We had our second doses of the Covid vaccine on Saturday, and while I wouldn’t exactly complain about the side-effects—at least compared with the alternative—I do have a headache and a general fatigue bordering on lassitude, like a late romantic poet who’s been overdoing the laudanum after finishing a really tricky sonnet. I’m experiencing a curious sort of dislocation: my limbs seem heavier than I remember, as though someone turned up the gravity instead of the air conditioning, and my brain feels like it’s been stuffed in (and with) cotton wool. My face grew warmer as the shot took effect, until I blushed as though I’d been injected, not with a vaccine, but with embarrassment. (Of course, by the time you read this all these minor symptoms will be gone.)
Outside, spring is having another try at world domination—its third since March, by my reckoning. I realise that at this point I’m in danger of taking the leading role in my own folk tale, “The Boy Who Cried Spring”, there’ve been so many false alarms. But the temperature in Wick has reached double figures for the third day in a row, and it can now only be a matter of time before a nameless dread stalks our land, viz., Scotsmen promenading in shorts.
Pareidolia
Ah, the weather. I’ve become quite media savvy down the years, and when I see a weatherperson smirking in front of a map of the British Isles saying, “And it’s going to be a beautiful day for pretty much all of us”, I note those weasel words pretty much and us, and direct my gaze to the top-right corner. There, sure enough, “us” becomes “them”, with a strip of cloud just fringing the coast of Caithness from John O’Groats down to the border with Sutherland, signifying the fabled east coast haar, also known as the sea fret, or other words I can think of beginning with f. So it is with us now, a dank, dripping fog drifting in from the sea like cannon smoke at Waterloo. You’d think I’d be complaining, but no: some like it hot, but not me; besides, Wick is one of those rare towns whose beauty is actually enhanced by fog. I’m still puzzled I didn’t land that job with the Caithness Tourist Board, with my prizewinning slogan, Wick: It seemed like a good idea at the time…
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TECHNICAL STUFF
Flamborough III
After finishing the welt, I’ve laid the foundations of the pattern. It’s taken from Gladys Thompson, where it’s recorded as Flamborough III, and, unless I’m reading it wrong, it’s called “net mask and honeycomb”—a much more attractive name than my working title, “open diamonds and fiddly bits”. There’s a real pleasure to be had in taking a simple, short pattern chart and turning it into a real, live full-size gansey, a process that (perhaps fancifully) reminds me of cloning dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
It’s not a quick pattern: every other row is mostly seed stitch, which really is fiddly; plus it’s a 48-inch chest, so this one won’t finished anytime soon. But it’s a lovely shade of blue, and the kind of pattern that should look very impressive running the whole length of a gansey; and anyway, who’s in a hurry? N.b., I’ve placed the seed-stitch rows so they start on the second row, not the first, so they will fall on the back (or purl) rows when I knit the yoke, leaving the plain knit stitches for the front; this will hopefully make knitting it easier (every little helps).
It’s been the wettest May on record across the U.K. We’ve escaped the worst of it up here, but this last week’s been pretty soggy, and cold and windy withal. This has somewhat given the lie to the handful of warm, sunny days we experienced just a few weeks back. Rather than bring the harbingers of spring, it turns out they were just God’s way of saying “Let me show you what you could have won”, and sending us away with only the bus fare and a pocketful of memories for our trouble. Still, if it deters the tourists it’ll be a mercy, our roads are so bad. The other day I passed a council repairman looking into a pothole, shaking his head and muttering, “The dwarves delved too greedily, and too deep…”
The Trinkie
In fact, it’s been so miserable I’ve been reworking some old Christmas carols. For example, there’s “In the bleak mid-spring/ Frosty wind felt numb/ The ducks on the river all took flight/ Saying, Siberia here we come.” Or, “Good King Wenceslas looked out/ On May bank holiday/ When the strong winds blew about/ And the tourists stayed away”. Another favourite would be, “I thought I saw three ships sail by/ On Saturday, on Saturday/ But it was just more rain on the way/ At John O’Groats in the morning”. Or how about, “Oh little town of Latheron/ How still we see thee lie/ For you were devastated/ When the storm front came on by”.
Tern with sand eel
Meanwhile it’s new gansey time, which is always exciting. This one’s another Flamborough pattern, one of many tucked away in the pages of Gladys Thompson, and it’s for a friend-of-a-friend. The yarn they chose is Frangipani Helford Blue and my first thought is, where has this colour been all my life? I’ll say more about the pattern next week, but so far I’ve just reached the top of the welt. (I would have been further on, except I’d knitted about an inch of ribbing, knit two-purl two-ing away merrily, when I realised I’d cast on the wrong number of stitches. With mickle care and Margaret’s assistance it was all ripped out, and I grimly started again—only to realise that I’d been right the first time. D’oh!)
The North Baths
And of course a blustery spring is nothing new: Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 tells us that rough winds were shaking the darling buds of May as far back as the sixteenth century. By a happy coincidence, scholars have recently unearthed an early draft of that poem. Perhaps it’s not surprising he revised it: here’s the opening—
Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou probably thinkst thou art more temperate and fair, But like the summer, wind troubleth thee always, And so disheveled art thou, birds nest in thy hair…
Spring has come to Caithness; at least I assume it’s spring because it’s not snowing. The sky is already bluer, the grass is grassier, and the air is filled with the cries of (*checks ornithological encyclopaedia*) birds, and the meadows abound with what I can only assume must be flowers. It certainly feels like spring, and in token of this I’ve started taking my daily walks up the river. Away from the harbour, where the current gets as lively as it’s going to get, i.e., not very, Wick River is a quiet, meandering waterway, the main channel spreading into broad, shallow wetlands. There are reed beds teeming with ducks and, this being the breeding season, duckettes; and also, if you’re lucky, geese, swans and even otters.
Multiple exposure of the Fairy Hillock
There are also, if legend is to be believed, fairies. A ways up the path there’s a knobbly mound called the Fairy Hillock. The story goes that two local men spent a day picnicking on the mound, when towards evening some fairies appeared and invited them inside for a feast. They accepted and stayed to party for a hundred years. When they finally emerged they expected the world to be transformed, only to discover they’d only been away from the real world for a day. (I must admit, when I was at university I went to one or two of those sorts of parties too.)
Trees reflected in the river
Meanwhile, here it is: the completed Wick gansey knit in Frangipani Cordova yarn. You can only really appreciate many of these Caithness ganseys when they’ve been blocked and opened out, like this one. And it’s a spanker; hats off to the anonymous knitter who crafted the original with finer yarn and needles than mine. I’ve knit a few of these for other people, or for the local museum, but this one I wanted to keep and wear for myself, for now at least. (That’s why it has the shaped neckline, because I don’t like the feeling of being clutched round the throat that traditional ganseys give me. I do regret the truncated central trees, though; it feels like hacking the head off a Rembrandt portrait so it will fit under the mantelpiece.) The Cordova yarn is a great shade too; sometimes blue-green, sometimes grey-blue, depending on your mood.
I like the Caithness fairy story because it’s a twist on the archetype: it ends happily, and proves that sometimes there really is such a thing as a free lunch. Usually in the old tales when people spend a night with the fair folk they discover that ages have passed in our world, like Rip van Winkle in the Catskills or Osian in Tír na nÓg (who found that 300 years had elapsed, and who instantly aged and died like an extra in an Indiana Jones movie). Although, having lived a number of years in Caithness, I wonder if there isn’t a simpler explanation: that many years did really elapse while they were in the Fairy Hillock, but when they emerged into present-day Wick they found that nothing had actually changed…
The Water Rat was sitting by the window, watching the rain fall on the river and writing what he liked to think of as poetry. He was just trying to come up with a rhyme for ‘bulb’ when the Mole burst in, clutching wildly at the fur on his head.
“Why, old chap,” the Rat said, startled, “whatever is the matter?”
“Quick! What’s my name?”
“Your what, my dear fellow?”
“My name! What is it?”
“Why, it’s Mole, of course.”
“No it’s not! That’s my family. What’s my name? What’s yours? And don’t say ‘Ratty’.”
The Rat opened his mouth and shut it again.
“You see? Why aren’t you called something like Gerald? Or Brian? Or Penhaligon? Why aren’t I?”
”Penhaligon?”
“And another thing,” said the Mole. “Why is there only one of each of us—one toad, one rat, one badger? Where are all the women? How do we reproduce?”
Creels
The Rat laid down his pen with an austere look. “I’d have thought someone might’ve explained this before now. Still, better it comes from me than one of those low weasels with dirty minds. You see, it’s like this: when a daddy mole and a mummy mole love each other very much they give each other a special kind of hug, and—“
The Mole interrupted him coldly. “Mummy mole? Have you ever seen one? Or a mummy badger?”
“Hmm, well, now you come to mention it…” The Rat brightened. “What about the barge woman who gave Toad a lift? Or the gaoler’s daughter? They were women.”
The Mole sighed. “You know perfectly well they never existed. Toad imagined the whole thing after eating those mushrooms we found in that field last year, remember? The ones that upset his tummy.”
“Oh yes.” The Rat chuckled. “Poop-poop.”
“I tell you, Rat, none of our lives makes sense. We’re living in the Matrix.”
The Rat frowned. “Matrix?”
“I took the red pill, the one that opens your eyes to the truth. I found it on the kitchen table this morning.”
“Red pill? Did it have a white M on it, by any chance?”
“Yes! I assumed it was M for Matrix.”
“That was an M&M, you wazzock. Look, why don’t I make some tea and you can help me find a rhyme for ‘circus’. Then if the weather clears we can fetch Toad and go for a walk in the Wild Wood: there’s nothing like lording it over a bunch of working class stoats for curing an existential crisis.”
Breaking waves
“Oh all right. But there’s still one thing bothering me.”
“Fire away, old chap.”
“You know we’re animals, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, why do we wear clothes?”
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In gansey news, I’ve finished the first sleeve and expect to finish the other this week. A word on the cuff, which is unique in my experience. It alternates knit 2/ purl 2 ribbing with a six-stitch pattern band involving yarn overs. The overall effect reminds me of shoes threaded with laces, very distinctive, the sort of cuff Galadriel might have added to his gansey if Celeborn had switched elvenkinging for herring fishing. Again, the Cordova yarn shade shows the pattern very nicely.
Protagoras of Abdera, the Ancient Greek sophist, claimed that “Of all things, man is the measure”. But, of course, the question is: which man? There’s obviously a difference if you’re measuring by the actor Danny de Vito (1.47m tall) or basketball player Michael Jordan (1.98m). Tell you what, let’s compromise with George Clooney, who’s often held up as a model sort of chap; he clocks in at 1.8m tall, which I shall in future adopt as my official measure. That makes the Eiffel Tower, at 324m, 180 clooneys. The Empire State Building, 443m, equals just over 246 clooneys. Fewer if he’s wearing shoes.
Primrose (not Primula scotica)
Now you may think this is fanciful, but I used to wonder about this sort of thing when I was a kid reading about ancient units of measurement. I remember being particularly annoyed by the vagueness of cubits*, which were defined as the length of the pharaoh’s arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. And I thought, OK, fine, but what happens when the pharaoh dies and you get a new one—one who’s shorter? Or what if, like Tutankhamun, he takes the throne as a nine year-old child? Did they have to change the length of a cubit every year as he grew? Or, using their mummification skills, simply preserve the relevant limb of the old pharaoh? So many questions: there’s a lucrative tv series and book deal in this for an open-minded academic, I feel.
Creels on the quayside
Ah well, sticking with good old inches for now, I’ve finished the collar and started on the sleeve. I’ve so far knit about 10 inches of sleeve (or 14.2% of a clooney). You’ll notice the distinctive Caithness stripes running around the upper arm, a feature common to several of the ganseys in the Johnston Collection photographs. I really like the finished effect, but it’s surprisingly challenging to knit—whenever my mind goes blank I revert to a knit 2/ purl 2 rhythm, instead of knit 3/ purl 1. If I make a mistake I often don’t spot it for several rows, and Margaret’s had to bail me out a few times already. Still, it’s plain sailing for a while now until we reach (*ominous music*) the cuff…
Path to the top: steps leading up to the Bremner monument
I’m on leave all this week, with no plans other than trying to break the world record for the most Ring Cycles listened to. The forecast looks grim, with sleet showers—sleet showers!—expected midweek, so plenty of knitting will doubtless feature. If we’re feeling brave we might go for the odd drive, though bearing in mind the state of the roads up here it’s advisable to pack climbing gear, the potholes are so deep—last time I looked into one I swear I heard some dwarves at the bottom singing the Hi-Ho song. Maybe this year we’ll get to see the gorse in bloom at Helmsdale—we couldn’t go last year, because of the lockdown—which is a mere 36 miles south of here; or, as I now like to think of it, 32 kiloclooneys…
(*The Vagueness of Cubits sounds like the title of a lost Pink Floyd album c.1971…)
We had our second doses of the Covid vaccine on Saturday, and while I wouldn’t exactly complain about the side-effects—at least compared with the alternative—I do have a headache and a general fatigue bordering on lassitude, like a late romantic poet who’s been overdoing the laudanum after finishing a really tricky sonnet. I’m experiencing a curious sort of dislocation: my limbs seem heavier than I remember, as though someone turned up the gravity instead of the air conditioning, and my brain feels like it’s been stuffed in (and with) cotton wool. My face grew warmer as the shot took effect, until I blushed as though I’d been injected, not with a vaccine, but with embarrassment. (Of course, by the time you read this all these minor symptoms will be gone.)
utside, spring is having another try at world domination—its third since March, by my reckoning. I realise that at this point I’m in danger of taking the leading role in my own folk tale, “The Boy Who Cried Spring”, there’ve been so many false alarms. But the temperature in Wick has reached double figures for the third day in a row, and it can now only be a matter of time before a nameless dread stalks our land, viz., Scotsmen promenading in shorts.
Flamborough III
