The coast of Caithness is dotted with little harbours, many of them ruined and abandoned now, or else on life support, home to maybe a solitary boat or two fishing for lobster. Yet once they were a base for whole fleets of fishing boats, and great three-masted schooners, that in photographs look like something the Flying Dutchman would choose for a round-the-world cruise, would be tied up at the quays, unloading timber and salt and filling their holds with barrels of packed salted herring for the markets in Germany and Russia.
Staxigoe, a mile or so north of Wick, is one such. The name derives from the Old Norse world for an inlet, geo, plus stakkr, or stack for the great lump of rock jutting up like the last tooth in a gum that’s seen better days; so, “inlet of the stack”. The Caithness fishing industry began here, when in 1767 three local men fitted out a couple of boats to fish for herring. Within a few decades there were 50 boats fishing out of Staxigoe, and it was the largest curing station in the area.
But boom leads to bust as chocolate Easter eggs lead to the dentist, and the fitting out of Wick as a purpose-built herring port (especially as the boats grew larger, with a deeper draft) killed off Staxigoe as a going concern. If you’re sensitive to atmosphere it’s laden with meaning, and everywhere you turn you brush up against the ghosts of ghosts. If not, – and while we were there a car pulled up, obviously tourists, who stayed for as long as it takes to say “is this it?” and drove off again – not…
The fountain, Wick
PARISH NOTICES
First of all, the great reveal as my gansey project is finally finished. Washing and blocking is essential with these garments, and especially ones with such extended ribbing: so now it expands, like a wilted flower after spring rain, and we can see it whole and entire. Will it fit? I’ll find out in a week or two.
“I got the pattern ideas from the German edition of “Ganseys” (original: The Gansey Knitting Sourcebook) by Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell: Eriskay Lifetree and Diamond, combined with Scottish flags with mock braids (Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire) and tiny heapies at the ends of the sleeves. I have to admit that I already had the body from a cardigan I had ribbed up – it had to become a gansey ;)). That’s why the yoke and gussets are a bit shorter, but I still like the final product.”
Many congratulations to Sigrid, and many thanks to her, and to all who have been so generous by sending us pictures of their finished ganseys, for sharing.
It being Easter, and spring having finally arrived, a little rusted after all the rain, we took a trip up to John O’Groats. John O’Groats is famously the most northerly settlement on the mainland of Britain. (Dunnet Head, a few miles up the coast, is actually a little further north; but as it basically consists of a lighthouse on a headland, a scattering of fulmars and the odd puffin, and is a bit of a fag to reach, it doesn’t count.)
The Harbour, John o’Groats
Back in the day, visiting John O’Groats used to be a pretty bleak experience, especially in bad weather: after the first half hour or so of standing next to a sign telling you that it’s 3,230 miles to New York whilst a scouring wind drives the rain through your inadequate coat like radioactive particles, the novelty starts to wear off. But since they rebranded the coastal road that runs for 516 miles in a broad loop from Inverness and back round “The North Coast 500”, tourism is now very much A Thing. John O’Groats has been gentrified accordingly: there’s an ice cream shop, gift shops, cafes and even a “distillery experience”, whatever that may be.
The Mill near John o’Groats
What’s in a name? The story goes that John O’Groats is named after a Dutchman (Jan de Groot) who was awarded a contract by King James IV in 1496 to operate a ferry across the Pentland Firth to Orkney. Well, maybe: for something so specific there seems to be a shortage of documentary evidence. Did he really charge passengers a groat each, and is that really where the place’s name comes from? I hae ma doots. De Groot means “the large” (incidentally, the same root meaning as groat), so if he existed it seems more likely that the place was just named for him; though I must say, John O’Groats has a better ring to it than “Big John’s place…”
PARISH NOTICES
In parish notices this week we have another splendid gansey from Judit. It’s knit in a lighter shade which shows off the pattern perfectly. The pattern itself is taken from Rae Compton’s book, that of John Northcott from Cornwall. It’s a cousin to certain other Cornish gansey designs like The Lizard and the Vicar of Morwenstow, which are some of my all-time favourites, and it’s great to see these patterns being brough to life by Judit. So many thanks to her, and as ever many thanks for sharing them with the rest of us.
The mill stream
Finally, my own gansey project is almost finished, just the last bit of cuff to go. As usual when I’m knitting a gansey for someone else, I tend to double the length of the cuffs so that, when doubled back, the recipient has a bit of flexibility as to how long they want their sleeves to be. And if they don’t like them doubled back it’s easy enough to rip them back to their preferred length. The only downside is knitting five or six inches of ribbing when you’re already thinking of your next project…
I was reading this week about Wick’s patron saint, an Irish bishop and missionary called Fergus the Pict (died c.730 AD). St Fergus didn’t confine himself to Caithness but founded a number of churches in north-east Scotland (the Aberdeen Breviary says he “occupied himself in converting the barbarous people”, still a fair description of Aberdonians to this day).
Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) in said river
There used to be a sculpture of the saint in Wick parish church. During the Reformation, in 1613, Wick got a new archdeacon, one Dr Richard Merchiston of Bower. Merchiston was an iconoclast in the original meaning of the word, someone who believed that images smacked of popery, and one day smashed up the statue of St Fergus. This so annoyed the townspeople they waylaid Merchiston one evening and – perhaps a little extreme – drowned him in the river. When questioned about it later they swore they weren’t to blame, but said the saint himself had appeared and sat astride Merchiston in the river, holding his head under the water. Full marks, you’d have to say, for style.
Cheerful daffs
Meanwhile in gansey news, I am inching my way towards being about halfway down the second sleeve. Another week or so should see it completed, and then there’s just the anxious wait to see if it fits! Like so many gansey patterns, we won’t see what it looks like properly until it’s been washed and blocked; for now I keep on, in Yeats’s phrase, “dreading and hoping all”.
Fulmar
And now it’s Easter week, which means it must finally be spring (by which I mean it seems to’ve stopped snowing). It’s traditionally the season of rebirth and renewal, and also of chocolate rabbits and the eggs they lay from which baby rabbits hatch. In The Lord of the Rings the Lady Galadriel sadly contemplates a future in the Undying Lands without her beloved mallorn trees; I feel much the same way about heaven (assuming I’m lucky enough to get there, which currently feels like a long shot) and Hotel Chocolat easter eggs…
A very happy Easter to all our readers, from Gordon and Margaret!
The clocks in the UK went forward last night for Daylight Saving Time, and of course I’m wrecked. It’s like having seasonal jet lag. Every year I find myself wondering if even summer is worth all this grief (this being what my old Latin grammar teacher called ‘a question expecting the answer “no”’). Experience teaches me that for the next couple of weeks I shall greet each day like Frankenstein’s monster on the slab, while Margaret stands over me with electrodes, waiting for a lightning storm and shouting “Give my creature life!”
The Last Snowdrops of Spring
The time change isn’t the only reason I’m knackered just now, though. I was down in Cumbria on a business trip last week, a wearying 800-mile round trip. Highlight of the journey was a visit to Sellafield, Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear site, some 650 acres on the beautiful Cumbrian coast. It doesn’t generate power any more and is used primarily for reprocessing and storage, as redundant buildings and plant are gradually being decommissioned. It’s big in three dimensions, some of the silos tall as cathedrals.
The church from across the river
It’s big in the fourth dimension, too. My profession is cultural heritage, and already places like Sellafield seem to belong to Britain’s past, like those ruined abbeys from the Reformation, crumbling monuments to a faith which once dominated the world and which now seem unimaginably out of reach. “History is now, and England” as TS Eliot said, even if it looked like the future just a few short years ago.
Budding hydrangea
But then, lack of sleep always tends to send me into philosopher mode. There’s no real cure but to wait till my body clock adjusts, tempting though it is to set the alarm for about an hour before the dawn chorus, then go out and shout at the trees to see how the birds like being woken up early for a change. Meanwhile, an urgent question: how exactly shall I spend all this daylight time I’ve saved…?
“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “If you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?” (Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking-Glass)
We watched the classic 1951 Disney version of Alice in Wonderland the other day. It was a bit disappointing, to be honest, and so (as often happens) it sent me back again to the books. And the main thing I noticed was how gratuitously rude all the creatures are, especially to Alice. It’s utterly delightful. Among the choicest insults are: “You don’t know much, and that’s a fact” (the Duchess); “Really, you are very dull” (the Mock Turtle); “I never saw anybody that looked stupider” (the Violet); “It’s my opinion that you never think at all” (the Rose); and, the best of all, “You’re so exactly like other people” (Humpty Dumpty – ouch).
Retro Snowdrops
Of course, plenty of other children’s books feature rude characters. Gandalf is splendidly tetchy (“Fool of a Took!”) in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, leading to this eulogy from Faramir: “Many are my names in many countries, he said. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, and in the South, Mister Grumpy-pants…”
St Fergus’ Church
Of course, the main thing about the Alice books is the sheer strangeness of it all, and the dream logic that obtains throughout (you can’t answer a door unless it says something first, for example). It’s an endlessly quotable book, even occasionally drifting into eastern mysticism and the illusion of the self: “I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Anyway, I’ll leave you with my favourite passage of all. Alice is talking with the Cheshire Cat, who’s telling her about the Mad Hatter and the equally mad March Hare:
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
I’m taking my time with the sleeves, now that the hard yards of the yoke are behind me. The Caithness style was to have a run of plain knitting at the top of the sleeve, followed by a moss stitchy-type band, and then it’s plain knitting again down to the cuff (which was usually a little fancier than just knit 2/ purl 2). The sleeves will only be 16 inches from the top of the shoulder to the bottom of the cuff, I.e., not very long, so I’m decreasing by two stitches every fourth and fifth rows alternately.
The coast of Caithness is dotted with little harbours, many of them ruined and abandoned now, or else on life support, home to maybe a solitary boat or two fishing for lobster. Yet once they were a base for whole fleets of fishing boats, and great three-masted schooners, that in photographs look like something the Flying Dutchman would choose for a round-the-world cruise, would be tied up at the quays, unloading timber and salt and filling their holds with barrels of packed salted herring for the markets in Germany and Russia.
Staxigoe, a mile or so north of Wick, is one such. The name derives from the Old Norse world for an inlet, geo, plus stakkr, or stack for the great lump of rock jutting up like the last tooth in a gum that’s seen better days; so, “inlet of the stack”. The Caithness fishing industry began here, when in 1767 three local men fitted out a couple of boats to fish for herring. Within a few decades there were 50 boats fishing out of Staxigoe, and it was the largest curing station in the area.
