Gansey Nation

Scotland, Weeks 10-11: 23 October

Have you ever heard of rope core memory? No, me neither. But in effect it means hand-knitted computer software, and it was used to navigate the Apollo moon landings safely to the Moon and back.

We first learned of this when we were driving through the beautiful (but damp) Border country on our way to the English border (driving time from Wick: 8 hours), listening to classical music radio. Sadly the BBC is under the impression that no one nowadays wants to listen to classical music for more than ten minutes at time, so they fill up the Radio 3 schedules with prattle: at such moments I usually switch it off, harrumph and write letters in green ink to the Times (or at least the Radio Times) bemoaning the collapse of Western Civilisation; but as I was driving, with all those badgers and red deer and wildebeest to avoid, and not having my fountain pen to hand, the moment passed.

Well, the programme was fascinating. As I understand it, conventional computer memory back then just didn’t have the capacity for the complicated processing required to navigate such vast distances. But, as we all know, knitting is essentially binary: replace knit and purl stitches with ones and zeroes and you can perform (literally) astronomical calculations. Teams of experienced knitters were employed to weave copper wire either through a magnetic core (a knit stitch, or 1) or around it (a purl, or 0). As a result you could store about 18 times as much memory per cubic foot than conventional methods.

The engineers referred to it as “LOL memory”, for “little old ladies”—be still my aching sides—but the astronauts at least seem to have valued the women’s contribution to the Apollo missions. And how could they not? Their lives were (again, literally) in those ladies’ skilled hands. [and here’s a short video on YouTube.]

In gansey news, we have lift off too, in a manner of speaking. I finished the Scottish-bepatterned gansey while we were down in Northampton, and it’s been washed and blocked and handed over to its new owner already, driven off the forecourt and out into the world. This is very much a Scottish “Sunday best” sort of gansey, and the colour really shows off the elaborate pattern combination. But as ever, I’m already onto the next project, in navy—not sure what the pattern will be yet, but probably something a little simpler—something that doesn’t involve a slide rule, let alone rope core memory.

Oops

Anyway, I can’t help thinking of all the useful numbers I could encode into a gansey. The lock code on my phone, for example. The number of my landline telephone. The date of one’s wedding anniversary, on the remote, very remote, chance that one was, as it were, perhaps the merest smidgeon absent-minded on the subject. The grid coordinates of all one’s assets, buried in a field for one’s heirs and assigns to find and so avoid inheritance tax. Hmm. Now I come to think of it, one gansey may not be enough…

Scotland, Week 9: 9 October

No matter how thoroughly you’ve explored a place like Caithness there are always new things to discover. The other day I was talking to a visitor to the Archive about harbours and he said, “And have you been to the Bocht?” Well, not only had I not been to it, I’d never heard of it, nor did I even know how to spell it. But as he explained it’s a small abandoned harbour on St John’s Point, on the north coast between Mey and Gills Bay.

To get there you have to drive towards the hamlet of Skarfskerry, park the car by the side of the road and then cross a boggy waste of moorland. The land rises away from you, so it’s a bit of a trudge until you reach the crest and then the whole coastline eastwards as far as John O’Groats and Duncansby Head is suddenly revealed, with the islands of Stroma and Orkney tantalisingly close before you.

Caithness is, let’s face it, soggy. I’ve mentioned before how the ground underfoot feels like a carpet floating on a swimming pool; well, at St John’s Point it feels more like a tablecloth. Within a few paces I’d sunk to my calves, and a cold, brown, slimy liquid began to insinuate itself into my socks. (Hence the county’s tourism slogan: Caithness—putting the quag in mire for over 10,000 years.) We might’ve stayed dry if we’d worn deep-sea diving suits, but I doubt it.

The Bocht, one of those splendid Scottish names that sounds like a Highlander expectorating, is also known as Scotland’s Haven, and it’s quite beautiful, as though Caithness had its very own lagoon. You could imagine it as the headquarters of a James Bond supervillain, with the water sliding back to reveal a rocket launching pad underneath. In fact, as we looked some of the rocks along the sides of the bay seemed disconcertingly to move, until we realised they were basking seals. At such moments time and space cease to apply and all you can do is stand and stare in a dazed sort of wonder. It’s almost—almost—enough to make you forget that your trousers are experiencing a sort of capillary motion and icy peat water is now being transferred up from your socks to your groin in a way that is frankly disturbing.

It’s been a slightly curtailed knitting week, so not a huge amount of progress on the gansey, as we’re off down to visit my family in Northamptonshire again. The good news is, I’ve taken the gansey with me and expect to get it finished in the next few days; the bad news: there won’t be a blog next week. So: happy knitting everyone, and we’ll see you when we get back.

Scotland’s Haven

Gansey Nation will return on Monday 23 October.

Scotland, Week 8: 2 October

Here’s the good news: my right eye’s been given the all-clear by the optician, who says there’s nothing to worry about (other than not actually being able to read with it). I went back on Friday and he dilated my pupils like a Welsh wizard practicing owl transformations, and then he took a scan of the retina.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an image of your retina blown up on a big screen? I’m not sure I’d recommend it. Mine was a veined reddish pink globe, like a Hubble snapshot of Mars, with a large white pimple rising from the surface where it meets the optic nerve, as though Olympus Mons was covered with an unseasonable fall of snow: apparently my eyes are so deep (the reason I’m so shortsighted), the retina doesn’t quite stretch all the way round and there’s a bald patch. Anyway, everything looked fine and the macular, where all the important visiony stuff happens, and which he thought might have been torn by a vitreal detachment, was undamaged. So I can relax. It’s probably just debris blurring my sight. (Probably: there’s that word again.)

It’s a huge relief, of course, especially as the operation to fix a macular tear involves replacing the jelly in the eye; afterwards you have to keep your face horizontal with the ground at all times, even when sleeping, for 2-3 weeks, to keep the pressure on. I’d toyed with buying a magnifying glass so I could pretend I was a detective looking for clues, or telling people I was desperately shy or afraid of ceilings; but none of these seemed quite satisfactory.

A redshank puts its best foot forward

Well, as David Bowie almost observed, I sat right down, waiting for the gift of sight and knitting. I’ve finished the first sleeve and started the second, even unto the end of the first (tree) panel. Incidentally, you’ll notice the sleeves have roll-back cuffs for the wearer to adjust according to preference. A fortnight should see it finished now.

Stroma

In parish news, Christmas has come early this year with a splendid red gansey by the indefatigable Judit. It’s a very effective combination of chevrons and diamonds and is going to be a Christmas present for some very lucky person. Congratulations as ever to Judit!

And now I find I’m looking at things slightly differently. It’s as if I’ve got new eyes. I sound like those friends I left behind in the seventies: I feel as though I could count every leaf on a tree (this is windy Caithness, mind: the maximum this time of year is about three), or see every blade of grass in a verge. I know it’ll wear off soon (it’s started already), but while it lasts it’s as though the whole world just got closer, sharper, in high definition; almost as though it made sense.

It was David Bowie who asked, “Don’t you wonder sometimes / ‘Bout sound and vision?” Well, sometimes, David, yes: sometimes I really do…

Scotland, Week 7: 25 September

Every now and again life throws something at you that’s so unexpected it knocks you completely off balance. Imagine your life partner of thirty years telling you over the morning toast and coffee that they’re really an alien from Kepler 186f, before pulling off their face mask to reveal a squid-like horror of rippling tentacles and slime. Or England winning at cricket. That sort of thing: you didn’t see it coming and it takes a while for all the pieces of your world to settle back into place. That’s kind of where I am just now.

I went to the optician’s for an eye exam last week. I like opticians, I like the routine and the reassurance. I sat in the chair, feeling totally relaxed. With my left eye I breezed through the chart, rattling off every line. Then came the right’s turn—and time just seemed to stop around me. I couldn’t read a single letter. There was just a smudge where the letters ought to be. “Take your time,” the optician said casually, but I could hear the edge in his voice. “How many letters can you read?” I stared at where I knew the chart had to be. But I could see none of them.

Duncansby Stacks

Well: it’s probably just a chunk of debris in the centre of my eye, which should break up over time of its own accord. But we won’t know for sure till I go back next week and he can make a thorough examination. Meanwhile I’m spending a lot of time looking at things with my left eye covered up, like a trainee pirate; and if I concentrate I can see a tiny splodge shimmering in the centre of my vision like one of those energy clouds that used to give Captain Kirk so much trouble on Star Trek. Strange how something so small can cast such a large shadow.

At least it’s not (touch wood) affected my ability to knit, and I’m over halfway down the first sleeve. The size of the top panel was determined by the height of the centre tree, and I decided to make the diamonds in the centre panel shorter than their equivalents on the body or they’d have looked out of proportion to the rest. (The zigzags and plain panels are exactly the same as they were on the body.)

So now I’m filling time by brushing off my pirate jokes (Why did the pirate refuse to say ‘Aye aye, sir’? —Because he only had one eye…); and now England seem to be winning at cricket and I’m left wondering where on earth I left my face mask…

Scotland, Week 6: 18 September

At the risk of repeating myself, the crinkly bits round the edge of Caithness really are stunning. (Inland we’ve got Europe’s largest blanket peat bog, some 4,000 acres of pure squelchiness; but while that’s impressive as a statistic, and very handy if you’re looking to dispose of the bodies, it’s not quite so jaw-dropping to look at.)

I’ve mentioned before that just a couple of miles south of Wick lies the castle of Old Wick, one of Scotland’s oldest, dating from the 1100s. All that’s left now is the location, perched on the sliver of rock forming a geo, or inlet, overlooking the North Sea, and the tower, rising above the landscape like the conning tower of a submarine, as though Celtic technology was more advanced than we’d imagined and an Iron Age vessel had been marooned there after a particularly exciting high tide, and been left to petrify down the ages.

A short walk south from Old Wick along the clifftops takes you to another marvel: a stone arch anchored to the cliffs like a flying buttress, and I like to think that God was a bit concerned about the ability of the land to take the strain, and so brought in the same master masons who built the gothic cathedrals of medieval Europe to shore it up, just to be on the safe side. You’d never know it was there—there’re no signposts, and it can only be seen from a certain angle to the south—and the thought of innocently strolling across onto it and then looking down has haunted my waking dreams ever since. I’m not sure if its correct name is Brig o’ Stack or Brig o’ Trams (there seems some ambiguity on the subject), or even Brig o’ Death Plummet; but coming across it as you round the headland feels like you’ve just won the landscape lottery.

Castle of Old Wick

In gansey news, I have now finished the front as well as the back, joined the shoulders and completed the collar: just the two sleeves to go (more on this next week). I decided on a “rig ‘n’ fur” (or “ridge and furrow”) shoulder, partly because I’m a sucker for the way the ladder at either side seamlessly integrates into the shoulder ridges, and partly because I like the way the cast-off row of a 3-needle bind-off becomes just another ridge, and disappears. Because the neckline is indented, I replaced the third tree in the pattern (see last week’s photo) with a little starette.

In the meantime I plan to pack up my troubles in my old kit bag, take a trip inland and drown them in the peat bog. As the old saying goes, what happens in Caithness, stays in Caithness—usually because the road’s blocked at Berriedale and the trains aren’t running…

Gansey Nation

Scotland, Weeks 10-11: 23 October

Scotland, Week 9: 9 October

Scotland, Week 8: 2 October

Scotland, Week 7: 25 September

Scotland, Week 6: 18 September

Recent Posts

Blogroll

Caithness