Gansey Nation

Now, I’m not usually one to complain (Editor, quoting Bender the robot from Futurama: “Ahahaha. Oh wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder”) but I’m starting to think that tourism up here is getting a bit out of hand. A lot of this is down to the North Coast 500, a clever marketing exercise that’s seen the broad loop of road that runs 120 miles north from Inverness to John o’ Groats, then west to Durness, and south down the west coast, taking in Skye, before heading east back to Inverness, rebranded as a tourist trail. And yes, it’s a lovely drive, even travelling at 30mph in a winding queue of traffic. But it’s turned the north Highlands from somewhere to go into something to do.

Muckle Skerry from John o’Groats

In the west country tourists are known as “grockles”, nobody knows why, but it’s a great name. In Cornwall I’ve heard them referred to as emmets, derived from an Old English word for ants (aemete), and you can see the metaphor. The other day we went up to Duncansby, to go for a walk along the cliffs and look and the sea stacks. But when we got there the car park was full, cars and vans were double- and triple-parked, and a solid line of people like emmets at a picnic trudged across the headland to see the view, take a few photos, and trudge back. (Reader, we chickened out, and went to John o’ Groats for an ice cream in the sun instead.)

In gansey news, it’s always exciting to start a new project. This time it’s another stone-cold classic, Mrs Laidlaw of Seahouses’ pattern, from Gladys Thompson. It’s a pattern I’ve loved ever since I first opened the book nearly 40 years ago, but have scarcely ever knit—well, it’s overdue a revisit. The yarn is Frangipani Breton, a lovely soft russet shade that should capture the pattern definition well. So it begins.

Stack at Sarclet

And do I begrudge other people the chance to experience the beauties of the Scottish landscape? Of course not: I’m a tourist myself every time I get in my car. So I guess I can see it from both sides. After all, what’s the point of scenery if no one looks at it? Here in Caithness there are plenty of quiet places that haven’t (yet) made the guidebooks, which you can visit with nary a camper van in sight. Though I do rather hanker back to wartime, when the north Highlands was a protected area, and you needed a special pass to go north past Inverness. You could limit the number of vehicles coming in, to avoid overcrowding: hmm, about five a day seems about right…

It’s been a week bookended by explosions and drifting clouds of smoke. To start at the end, last night was the finish of gala week, which always culminates in a very pretty firework display down by the river. For once the weather was kind and sunset elided into a clear night of soft blue skies, against which the dark shapes of birds flitted to their nests, the perfect stillness of the night broken only by the pounding thump-thump-thump of the funfair. We watched the fireworks from our upstairs window, breathing in the drifting smoke from the huge bonfire, watching coloured flashes fill the sky and jumping at the bangs. The only problem is, it’s practically August, and here in the far north of Scotland summer tends to leave with the fair. Autumn is just around the corner: the wind has a subtle edge and even the warmest days have a feeling of impermanence.

Getting ready for the bonfire

The week opened with the demise of our microwave oven, which yielded up its spirit accompanied by a loud buzzing noise, like a bluebottle trapped in Metallica’s sound system, together with a cloud of acrid smoke. It occurred to me that this might be a special feature by the manufacturers, if they were Scandinavian, and that each oven departs this world by providing its own Viking funeral; I suppose I should be grateful that it didn’t ritually disembowel and incinerate me as well.

I’ve been amusing myself by imagining how various writers might have described it. So far I’ve got Dickens (“It was the best of ovens, it was the worst of ovens”), Tolstoy (“All working microwaves are alike; each broken microwave is broken in its own way”), Jane Austen (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an archivist in possession of a broken microwave, must be in want of a replacement”) and Tolkien (“In a hole in a recycling bin lived a broken microwave”). Then there’s Camus: “Our microwave oven died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” Or possibly even Kafka—”As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a broken microwave oven”.

So now it’s off to the home for abandoned microwaves to find a new one, always a depressing experience as you walk up and down rows of cages, with hopeful ovens wagging their little tails and barking optimistically, hoping you’ll take it home. I just hope the new one’s been housetrained. Meanwhile I can only make this appeal, in the immortal words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ovens…”

We’re having all our windows replaced. It was long overdue—they were very old, some of the frames were rotten, and one was basically held together with a twisty tie and a rolled-up towel laid across the join to keep the wind out. Things had got so bad the Council proposed we change the name of our property to The House of Usher. The final straw was observing a Himalayan vulture the other day perched amid the seagulls on our roof with a hopeful look in its eye. Yes, it was definitely time.

Bedroom windows removed

It’s been a week of disruption all round, with our house currently resembling a set from Saving Private Ryan and the County Show taking place across the way. Overnight the neighbouring fields were transformed into the kind of tented city that Galadriel might have ordered if the elves had won the contract to run the Glastonbury festival. Tall, white pavilions encompassed the field over the road, and the hills were alive with the sounds of a funfair, motorcycle display teams and vintage tractors. Then it rained.

A vintage tractor on display

Well, I say rained, though that doesn’t really convey the apocalyptic immensity. If I open my thesaurus other, more appropriate, nouns suggest themselves: deluge, torrent, downpour, spate, and perhaps even cataclysm. Then in the early morning it stopped and words like mud, sun, heat, mud, steam and more mud become necessary. At times it felt like a recreation of the battle of Waterloo, which had uncannily similar weather—though I’ve never quite recovered from learning that the Allied and French armies, who got into position overnight in the pouring rain, didn’t have any toilet facilities (water-porta-loos?) and just relieved themselves where they stood or lay; and so, when the sources describe the battle taking place in a sea of mud, well, let’s just say it was brown and leave it at that.

Backing into the traces

In gansey news, I have finished the first sleeve and am now embarked on the second. I’ve just finished the underarm gusset and there’s just the rest of the sleeve and cuff to go. It’s not a long sleeve, and I’ll be decreasing at a rate of two stitches every fifth row. I still hope to finish it by the end of July, so fingers crossed.

And as I write this it’s Sunday morning and the tents are coming down surprisingly quickly—every time I look out the window—or the gaping hole where a window used to be—another one’s gone. Soon it will be as if they’d never appeared, and all we’ll be left with is the funfair; though, without wishing to appear in any way negative, honestly I think I’d rather take the vulture…