Gansey Nation

Apologies for the break in transmission over the past couple of weeks – normal service is now resumed, albeit using the word “normal” in its loosest sense.

It’s probably no coincidence that the dramatic growth down the sleeve you can see from the pictures has taken place while the Edinburgh festival is on, since my usual response to any mass entertainment going on around me is to draw the curtains and pretend it isn’t happening. (There’s something incredibly annoying about being expected to enjoy yourself – as if people dressed in waistcoats playing the guitar in shop doorways have an automatic right to your loose change instead of a blow to the solar plexus. The other day I was stranded in a Sargasso Sea of tourists, desperately trying to fight my way to the sandwich counter in Boots, armed only with an umbrella and a sense of grievance, when I discovered the reason for the hold-up was a bunch of wide-eyed slack-jawed orange-robed Hare Krishna devotees snaking up Princes Street. If I hadn’t been so famished and weakened by inanition I’d have grabbed the leader by the slack of his robe, hoisted him off his feet and asked him if I looked like I was in the mood for inner ****ing peace? As it was I contented myself with a meaningful scowl. I think he got the point, for he looked properly abashed.)

Our window at the National Archives looks out on a plaza in front of a shopping mall, and every now and again a busker is incautious enough to set up close to the wall. If the music goes on long enough to become annoying we have perfected the technique of reaching out, grabbing them by the shoulders, and suddenly pulling them inside like the creature from Alien dragging another victim into a cooling duct. (Once we’ve got them inside we can go through their pockets, then set them to work cataloguing archives until we consider they’ve paid their debt to society. Or just until we feel like it. This of course is how the National Archives recruits most of its staff – it works just like the old-fashioned press gang.)

All of which is not to say that the festival has nothing I’m interested in – I snaffled tickets to Wagner’s Flying Dutchman next month; it’s a concert performance, so they just stand there and sing – you lose some of the drama, but at least you don’t have to put up with a loony staging (e.g., where the producer has it set in a military hospital, or in an abattoir, etc.). And there’s some nice chamber music concerts, even a lutenist. So it’s not all bad…

Anyway, back to the pullover. I think I made the sleeve a little too wide for my taste at 10 inches at the armhole. I normally aim for 8 to 8.5 inches, which works fine with my standard decrease rate down the sleeve of 1 in 6. This time the sleeve looks a bit puffy, the kind of thing Lord Byron would have worn if he’d been into fishing for herring instead of writing poetry. Of course, it’s all relative, and this sleeve is fairly typical of those shown in many of the old photos, so it’s not a problem. But best worn by someone with muscular upper arms, not the likes of me whose arms most closely resemble those animals made out of air-filled balloons.

Next week, we get to do it all over again with the other sleeve.

Here’s a fun experiment to try. First, change the bed and put a new duvet cover on. Then take some clear apple juice and put it in a saucepan. Set it on the stove, and gently heat it till it’s about the same temperature as the average baby’s bath water (you can test it with your elbow to be sure), and then fill a hot water bottle with it and go through to the bedroom. Hold it over the bed, remove the cap and press both sides simultaneously, sending a strong squirt of yellow liquid all over your nice clean duvet cover.

That’s what it’s been like since we moved, as our elderly cat does not seem to be adjusting well to life in Edinburgh (for apple juice, substitute – well, you get the picture). Ah, well – at least we know the washing machine works.

As for the move itself, that wasn’t as much fun as it could have been, but no disasters. The loading went fine at the Somerset end on Monday – they had plenty of guys on the job. But when they arrived in Edinburgh (an hour late, about 4pm) the next day, there was only one man – the driver – as the other had reported in sick. (I’d asked Margaret to make sure they knew about the 55 steps, and I guess her description was a little too vivid…) So anyway the driver spent over 3 hours that night slogging boxes and furniture up to the flat all on his own, until he looked like an extra from a low budget zombie movie and had to go sleep in his cab.

Next day, the company had hired a local guy to help, but he couldn’t come till 9.30am, so the poor old driver had another couple of hours on his own. Then they really got down to it, but even so it took them till 3.30 to get it all in, some 100+ boxes of books and stuff, plus beds, dressers, desks, you name it – by which time neither of them could stand up unaided. The poor old driver then had to drive all the way back to Somerset by himself, which meant he wasn’t allowed to drive next day (working time directive), so he couldn’t work and so would miss a day’s pay – so he was not a happy bunny.

Anyway, we’re here now, and it’s starting to feel like home, mostly because the house is full of unpacked boxes of stuff, just like all our homes tend to be. Not much time for knitting with all this stuff to be put away, but the lounge, the bedroom and the kitchen are mostly sorted now. The hi-fi is up and running, the cds are on the shelves (and in order) and all’s right with the world.

We’ve also found the local supermarket, so we can stock up on apple juice, and – .

Just a few rows to show this week, as I’ve been otherwise engaged bringing my car up from Somerset to Edinburgh, an 8-hour journey which turned into an epic worthy of legend and song. Here’s the short version.

I took Friday off work, and flew down Thursday evening. I’d got on the plane quite early, and bagged an aisle seat near the rear (it was a row of three, with another chap by the window; the centre seat was empty). Imagine my feelings when I saw the fattest man in the world waddling sideways down the aisle (the only way he’d fit) towards us, ours being the only empty seat left. Well, he squeezed himself into the middle seat in the manner of someone crushing a sofa cushion back into its cover, and the pressure effectively forced me out of my own seat so I found myself rising like dough in the oven. All through the flight I was a sort of flying buttress for him, poor chap.

This was uncomfortable enough, as I was sticking out into the aisle like a man peering round a fence, but one there was a particularly beefy stewardess who kept barging into me with her thick, meaty hams every time she passed, several times a minute. Indeed, when she first backed into me as she manoeuvred the snacks trolley down the aisle I became so intimately involved with parts of her anatomy I thought I’d end up with a paternity suit. In the end I got so fed up I leaned in with the shoulder in the manner of a footballer body-checking an opponent next time I saw her coming, and that seemed to sort her out. Got her right in the escape slide, as it were.

Other highlights included one of the most spectacular lightning storms I’ve seen, bolts of electricity sparking to the ground like a gigantic van de graaf generator, followed by a power cut of several hours which started within five minutes of reaching home. And is there anything more discouraging than getting stuck in a traffic jam, not on the motorway itself, but on the slip road to join the motorway, even before you’ve started your journey?

Ah, well, not to worry, I’m here now, doing my own small bit to increase traffic congestion in Edinburgh, a city which increasingly resembles Gondor in the third Lord of the Rings movie the more I get to know it. Weathered stone buildings, a castle atop the hill, cobbled streets, knights in shining armour, and a distressingly large orc amy besieging the place and flinging severed heads over the walls (the latter probably a feature of the Highland Games)…