Gansey Nation

Some parts of the world at this time of year enjoy an indian summer, a few weeks of warm, bright, summer-like weather. Caithness has just enjoyed an indian weekend—well, more of an indian Sunday, actually—in which the temperature soared to a giddy 12 degrees and the wind dropped to what was almost a gentle breeze. (Warm enough to shed at least one layer of thermal long johns—maybe even two.)

So we went to the castle of Old Wick, just a mile or so south of the town. You drive along the narrow clifftop road, but have to leave the car about 800 yards distant and walk the rest of the way across waterlogged fields (imagine the Dead Marshes in the Lord of the Rings, but instead of walking over the bodies of fallen warriors from bygone wars, here you have cowpats).

I’d seen pictures of the castle remains—just a ruined square tower, jutting up like a broken tooth, not very impressive—but I wasn’t prepared for the location. That part of the coast consists of a series of narrow inlets (or “goes” as they’re called up here, as in Whaligoe), and in between each is a narrow, sheer-sided promontory of rock jutting out into the ocean. Wick castle is perched on one of those promontories. (Lie your hand flat, palm-down on the table; now splay your fingers—the castle lies on your middle finger, and all the space from your first knuckle to the tip of your fingernail was taken up with buildings, a courtyard and a keep.) It’s really stunning.

It’s very old—one of the oldest in Scotland, dating back to the 1100s. Standing there, looking out over the limitless, empty ocean, waves breaking on the rocks far below like spouting whales, it’s hard not to imagine what it must have been like for the men and women who lived there on the edge of the world almost a thousand years ago. And I can’t help wondering how many men they lost in the early morning darkness as they stumbled out of bed and went to relieve themselves over the cliff edge—a fumble of clothing, a bleary misjudgement, a missed step and a long, fading, plummeting scream… (This, of course, is the reason indoor plumbing was invented.)

Another milestone on the gansey as I’ve finished the second diamond, and my zig, having zagged, is now starting to zig again (following the pattern as it moves up the body is a bit like watching a 1980s pingpong video game). I shall probably end up with four diamonds comprising my body pattern, but we’ll have to see. The pattern is starting to show up properly, now you can see the repeats. And it’s getting too tall to support its own weight, but quivers unsteadily like a fat man balancing on a chair to change a lightbulb.

Finally, a note to say that I’m publishing my third novel on Amazon kindle this week, the first part of my Welsh fantasy trilogy, The Wraiths of Elfael (which some of you may have already read when I offered it as a free download a year or so ago). It will retail for the exorbitant sum of 99 cents, but if you wait till next week it’ll be available on a free promotion from Amazon from 29-31 October.

It’s a snowbound, frozen chiller of a book set around Christmastime, which is why I thought I’d publish it now—except, of course, we’re enjoying this mild autumnal weather right now, which rather spoils the effect. So, if you do decide to read it, I suggest you take a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and stick it down the back of your neck to get you in the proper mood…

I’ve always enjoyed the daft things sports reporters sometimes say live on air. My favourite from my childhood was someone commentating on an Olympic table tennis match on television who said, “It’s almost as if each player is challenging the other to hit the ball back over the net.” So imagine my delight when I caught the BBC radio commentary on the Japanese Grand Prix this morning, and the commentator said that the modern racing car steering wheel was covered with complicated technical buttons—”but the best drivers know what most of them do…”

I’ve needed cheering up this week, since I pulled a muscle in my neck on Wednesday night (I think yawning can now be classed as a martial art) and have been in quite a lot of pain ever since. When it was really bad I couldn’t lift my arms higher than my chest, which turned even simple operations like donning a pullover into an impression of a man with a dislocated shoulder trying to escape from a straightjacket. In order to put my cap on I had to wave it vaguely in the general direction of my neck, and then lower my head and sort of butt the cap like a goat trying to force its way through a hedge. If I was lucky the cap rested on top of my head as securely as the rowboat perches on the back of a surfacing whale in Moby Dick.

A stiff neck is of course the gift that keeps on giving since it provides endless mirth to one’s loved ones and colleagues, knowing as they do that it’s not really serious. (And if you were wondering, no, faced with a person whose head lolls like a puppet’s with the strings cut, tilting your head to the angle of the suffering person’s and giggling does not raise you to the level of wit achieved by such as Oscar Wilde—trust me on this…)

Which is one of the reasons why I haven’t made a lot of progress this week, since my standard knitting technique involves flapping my elbows like an overstimulated 12 year-old impersonating a headless chicken’s death sprint, and that’s quite tricky when you can’t move your arms much. (The other reason was a blood blister on the ball of my right thumb when, inspired by the spirit of Laurel and Hardy, I was putting together at work a display stand which had intersecting struts like tent poles to hold it up, and—you can see where this is going, can’t you?—I carelessly left my thumb in the exact spot where empty space would have been most useful; it got punched like a bus ticket.)

Still, I’ve got an inch or so of the gansey done, enough to finish a whole diamond and start to turn the zig into a zag. I rather like the wide panels on the body—they remind me happily of the big squares you get in really fancy white chocolate bars, the ones that need cardboard to stop them breaking. (Memo to self: chocolate ganseys. Mmmm.)

I’ve made a few mistakes as well, which Margaret has had to go back and fix for me—with my secondary cataract getting worse I’m operating on one and a half eyes most of the time now, and it’s the good eye that’s blurred. I think of it as knitting archaeology-cum-surgery, as she has to peel back the layers, go deep, and then perform complicated operations to the patient’s lower intestine. (Memo to self: haggis ganseys. Mmmyyeeuurrgghh.)

There’s another stunning gansey from Judit to share on the Gallery, a combination of traditional patterns blended to her own design. Congratulations again, and I think Henry Ford could have taken a few tips on productivity from her!

Finally, to return to the felicitous phrases of our friends in the media, I was watching the BBC news just before I wrote this. The newsreader solemnly announced that the provision of care for the homeless was—wait for it—a “postcode lottery”. The thought of which will keep me warm through the long winter nights to come…

Here’s a thought—Margaret tells me Ganseys.com has just passed 200 posts (this is number 201). Which—taking into account breaks for holidays, nervous prostration, etc.—means we’ve been going for nearly six years. Six years! No wonder I’m feeling old. Back then I was a mere stripling, still had my own hair and didn’t have to walk round with the neighbour’s cat velcroed to my scalp (honestly: do you think anyone can tell?).

It’s been a beautiful weekend in Caithness, crisp autumn sunshine and blue skies, but with that bite in the wind that tells you the equinox is past and the winter dark is coming with all the grim inevitability of a dental appointment. So we went to the Whaligoe Steps.

The steps start at bottom left and zigzag up to the top. Part of the salt-house can been on the right.

Whaligoe is a natural harbour just a few miles south of Wick, a narrow cleft cut out of the coast like the first slice from a cake. It’s not very accessible; basically, you look down on the bay from the cliffs, a drop as sheer as a four-storey office block. But harbours are pretty rare along here, and you have to make the most of what you’ve got, so a couple of hundred years ago over 300 stone steps were laid in a zig-zag all the way down to the bottom of the cliff, where an artificial grassy area (“the size of a tennis court”, as the guide books say) was laid, called the Bink.

Cormorant on Muckle Loups and, slightly below and to the left, a mooring ring.

Boats—up to twenty-four at the height of the Victorian fishing boom—would come into the harbour and tie up at the Neist, a rocky shelf, and would unload creels of herring, which would be carted or winched up to the Bink, gutted by the fisher lassies and packed (you can still see the ruins of a shed where the salt was stored) and then put to one side until a schooner could call and pick them up. Barrels and salt had to be carted down the 300+ steps from the top of the cliff. (My legs were protesting long before I reached the bottom, and it was a fine day; but doing it on a cold day, in the driving wind, with the rain making the steps slick and slippery, casks of salt on my back?—I think not!)

On the way down the steps. Gordon is mid-picture, disappearing around the curve of the steps.

Hard to imagine now, but at one time it would have been full of activity and bustle. Now it’s just another monument of weathered stone, deserted as a ruined medieval monastery, with that same sense of sadness and stillness; the only life, the bright mustard-coloured lichen on the sea-facing rocks and the odd German Stuka pilot reincarnated as a seagull.

So Whaligoe is worth a visit next time you’re passing. And—how civilised is this?—there’s now a cafe-restaurant on top of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. So you can slog all the way down and back up, and treat yourself to a very nice coffee and piece of cake without feeling guilty, because you’ve (probably) earned it.

Gordon on the Bink, showing the bottom of the steps. The Neist is in the background.

In gansey news, I have finished the garter stitch welt and the inch of plain knitting that tops it, and have started the pattern for the body (albeit only just). Because I’ve run on so much about the dear old Steps, I’m afraid I don’t have space here to give you the pattern charts—they’ll have to wait for next week (ain’t I a tease?). But as you can see each side of the gansey will be divided into seven panels, each twenty-five stitches wide. Each panel is separated from its neighbour by a two-stitch cable (cabled every sixth row), flanked on each side by two purl stitches. The panels will alternate an open moss-stitch diamond and a zig-zag (although I still have an open mind about the zig-zag). Much more on this next week.

So there we are. As some of you will remember, I gave up chocolate (and cheese and crisps) a couple of years ago, when the doctors checked my cholesterol and then advised me to stick to reading only short books in future—or maybe just haiku poetry—just in case… But if 200 posts isn’t a milestone worth celebrating, then I don’t know what is.

Now, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re getting an incredible 150,000-plus hits a month—and the number is growing all the time (we are the Gansey Nation, guys). I know that some of you have been here from the very beginning, while others come in all the time, and others drop in and out, depending on mood and circumstances. So: thanks to all of you who’ve made Ganseys.com such a success—and who make it worth our while to keep it going. Here’s to the next 200! (Or, well—given that my cholesterol has just taken one more for the team—let’s say 25 for now, and we’ll see how it goes, shall we…?)

View from the Bink seaward, with Muckle Loups in the centre