Gansey Nation

There’s a perfectly good reason why, whenever there’s cooking to be done, I am politely shunted over to the cooker with a spatula while someone better qualified than I brandishes the sharp steel knife and gets on with the complicated business of disassembling vegetables. It’s all a question of hand-eye coordination, something that’s as much a mystery to me as quadratic equations or parallel parking. I simply don’t have any.

I can’t judge distance. The only way I know when my car has reached the edge of a parking space is the slight bump it gives as it connects with the pavement, like a boat bumping up against the dock. And shaving in the mirror was always a voyage into the unknown—not just a question of distance but also the reverse-ness of the image—so that before I adopted the safety-first approach of designer stubble I had the best-shaved ears of any archivist I know. So it is with reason that the chopping block and I have lived separate lives: together, but apart.

Springtime by the river

However, even Homer nods and on Saturday my handlers dropped their guard long enough to enable me to prepare a vegetable and lentil chilli. Onions, celery, carrots, all were sliced and diced to perfection until, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, I grew cocky; and it was while chopping a red pepper the exact point where my thumb ended and the pepper began became confused. That’s strange, I thought, looking at the spreading pool of red; I don’t recall peppers being this juicy. (Note to self, I added, already light-headed from loss of blood: cut down on the salt the recipe calls for.)

It’s noticeable, when you stop to think about it, just how jolly useful thumbs are. Of course, cat owners have realised for years that the species are only one genetic mutation away from being able to use a tin opener by themselves, at which point the status of humanity moves from enslaved to redundant. But everything—from doing up a button to operating a mobile phone, from tying shoelaces to holding a pen—is so much harder when your thumb is encased in bandages. I remember a friend once fell on gravel and cut her palms open, so that both hands had to be thickly swaddled until they healed; she said the sheer indignity of utter helplessness (try manipulating toilet paper with your teeth) prompted her to resolve that if she ever found herself falling again, she’d try to land head first.

Local denizen

Another thing that’s tricky to do while beswaddled of course is knitting. The cuts lie just where I grip the needle between thumb and forefinger of my left hand; I find I’m gripping the needle tighter by way of compensation, which has the unfortunate effect of squeezing blood out of the cuts like toothpaste out the tube. (Hmm. If worst comes to worst I’ll pretend the gansey was knitted using herring girl pink yarn.) Even so, I am almost at the end of the pattern band at the top of the sleeve, the gusset is finished and at some point this week it’ll be plain knitting all the way.

The chilli, by the way, came out excellently. What’s that? No, I think I’ll pass on the tomato ketchup this time, thanks all the same…

Well, here we are at the end of March already. In a few days it will be Easter, not to mention April, which TS Eliot famously called the cruellest month: the words of a man who never spent a winter in Caithness. (After The Waste Land was published I like to imagine him clapping his palm to his forehead in dismay and crying, “Oh, yeah—January! What was I thinking?”) Of course, the line refers to the way April flatters to deceive, promising spring but frequently bringing snow and gales in place of sunshine and greenery (see also: Britain, May through August); but also the pain of rebirth and reawakening.

Whaligoe

Which brings us to Easter. In the 8th century the Venerable Bede wrote that “Eosturmonath” (Easter month) took its name from the pagan goddess Eostre, “in whose honour feasts were celebrated”. But that’s the only mention of her in all of history; and there’s no detail of any kind—certainly no hares, no eggs, not even, disappointingly, chocolate. Of course, Christianity absorbed local pagan festivals and repurposed them all the time (as with Christmas and the Roman festival of Saturnalia), and I’m fine with that. I’ve mentioned before how I love the way language adds layers of meaning to place names over time; and it’s the same with religion. It’s what humans do: we take a thing and pass it on, and add a little something along the way, until gradually the original meaning becomes lost. It’s history in three dimensions: not just length and breadth, but depth.

Oystercatchers at Crosskirk

So where once there may’ve been the pagan festival of Eostre, now there is the Christian festival of Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Over the years we’ve added spiced buns with a flour-paste cross and chocolate eggs and cards and bunnies; but at the heart of it all, like the snowdrops and daffodils and budding hedgerows, the original idea is eternal, and eternally renewed.

And while we’re on the subject of hope, possibly false, I’m making progress down the first sleeve of the gansey. I’ve finished the pattern band at the top of the sleeve, and am on the plain knitting. Because of the size, and the number of stitches, I’m decreasing at a rate of 2 stitches every fourth row, instead of every fifth, as I usually do. In my rasher moments I imagine I might finish the sleeve this week, but common sense swiftly intervenes.

Easter celebrates resurrection and rebirth and the coming of spring. And whether that’s of Aphrodite, Ishtar, Kali or Jesus son of Joseph of Galilee, or of the early daffodils along the riverbank, we wish you a peaceful and joyous Easter, with just the right amount of chocolate and, if such is your desire, and who are we to judge, rabbits.

Happy Easter from Gordon and Margaret.