Gansey Nation

Many years ago I discovered I was allergic to penicillin when I broke out head to toe in red spots. When I went back to the doctor next day he got me to take off my shirt and trousers then said, “Excuse me a moment” and left the room.

He returned with two nurses and, while I stood there feeling the draft and horribly aware of my bulging midriff spilling over my nether garments like a loaf in the oven overflowing its tin, proceeded to point out interesting features on my person with a felt-tip pen, as if I was a relief map of Germany and he was planning a bombing raid.

Well, this week I discovered I have an adverse reaction to another antibiotic, doxycycline, which sounds like a circus act involving prostitutes on bicycles but which in fact the doctor prescribed for my chest infection. I took the dose in the morning, felt very light-headed and had to lie down; but then, after an hour or so it seemed to pass and I felt well enough to get up and have lunch.

But, just like John “Chestburster” Hurt in the movie Alien, I had  been lulled into a false sense of security. Like John, I ate a hearty meal—then felt ill and collapsed—and, just like John, an alien substance exploded from my chest. (In his case it was a baby alien—in my case my lunch—but the principle is the same.)

I almost fainted, but didn’t quite. I sweated profusely, and I saw something remarkable: I was lying on the floor, unable to move, and my right arm lay before me, with the wrist only a few inches from my eyes; every single pore had a tiny bead of sweat in the hollow, so that my skin looked like a spider’s web on a dewy morning. (When was finally able to stand up I left a Gordon-shaped damp patch, as if my evil shadow had mysteriously been transferred into the carpet, and I remember wondering in the night if it could escape and come after me.)

Anyway, as I say, it was only an adverse reaction, not an allergic one, thank goodness; but between that and the chest infection I’ve been off work all week, sleeping mostly, and wheezing like an old bellows if I did anything energetic, such as breathing. (Sitting and watching television, on the other hand, I’ve got rather good at.)

Calm day on the river

I did an awful lot of knitting. So much so, in fact, that I have finished the first half of the gussets and divided front and back. (Incidentally, for those who keep count, at the point where I started on the back I had just 40g left from a 500g Frangipani cone.) The gussets are 3 inches long, with an increase of 1 stitch either side of the seam every 4 rows, and are 15 stitches across at the widest point.

I went back to the doctor today, and she took a blood sample to see if it’s a virus or an infection that I’ve got. If the former, I just have to tough it out; if the latter, I get to play Russian roulette with another antibiotic. And now I don’t know which I’m more afraid of: another adverse reaction to the drugs, or more time exposed to daytime tv…

There’s a seal in the river, and if you’re lucky you’ll catch a glimpse of its sleek head bobbing among the waves like a black rubber duck. It spends most of its time down by the harbour, but when the tide’s high it coolly swims upriver; it was there on Thursday lunchtime as I was walking back to work, and we regarded each other for a while until it remembered it’d left the gas on and swam away.

There’s a wealth of reproachful sadness in a seal’s eyes, like a dog who’s just watched you eat the last digestive biscuit, and there was something doglike about the way it seemed to be trying to understand what I said. (Talking to a dog always feels like trying to start a conversation with a friendly alien; whereas cats act like they’ve already enslaved humanity and the only words you’ll need in future are “tin opener” and “tummy rub”.)

Seals look so intelligent it’s not hard to see where the Scottish legends of the selkie, the seal-man or seal-woman, come from; but if the souls of the dead are ever reincarnated as seals, from the look of polite disappointment on their faces I presume in life they must have been English cricket fans.

The gansey’s about 7 inches long now, or a quarter of the length. Hopefully you can see the pattern beginning to take shape: the diamond panels stand out quite nicely against the background of cables, moss stitch and ladder. The colour matches a cloudy day at John O’Groats—I’m hoping I’ve patented the “stealth gansey”, which effectively turns you invisible if the sea and the sky are exactly the right shade…

Dunnet Head

Meanwhile, the plumber has almost finished installing the new boiler and shower. We’re going from a shower that was about as effective as holding your face over a fresh cup of tea to something so lethal it’s probably illegal under the Geneva Convention. In fact it reminds me of a Star Trek transporter pad; I keep expecting to find a confused Klingon standing in the bathtub, brandishing a cake of scented soap instead of a phaser.

Batten down the RSBP shed

We were without hot water and heating for a few days last week, so imagine our delight when the boiler was finally connected on Wednesday afternoon. Then imagine our dismay when the northern third of Scotland was plunged into darkness three hours later, over 200,000 homes suddenly without power. As we sat all evening huddled around our two feeble candles, too dark to knit or read by, no tv and a radio with a flat battery, I gradually realised that the entirety of human civilisation is really just a way to keep yourself occupied till bedtime…

Finally, as it’s Easter—Christus resurrexit, apparently—we’ll be taking a short break while we go to visit my parents in furthest Northamptonshire, a journey not unlike that described in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, albeit with fewer Belgians.

All things being equal we’ll be back on Monday 5th May 2014. Till then, Happy Easter!

The neighbours have a new dog, a big, boisterous, friendly pointer, and their cats are not amused. One of them coolly dealt with the situation in much the same way my brother handled my arrival as the newest member of the Reid family, by swatting it on the nose and then slamming its head repeatedly in the fridge door until it accepted who was boss.

The other feline, however, obviously abhors violence and prefers simply to keep out of the way. In other words, it haunts us much like the three spirits haunted Scrooge. It lurks in the bushes for you to open the front door and then all you see is a grey streak, like the starship Enterprise going into warp, as it shoots past you and whizzes up the stairs, and you have to go find it—as if life was one long game of hide-and-seek.

Or else it rolls around on its back on the warm gravel, waving its legs in the air like antennae, as though the other cat had stuck a rude notice on its back, and it was trying to get it off. It knows a soft touch when it sees one, and it’s obviously seen one in me; it collapses as soon as it sees me now, like one of those bendy toys held up by elastic, and waits.

I have to be careful though: I got the two cats mixed up once, and tried to pat the bully in an absent-minded moment. It wrapped itself around my fist like the creature from Alien attaching itself to John Hurt’s face and began to flay my hand like someone going for the world record parmesan-grating championship. I shook it off eventually—my last sight of it was a flying ball of spitting teeth and claws sailing over the neighbours’ hedge with a long-drawn-out r-r-r-o-o-o-w-w-w-l-l-l, like an ambulance siren vanishing in the distance—and ever since then I’ve carried an oven glove, just in case.

Meanwhile, I realise I’ve become a sort of chain-smoking gansey knitter: I start a new one from the embers of the old. (Am I addicted? Could I really, as I tell myself and my counsellor, give it up any time I liked? Of course I can—I just don’t choose to, that’s all.)

So, yes, I’ve already started the next one. It’s in Frangipani denim-coloured yarn, but we won’t fall out if you call it sky blue. It’s going to be for me, and will hopefully be ready for the autumn, where I have a feeling I’m going to need it. I’ve cast on 388 stitches for the welt, and have just increased by 32 stitches to 420 for the body. I’ll reveal the pattern next week.

And it’s really spring! Or nearly. Yesterday I almost loosened my scarf, which is as good a sign as hearing the first cuckoo. Before you know it I’ll be down to just the one pair of long johns…