of isolation provided by that high stone wall; and the musty, weighty drag of history that several hundreds of years’ worth of records provides. Certainly when things were quiet sounds became queerly amplified.
Every now and again a crow would flutter down from one of the trees onto the roof, to do whatever it is crows do, and as it strutted about its claws made a high-pitched scraping noise on the metal. Well, one winter’s afternoon, when the sun had already set and the wind was making the trees creak in an ominous sort of way, and there was only the two of us in the building, the crow paid us another visit. As soon as she heard the high, thin, skreek-skreek of its claws my colleague jumped to her feet. “What’s that noise?” she cried, her hand actually to her mouth.
 “Well,” I said without thinking, “you do know that the archive was built on the site of an old Indian burial ground, don’t you?”
The next thing I knew she’d grabbed her coat and was running for the door. In vain I tried to explain that I’d been joking; that this was Wales where, to the best of my knowledge, there was a notable absence of Native American burial grounds; or that it was just a bird and probably not the spawn of Satan come to claim her soul. It wasn’t until the following morning that she’d even consent to set foot in the building again. Not long after she changed her name to Esmeralda and left to study drama at Aberystwyth University, and I like to think I played some small part in her decision…
Meanwhile, back in the wonderful world of ganseys, the Flamborough is finished; and very splendid it looks too. It was blocked to 23 inches across, but given all the cables and purl columns it has relaxed to a comfortable 22 inches. (The concertina effect means it has room to expand with my waistline, should occasion demand, an important consideration.) I have, of course, already cast on my next project: more about that next week.
Finally this week I had some very sad news. It’s the nature of my line of work that I meet a lot of people who visit the archive to research their ancestors, who stay in Caithness for a brief time and move on. Recently I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely couple, Arlene Raeburn and her husband, Professor Sandy Raeburn. We spent some time talking, and then, as ever, went our separate ways. Last week I learned that Sandy had died suddenly. I can’t honestly say that I knew him at all well, but in a our few conversations together he made a strong impression on me as an erudite man who wore his erudition lightly, thoughtful, self-deprecating, with a keenly developed sense of humour. Every such loss diminishes us a little more. My condolences to Arlene and their family.
 It’s only July and already I’m longing for autumn. It’s weeks since it rained. Caithness ground is usually as waterlogged as a sponge, and I’m used to that mossy, springy feel you get as your boot sinks through the surface grass into the squelching, sucky embrace of the underlying peat; now I keep jarring my spine on literal terra firma. Very strange. The other day I thought I saw several sheep busy contracting an archimedes screw to get at underground water, but as soon as they saw me they broke up and started sauntering about eating grass and bleating innocently. I wan’t fooled, though.
It’s hot, too—well, hot for Caithness. Temperatures keep sneaking up into the low twenties (what is this, California?). So on Saturday, driven half-mad by the unforgiving heat of 23º, and determined to avoid England winning the football on TV, we took a trip to the Grey Cairns of Camster.
Summer Shadows As regular readers will know, this is one of my favourite places in Caithness (and the world). It consists of two great stone cairns erected some 5,000 years ago on a hillside a few miles south of Wick. They’ve been reconstructed—unless Neolithic Caithnesians were ahead of their time in glass skylight technology—and you can crawl inside and stand in the central chambers. The cairns were disturbed long before modern archaeology, but burnt bones and the remains of skeletons were found inside. Why were they built? What did people do here? Whose bones are they? We’ll never know.
Sweetly-scented Philadelphus  Inside a Cairn All of which is fine by me: in fact, these are the wrong questions. Modern archaeologists have decided that Neolithic beliefs centred around a form of ancestor worship, but you only have to substitute the word “relative” for “ancestor”, and think back to that last Christmas party, with great-uncle Albert dad-dancing to Slade and great-aunt Phoebe necking Baileys from the bottle, to see how misguided this idea is. No, the past is wonderfully undiscoverable. All we leave is physical remains; the bit between our ears—the bit that really matters—we take with us when we go.
In parish news, Lois has come up on the inside track with a stunner, another Flamborough gansey (different pattern) in cheerful cherry red. You can read more about it on her gallery page—and note the saddle shoulder strap with the cable running down the sleeve. Many congratulations to Lois!
My own Flamborough is nearly finished—I’m on the final cuff and should finish it in a day or so. (The weather’s so hot, mind you, I can’t promise I’ll be modelling it anytime soon.) I still can’t recall a gansey I’ve enjoyed so much to knit. The colour seems to suit the pattern perfectly, too. In fact my only concern now is that all the cables and purl rows continue to pull it in after blocking, so I end up inadvertently inventing the world’s first gansey surgical bodystocking…
 I don’t usually remember my dreams, but when I do, they’re always weird and vivid. How weird? I’m glad you asked.
Last week I dreamed I was driving down the main street of a small town. On my left was a large white house, a hotel, and standing outside or leaning out of the windows were men dressed in ape costumes, pretending to be apes. They chattered and shrieked and swung their arms like the apes at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and were throwing items of furniture and carpets out of the windows. There was a sign advertising a yard sale, and as I drove past a large rug came sailing out of the window, narrowly missing me. (It was as if the monolith from 2001 had inspired the apes to invent capitalism and trash the place and, well, now I come to think of it, let’s not go there.)
I half-awoke and then went back to sleep. This time I was in the same car, but every time I sounded the horn there was this strange bleating noise from under the bonnet. I stopped the car and opened the boot first, where I found the engine. I then popped the latch on the bonnet and opened that, and inside I found a large sheep, curled up and looking at me reproachfully. There was a sharp spike attached to the steering column just touching its back, and every time I pressed the horn the spike gave the sheep a jab, causing it to bleat.
Cottongrass on the cliffs, Sarclet Probably my most powerful dream came about 20 years ago, when we lived in Wales. We had one of those garage doors that swing up, with a handle by your ankles. In my dream I bent over, grasped the handle, and then straightened, lifting the door as I rose. Just when I was fully extended, my arm high above my head, I looked down into the darkness of the garage and saw a great black dog sitting inside, quivering, tense, with wide, mad, ivory eyes staring at me. Then it leaped straight for my throat—and I woke up.
This is one of the reasons why drugs have never held the slightest interest for me: I’ve always felt that reality is too precarious to be messed around with. (And why aren’t my dreams happier?)
Cling-ons on the bridge, Wick In gansey news, it’s amazing the progress you make when you’re sent on a training course and spend cheerless evenings in a b&b. I have finished the first sleeve and made a start on the second. Another fortnight should see it finished, and I can’t work out why it hasn’t taken longer. But it’s been an utter joy to knit: everything’s just clicked without my trying, the pattern fits the size, even the sleeves decreased down to the right width for the cuff without my even bothering with the maths. Sometimes the angel of knitting just sits by your shoulder and smiles. (And sometimes she’s nursing a mean hangover and wants to make other people suffer too; it’s just luck.)
In parish news, Judit has been busy again, knitting a jumper in pink using a design of chevrons and purl stitches. It’s a nice, clean design, and the pastel colour lets you see the elegance of the pattern clearly (always helpful with gansey patterns).
Finally, I think I passed a milestone today (Sunday). Britain is basking in a heatwave like a turkey in the oven so we went up to Dunnet Head, the northernmost tip of the mainland. There were blue skies, warm winds, temperatures of 26ºC, and an elderly couple sitting up at the viewpoint having lunch. The man nodded a greeting, then looked me up and down. “Well, you’re obviously retired, of course,” he said. I turned my head quickly: sure enough, I was just in time to catch the last remaining shred of my self-esteem vanishing like confetti on the breeze, disappearing somewhere in the direction of Norway…
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There’s an old saying that an English summer consists of three fine days and a thunderstorm, and it’s usually a similar story here in the north of Scotland, apart from the three fine days. But this has been a golden summer in which the Earth, to use one of my favourite analogies, has baked like an apple in its skin. Only after weeks of hot, unforgiving sunshine are things finally dissolving into heavy thundery showers.
