Gansey Nation

The European definition of an English summer is, apparently, three days of sunny weather followed by a thunderstorm; but what they’d make of Caithness in July one can only guess.

For it’s the height of summer here—the hay is being cut in the fields, baled and shrink-wrapped into what look like ugly black plastic bin liners; the lush, grassy meadows are filled with sheep, innocently thinking what lucky little sheep they are to be so well fed; and it’s raining—though there’s no wind today, so we’ve got that fine Scotch mist that hangs in the air like breath, or low cloud, or a traditional British power shower.

Wick Town Hall
15 July 2016

It’s rained a lot. Usually the rain up here is propelled by gale-force winds, so that even fine drops hit you like frozen peas fired from a blunderbuss; but this week we’ve just had downpours. A pool has developed outside the library: it’s now so deep, and it’s been there so long, that I suspect it of having its own Watcher, like the many-tentacled horror that lay in wait for Frodo outside the gates of Moria. (On Tuesday I saw two little girls step incautiously close; I turned away and when I looked back they’d disappeared; all that was visible was ripples spreading across the surface of the water, a few solitary bubbles and a library card.)

Castle Sinclair Girnigoe and Noss Head Lighthouse, and two soggy walkers.

The ground is waterlogged. Much of Caithness is swampy, boggy marshland, the land lying on the water table like algae floating on a pond: in the field behind our house a couple of cyclists have pitched a tent, and are now settling in for an exciting evening of, ah, well, settling in for the evening. In the half hour since they started their tent is already noticeably lower; I just hope they can swim.

The Carnival has come to town

In gansey news, I’m delighted to say that I’ve almost finished the current project: the first sleeve is complete, and the second sleeve is all but. I should finish the knitting perhaps on Thursday or Friday. (Because it’s been fashioned out of recycled yarn the darning in of ends will take longer than usual—up to five joins or frayed threads per 100g ball. Shall I let you in on a secret? I’m not looking forward to it at all.) It’s been great to rediscover navy yarn, though; I just wish I could see it better to knit in poor light.

And now it’s time to go do something constructive like watch the cricket highlights on television—either that or, seeing the tent is now listing to starboard, I could go and throw those poor campers a lifebelt…

When I was at university I studied medieval history and one of the things that caught my attention—one of the very few, as my tutors would tell you—was the random outbreak of irrational behaviour across communities, such as the famous dancing sickness. Whole villages and towns in France and Germany would suddenly, without obvious cause, start to dance, like extras in—I was going to say an Ingmar Bergman movie, but maybe Fred Astaire is nearer the mark—and the dance would last for days.

Because historians hate to leave things unexplained, the consensus in the early 1980s was that this was because they’d eaten bread contaminated by a fungus, a malady known as “ergotism”. (Of course, I knew this to be nonsense, because as a student I had first-hand knowledge of eating mouldy bread, and no one saw me or my flatmates dancing—running in an awkward crouch to the seat of ease, yes; dancing, not so much.)

Grand Union Canal and Northants countryside

More recent theories include a sort of mass psychosis, religious mania, or even (my favourite) “shared stress”. But I gradually developed my own alternative theory, and I think it holds good: sometimes people, and societies, just go batshit crazy for no reason.

But enough about Britain’s EU referendum.

We’re back in Caithness after a restful, tranquil and delightful visit with my family in their canalside home in rural Northamptonshire. “O”, as my good friend Keats once said, “for a beaker full of the warm South”; and it really was warm. Ever since we got back we’ve been telling people tales of a land so temperate the inhabitants go around without pullovers or thermal underwear, only to be waved aside in knowing disbelief, as though we’d tried to sell them shares in a diamond mine in Radnorshire.

Not a reflecting pool – Northampton Arm of the Grand Union Canal

I didn’t take the gansey with me, as it’s hard for me to keep track of a pattern and socialise at the same time (or socialise at all, to be fair). Instead I took a cone of Frangipani bottle green and started the next project, getting most of the ribbing completed. I’ll set it aside till the navy one is done.

I’ve still done a fair bit of knitting on the navy gansey since the last post, mind you, mostly because I came back from Northants rotten with cold: I’ve finished the back, joined the shoulders, knit the collar and picked up the stitches round the armhole to begin the first sleeve. You’ll observe that the collar is a traditional, non-shaped one, front and back exactly alike. (I must admit, I think ganseys do look better with this sort of neckline; and if it wasn’t for the fact that they make me feel as though I’m being throttled by a malignant boa constrictor I’d probably make more like this.)

Fireworks in flower form

And now I feel I could do with cheering up after all the dismal news of the last few days. I’ve got some mouldy bread in the cupboard; anybody feel like a dance…?

PS – Happy 4th July to all our American readers! [There has been some talk of the referendum date, June 23rd, being Britain’s own independence day, the day we seceded from ourselves. Well; so long as there’s fireworks…] To mark the occasion I’ve put most of my novels till Friday on a free promotion on Amazon (US and UK). Hurry while stocks last…

I read a headline in the Guardian newspaper online this week, which stated that the French finance minister had warned that if we vote to leave the EU it would result in the “Guernseyfication” of Britain.

Well, I thought, at last! Finally someone has recognised the importance of the gansey-knitting vote, and I read on eagerly to discover more about how circular knitting would replace sports in the national curriculum, with modern languages dropped in favour of teaching three needle bind-offs. Hitherto a staunch member of the Remain camp, but scarred as a child by the physical and mental torture of cross-country running and irregular verbs, I prepared to switch my vote.

Black Guilemot in the harbour

Imagine my disappointment when I realised that all he meant was that Britain would be as important internationally as the island of Guernsey. Quel—as we students of modern languages say—dommage. No wonder people have lost faith in politics.

Oh, well. We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things, as the poet said—in this case to a navy gansey with a rather fetching leaf pattern. I have finished the back and am about to embark on the front, which will (probably) be identical, so if you like you can go on holiday for the next fortnight and not feel you’ve missed anything important.

Front garden foxgloves

This is one of those designs that when the light catches it just so the pattern stands out like medieval pillow mounds in a field illuminated by the low winter sun, and what seemed like random bumps in the landscape suddenly reveal themselves as a definite pattern, snapping into clarity like one of those 3D magic eye puzzles. (Of course it means when you wear it you have to keep shifting position through the day so the sun is always coming in over your left shoulder, but that’s a small price to pay, I feel.)

This week we received a lovely visit from Song and Chris of this parish. Unfortunately the weather more closely resembled someone spraying a fire hose into a wind tunnel than the kind of thing you might expect if you looked up “summer” in a dictionary. The wind and rain at John O’Groats came hard from the north—due north, so that any tall straight object (lampposts, a phone booth, and once, when he stopped moving, Chris himself) acquired a curious thin, straight “shadow” of dry ground stretching away southwards.

Wool on the hoof

There’s a scene in the Lord of the Rings where the quest is defeated on the mountain of Caradhras by malign storms of snow and bitter winds—I wonder if Tolkien ever visited Caithness in June…? But if nothing else it reminded us why ganseys were invented; also, of course, why so many people have moved elsewhere.

In parish notices, I’ve been contacted by Tina of the Cornish Gansey Company. Their strapline is “heritage knits to make, wear and share”, and that’s exactly what they offer, traditional and contemporary patterns and kits, as well as designs by Liz Lovick and others. Please check out their website, and pass the word around: and we wish Tina every success.

Finally this week, Lois has sent me pictures of a very elegant lace beaded shawl she’s just completed, whose colours, style and pattern remind me of very expensive things I’ve seen draped over mannequins in Cape Cod boutiques. A doffing of the cap is due to Lois for such a splendid creation, and many congratulations.