Gansey Nation

Well, here we are: another gansey rolls off the production line and into the showroom, spick and span and with that special “new gansey” smell that will last right up to being exposed to its first takeaway curry. And what a cracking pattern it is—which, seeing as it comes from Flamborough, almost goes without saying—and, as ever, I’m impressed at how clearly the Frangipani Moonlight yarn shows up every stitch, for good or ill; there’s really nowhere to hide. My next project will be a blend (or “mashup” for our younger readers) of two famous and familiar patterns; more on this next week.

Wrapped in Plastic

I referred last time to the notorious prankster Horace de Vere Cole in relation to the Dreadnought scandal of 1910. But Horace deserves to be more than a footnote in someone else’s story, so I thought I’d mention a couple of my favourite practical jokes of his. Some perhaps haven’t aged so well. For example, he and his pals once dressed up as workmen and dug a trench across Piccadilly in central London, easier a hundred years ago when all you needed was a shovel and an assortment of decent biceps. And once he bought up front-row seats for the premiere of an avant-garde play, which were taken by several bald men, each with a letter painted on their pates which, when seen together from the circle, spelled out a rather rude word.

Abstract Waves

But there is genius in persuading someone at a street corner to hold one end of a piece of string, then walking round the corner and getting someone else to hold the other end, and strolling off, leaving them both to it. The one I like the best, though, not least because it was aimed at his friends—it’s a little surprising to discover he had any, but still—is as follows. In the course of an evening, he would slip his watch into the coat pocket of one of his chums. Later that night, he would offer to walk them home. When he spotted a policeman on the beat coming towards them he’d challenge the friend to a race, and then, as the friend innocently hared off down the road, shout, “Stop thief!”

Wind in the Willows

Of course, the problem with practical jokes is that someone usually has to be the butt, and it’s hard not to resent being made the fall guy for other people’s humour. But Ishmael in Moby Dick has this to say on the subject:  “However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way.” Wise words, I hope you agree; and so, in that spirit, would you mind just holding this piece of string for me? I promise I’ll be back in a minute…

I saw the doctor last week about a growth on my face. I’ve had it a few years – the growth, that is; my face I’ve had longer – and, apart from occasionally being mistaken in the street for a James Bond supervillain, it doesn’t particularly bother me. A specialist said a few years back that I only had to worry if it changed shape or bled or told me to burn down an orphanage. But here’s the thing: it’s on the side of my face, just out of sight, and the nearest eyeball is the one with macular degeneration. So how can I tell if it changes shape? I’ve tried taking photos, but honestly the images look like something the Hubble Space Telescope would reject as too blurry; I sent the images to NASA in case their image enhancement computers could help, but they thought I’d discovered a new supernova and offered to name it after me.

A Bird in the Bush – female goldfinch

“It looks like a seborrheic keratosis,” the doctor observed after examining it. As I aways do in these situations, I explained that I was an arts graduate and had no idea what that meant. She smiled tolerantly. “Of course—we doctors commonly use technical terms that don’t mean anything the layman. How shall I put it? It’s a type of keratosis that is seborrheic.” At which point I nodded sagely and said, “Ah, of course.” So it’s a referral to specialist in Inverness “just to be on the safe side”. She picked up on my vocal problems too—unsurprisingly, as I sounded like a cross between someone making balloon animals and a transmission from one of Pluto’s moons. That means another Inverness referral, this time to ENT—which always sounds as if some of the talking trees from The Lord of the Rings had taken a degree in medicine—and apparently involves a camera down the gullet to take pictures of my larynx. Oh, good. I understand NASA is already on standby.

Curious cow

In gansey news, I am effectively at the end of the first sleeve. I’ve said before that the gansey is definitely a SMALL, whereas I usually knit closer to XL. The difficulty I always have with small ganseys is scaling down the sleeves, so they don’t balloon out like those of a romantic poet. My solution is to continue the pattern all the way down the sleeve, since, other than looking very swish, if you’ve chosen wisely there will be enough purl columns to act as pleats, which means you can choose how wide to make the sleeves at any point. The only downside is, until it’s blocked the sleeve looks though it needs inflating with a bicycle pump.

Front yard fungus

Finally this week, I came across this great anecdote. There was a formal dinner to mark the retirement of the American General George C. Marshall as Secretary of Defence. Among a host of dignitaries present were General Eisenhower and his wife. The diplomat Joseph Grew made a speech, but ended with a fatal slip of the tongue when he announced that in retirement Marshall “was going to go down to his beautiful little farm in Virginia and spend the rest of his days with Mrs Eisenhower.” The audience cracked up. Covered in confusion, Grew hastily wrote a note to Mrs Eisenhower and slipped it down the table: “My apologies to you and the General.” Mamie Eisenhower read it and passed it back with the wonderful question: “Which General?”