Gansey Nation

Autumn has come to Caithness, as the nights draw in and the leaves turn burnished gold—at least I assume they do; it’s hard to tell, as the wind is gusting so strongly there’s just a vague suggestion of yellow as the leaves are stripped from the branches and sent scything at passers-by like ninja throwing stars. On our street alone there’ve been three leaf-related fatalities this week.

I treated myself to a new ebook reader, one of those fancy ones you can read in bed without having to turn on the light. Partly I bought it for ease of reading; partly because I got fed up reading a heavy iPad in bed, losing both my concentration and my grip and having it slam into my face (it got so embarrassing turning up to work with a bruised and swollen nose so often I had to pretend I moonlighted as a bare-knuckle fighter).

Waves at JoG

I’m a big fan of ebook readers. I know their main selling point is being able to read 50 Shades of Grey in public without anyone knowing, or in my case Ulysses without being beaten up, but I love having all my favourite books with me wherever I go. And, yes, I love the physicality of a good book—but the binding of a number of paperbacks I bought in the 70s has cracked and broken, so that all I’m left with is a handful of loose pages and some fading memories. Typeface or electronic ink—in the end, it’s all written on water; it’s the words that matter.

Giant reels at the harbour. Alas, they’re not loaded with yarn.

In gansey news, I’ve finished the half-gussets, divided front and back and am now well advanced up the back. You can see the pattern more clearly now: although it’s another very simple pattern, and delightfully easy to keep track of, the combination of knit and purl stitches, light and shade and cables, make it a something of a classic.

Finally this week, I was told the following story which comes from the Second World War. Well, the county’s Home Guard platoons all took part in a great exercise in which they had to pretend to attack one of the small villages on the east coast of Caithness. All the way there, this particular contingent argued as to how best to make their attack; some said one way, some said another. The arguments dragged on and on until at last they agreed to attack along the coast. They crept along the cliffs until they finally reached the command post and rushed in—only to find everyone was sitting around drinking tea. They’d spent so long arguing about how to attack the exercise was over before they got there…

I’ve been suffering from a small migraine, more of a migrainette, today. This isn’t one of the really bad ones—I can tell because the walls aren’t melting and I haven’t tried to gouge my eyeballs out with a teaspoon—but I feel as if a small, invisible baboon is sitting on my chest and, with each heartbeat, inserting a needle into my temple.

When a migraine’s really bad nothing makes sense; I even lose my ability to understand simple English. I remember once standing for about fifteen minutes in Northampton town centre trying to grasp the meaning of a sign which read: “Parking limited to 30 minutes. No return for 1 hour.” (In all seriousness, I couldn’t work out how the car could only be parked for 30 minutes but I couldn’t come back to it for twice that long before I could drive it away—if I’d been an evil robot in Star Trek I’d have exploded in a puff of logical paradox.)

Eventually a policeman happened along and I asked him to explain it to me. He did so, though he gave me a very dubious look and asked, “Do you know where you live, sir?”

Still, I’ve made good progress on the gansey this week, which now stands at 14 inches long (or it would do, if it didn’t collapse under its own weight like an imploding blue-green star). Another inch or two and I’ll start the yoke and the pattern, which I’ll post next week.

In parish news, Suzanne has sent pictures of this superb gansey-inspired jumper, knit in New Zealand merino-possum yarn, and showing once again the versatility of the gansey concept. (Though I must admit, I’m troubled at the thought of just how they got the merinos and possums to mate…)

John o’Groats: All in one view

Finally this week, I came across this great anecdote from World War Two. It’s from the book “Operation Mincemeat” about the British plans to deceive the Germans over the invasion of Sicily. Apparently the submarine and crew which took part in the operation had previously smuggled US general Mark Clark to Algeria for a secret meeting. At one point after midnight the whole party had to hide in the cellar when the gendarmes happened to call, and one of the British commandos developed a cough he couldn’t control.

Obviously, discovery would have meant disaster but Clark hastily passed the man some chewing gum, and the danger passed. Afterwards the commando thanked him, but observed, “Your American chewing gum has so little taste.”

“Yes,” Clark agreed. “I’ve already used it.”

It’s been such a poor summer up here in the Highlands, the worst for 30 years, that meteorologists have struggled to find an adequate standard of measurement—after all, the euphemism “disappointing” has been used so often in forecasts it’s finally worn out and had to be replaced by the more truthful “bloody awful”.

In a spirit of helpfulness, therefore, I offer here the GSI, or “Gordon’s Sweater Index”, the ultimate measure of the warmth of a summer day. Really, it couldn’t be simpler: if the temperature reaches a certain point, I take my sweater off; if it doesn’t, I don’t. (The system can be modified to take account of wind speed, scarf and thermal underwear interplay, horizontal sleet, that sort of thing, but it’s not really necessary—a jumper and a breezy lack of modesty are all that’s required.)

View from the base of the tower

Today had a positive GSI (only the fifth time this summer), so we took a trip to the Forsinard nature reserve across the border in Sutherland. It’s an hour and half’s drive from Wick, and is situated on a 39-mile single-track road with virtually no turnings off (the road sign says “Forsinard—Um, Are You, Like, Really Sure?”).

The nature reserve basically consists of an unmanned railway station and a vast peat bog, the kind of place that in Middle Earth would be packed to bursting with the preserved corpses of elven warriors, but here is a home to occasional lizards, dragonflies and swarms of flies, the latter behaving much like piranha fish that have taken to the air and developed a passion for earwax.

Massed starlings at John o’Groats

But it is beautiful, in a desolate, bleak, soggy kind of way, especially on a summer’s day like today. The RSPB have built a viewing tower in the middle; it seems a little incongruous at first, like something that survived the destruction of the Death Star’s pre-school crèche, but after a while it feels as if it belongs in the landscape, and the views it offers are rather stunning. If you want to watch dragonflies skimming across stagnant ponds while flies probe your inner ear in relays, I can definitely recommend it.

What fishermen wear today

In gansey news, I am off the welt and onto the body. I cast on 312 stitches for the ribbing; after 4 inches I increased by 32 stitches to 344. So now it’s just a question of knitting away until I start the yoke, in about a months time.

In parish news, both Den and Judit have sent me pictures of completed ganseys, and both, as it happens, Filey patterns. Den’s is in navy and has zigzags and seed stitch and ladders; Judit’s is in heather and has diamonds and moss stitch. Congratulations to both on some very fine knitting!

Not before time, too—there’s been a nip in the air which means that autumn will soon be upon us, ganseys will be in demand and—the horror—the cricket season will soon be over. Then it will be time to switch to my other temperature measure, the GLJI, or “Gordon’s Long-John Index”. As the old joke goes, send me money and I’ll post some pictures; send me even more money, and I won’t…