Gansey Nation

You know the saying that travel broadens the mind? Well, in my case it may do, but it also raises the blood pressure, increases stress levels and shortens my life expectancy. Much of this is caused by staying in hotels, of course. The room I had in the hotel in Inverness last week was so narrow I touched all four walls every time I breathed in: lying in the bed was like being digested by a boa constrictor, or buried alive in a child’s coffin. Then the guy next door came in noisily at 1.30 in the morning, and got up and left noisily at 5.00; the walls were so thin I could hear his nose hairs rustling as he slept.

Dornoch Firth, not to be confused with a hotel in Inverness

There’s this theory that the universe will expand to a certain point, then collapse back, there’s a big bang and everything repeats, again and again, eternally and for ever. There are many reasons why I don’t want this to be true, but mostly because it will mean endlessly reliving that night in Inverness, back and forth, until the end of time and space, an infinity of sleepless 5.00am’s.

I spent part of last week’s holiday with my parents at Reid Towers, our ancestral mansion in Northamptonshire overlooking the Grand Union Canal. South Northants really is a lovely county, a patchwork of fields draping the landscape like an embroidered quilt, charming villages of Cotswold stone, all ivy-covered pubs and cricket on the village green, and everywhere herds of solicitors and doctors, the only ones who can afford to live there, ravaging the crops like wild deer (time for another cull, you say? Pass me my twelve bore). But it still feels like home to me.

The Grand Union Canal from my bedroom window Chez Reid

The town of Northampton itself, though, is sadly an urban wasteland of post-apocalyptic desolation, where hollow-eyed survivors stagger from the ruins after dark (not zombies, of course, for as everyone knows, zombies feed on brains, and the last one in Northampton starved to death 20 years ago).

Northampton made the schoolboy error of supporting Parliament in the Civil War, so when Charles II was restored to the throne he—rather petulantly, it’s always seemed to me—had the castle torn down, starting a tradition of destruction carried on by the Luftwaffe and subsequent town planners. Retracing my childhood in the town is now about as hard as working out how medieval people lived and already involves more archaeology than history (I know I’m getting old, but really: this is my childhood, people).

I left my knitting behind, as I usually do on these trips, partly because I’m self-conscious, but mostly because it’s so big and unmanageable now it’s like holding a drunken sheep with a fever on your lap. And anyway, it was just too hot down south (at one point I even contemplated rolling up my shirtsleeves, but recollected in time that there were ladies present, and forbore). Still, I’ve managed another few inches since last time, and am still on track to finish the gansey by the end of the month.

My Victorian detective novel The Cuckoo’s Nest continues to sell well on Amazon, selling more in a month than some of my books ever have, so thank you to all who’ve downloaded it. I guess crime, as they say, really does pay.

Margaret comes back from serving her time in a Turkish prison, correction, “holiday”, next week, when normal service will be resumed—by which I mean the blog will have images that actually vaguely resemble their subjects. Meanwhile I’m off to catch up on my sleep, now my travels are done: I think, all things considered, I’ll keep my mind safely narrow in future.

   First of all, many thanks to everyone who downloaded a copy of my novel The Cuckoo’s Nest when it was on a free promotion on Amazon last week. The book had some 2,000 downloads, sending it rocketing to number 1 in the free historical mysteries chart, and number 48 in the overall Amazon free chart. (Remember, if you’re one of those 2,000, and you enjoyed it, please add a review, however short; and of course, if you hated it, please have the good taste to keep it to yourself…)

Summer came to Caithness this weekend—cloudless skies, a flat calm on the ocean, breeze warm as a lover’s sigh—and brought with it the County Show, all the way to the bottom of our garden. You see, we live in a cul-de-sac which ends in fields, and across the road from us is another field, usually occupied by sheep, sloping gently to the river. My rather bucolic walk to work takes me down a lane through these fields and along the river, and in ten minutes I’m at the library (unless I get into a philosophical argument with a seagull, in which case anything goes).

Now the field was full of tents and marquees, for all the world as if Henry VIII had decided to make a state visit to Wick—always assuming Henry’s courtiers also drove tractors and enjoyed playing whack-a-mole. In fact, I hadn’t really appreciated the scale of the operation until I threw open the curtains on Saturday morning in a state of quite spectacular undress and found myself looking down on what must have been half the population of Caithness, and at the same time unwittingly recreated that scene in Life of Brian when our eponymous hero exposes himself—literally—to his followers.

I’m not really a fan of agricultural shows, feeling about them much the way the great Liverpool football manager did about his local rivals: “If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.” This was a bit like being subjected to psychological warfare by the American army, with pounding rock music and distorted screaming over the tannoy—the overall effect that of a cat suspected of heresy being tortured by the Inquisition to a soundtrack of Neil Diamond.

On the gansey, I’m nearly at the end of the first sleeve. The arm is about 18-18.5 inches long, and I decreased by 10% into the cuff. I plan to make the cuffs 3 inches long, and not make them double-length this time, since I’m not knitting the gansey for anyone in particular. Then it’s on to the second sleeve, and the whole finished by the end of August. Hopefully.

Speaking of ganseys, I got confirmation this week that I’ve wasted my life when Margaret found an add on Pinterest for made-to-order ganseys. The price per gansey? A mere £1,250, or $1,900. But then, I suppose, what is a reasonable price for a hand-knitted gansey…?

Britain has been basking in a heatwave this weekend, which means that in Caithness the temperatures have reached a giddy 20°C and I celebrated by taking my pullover off and—feeling rather rakish—unbuttoned my shirt’s top button. Even the wind was warm, like holding your face up close to a rapidly panting dog (fortunately without the meaty dog food smell).

The lighthouse at Dunnet Head – Orkney is in the background

So we decided to get out of the house and take in some scenery. It’s puffin season, so on Saturday we went up to Dunnet Head, the jutting-out bit that is the northernmost tip of mainland Britain, and watched the puffins nesting in the cliffs, with Orkney almost close enough to touch.

Puffins really are absurd birds, they’re like penguins who ran away to join the circus and got taken on as clowns. Their wings are so small it’s as if they’re propelled by continually expelling trapped gas. And yet in flight they’re as graceful in their own way as swallows, albeit chubby swallows with a weakness for doughnuts. It’s always windy up on Dunnet Head, even when the sea is calm, and it was pretty gusty on Saturday, as though the ghosts of Viking invaders were constantly jostling us, trying to reclaim their lost kingdom. My baseball cap was snatched off my head and sent bowling along the gravel track by the wind—unless it was the Vikings, Yankees fans to a man, harbouring bitter thoughts against the Red Sox.

Camster Cairns – the Long Cairn

Then on Sunday we drove out to the Grey Cairns of Camster, about half an hour away. These are a couple of Neolithic structures dating from c.3,000 BC, presumably burial mounds, whose walls and roofs have been partially reconstructed, but whose inner chambers are still intact. (You can unbolt the grilles that cover the entrance passageways and squeeze inside, if you feel like crawling on hands and knees: a puffin that’s been on a strict diet could probably do it easily, but we decided to pass.)

View into one of the cairns

The cairns are on a lonely hillside, surrounded by forestry plantations and acres of moorland, miles from anywhere. It was hot and still when we were there and utterly silent except for the birds, and a lost sheep which seemed to be facing an existential crisis (its constant bleating far more annoying than a car alarm). It feels like a special place—but is it? Did they build the cairns here for some special property of the landscape, or does the landscape feel special because it is graced by their presence?

The great Philip Larkin, as ever, said it best, in his poem “Church Going”:

“A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.”

Side view of the Long Cairn

I’ve started working my way down the first sleeve. It’s about 9.5 inches from gusset to shoulder join, and I cast on 168 stitches, decreasing (once I got past the gusset) 2 stitches every 7 rows, to coincide with the cable rows. As you’ll see, I’ve reverted to my usual double-pointed needles after experimenting with 2 circular needles, which felt a bit like trying to knit a pattern by Escher: the problem was mine entirely, though, and I will have another go with the circulars now it’s been explained to me where I was going wrong!

Finally this week, another splendid gansey has fallen off Judit’s needles, a white one this time and based on patterns from Beth Brown Reinsel’s book. You can see it here (note the initials just above the welt): it really shows how effective banded patterns can be – congratulations to her once again.