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 It was Wick Lifeboat Day on Saturday so we joined the crowds down at the harbour and braved the bunting and watched the Pipe Band. There’s something about the skirl of the pipes—it always makes me want to take the ancestral claymore down from the mantelpiece and engage in a mild spot of border reiving (though as it’s 300 miles to the English border, then again perhaps not).
 It was a cool, grey day, and the strong east wind blowing in off the sea eventually drove us from the quay onto the marina, to visit the Isabella Fortuna, the restored fishing boat belonging to the Wick Society. Now, I’m not much of a lad for boats as a rule—I get seasick in the bath and just looking at choppy water is enough to give me that “elevator going down, lunch coming up” sensation my loved ones have come to dread—but we had to pay our respects to the old girl.
 The Highland dancers warm up While we were admiring the restoration work one of the volunteers came over and engaged us in conversation—recounting tales of sailing her in heavy gales, nine hour journeys that ended up taking over twelve, while I felt my lunchtime croissant rising like mercury in a barometer. Then we got onto the subject of Wick’s “Black Saturday”.
 This was 19 August 1848. A sudden overnight storm had caught the fishing fleet unawares and as the boats desperately ran back for the safety of the harbour many were wrecked in the bay, their crews drowned, and all in sight of land while their loved ones looked on helplessly. 37 men died here that day.
It was a terrible event, and I’ll talk more about it another time; but I think about it sometimes when I look at the cheeky grins on the faces of the fishermen in their ganseys, staring back at us down the lens of time in the old photographs. It was because of Black Saturday that more seaworthy vessels like the Isabella were built, with full decks; and it was also the reason Wick got its first lifeboat—beginning a sequence leading all the way to the one we celebrated on Saturday.
 Wick Lifeboat Now, you may not have noticed, but there’s a new gansey this week. It’s another Wick pattern from the Johnston Collection (well, it would be rude not to), which also appears in “Fishing For Ganseys” on page 25. I’m using navy yarn from a very old sweater I never liked, which Margaret ripped out for me and de-kinked. It’s 368 stitches in the round (or 46 inches at 8 stitches to the inch.) I’m thinking of doing a traditional non-indented neckline and high collar.
 Margaret was also kind enough to chart out the pattern for me and knit a swatch while I was busy finishing her damson gansey. As far as I know this is another pattern that has never been publicly charted before, the leaf effect really effective in navy blue and a nice variant on the more usual herringbone.
Finally this week, I’m going to leave you with a great quote I came across (it’s an old joke, apparently, but was new to me, and has the ring of truth). Question: Why will the sun never set on the British Empire? Answer: Because God doesn’t trust the British in the dark…
 And here it is—our homage to Fergus’s gansey, washed and blocked and ready to go, the patterns properly visible at last. (And bearing in mind that the original is even more detailed, and more finely-knit, than this, you really have to doff your cap to the original knitter.) You know, the more old photos of Wick fishermen I see, the more convinced I am that Caithness provides a “missing link” between the Scottish Fleet patterns of the mainland and those of the Hebrides.
I read with sadness this week that Dave Swarbrick, the great English folk fiddler, had died aged 75. Other major cultural icons, from Bowie to Muhammad Ali, sad losses all, have naturally dominated the headlines; but it’s the passing of Swarb, as he was affectionately known, I find, that has touched me most deeply.
 His music has been part of the soundtrack of my life for over 40 years. I saw him play live any number of times: in small, intimate folk clubs with Martin Carthy and Simon Nicol, or at the Fairport Convention reunion festivals at Cropredy, near where I grew up. (The abiding image of his playing was, apart from the effortless ability, the way he kept jerking his head around, chin jutting out, as he tried desperately but unsuccessfully to prevent ash from his cigarette falling onto his violin; well, that and the vast round of drinks on a nearby tray…)
Thurso from Holborn Head Anyway, in honour of his memory, here’s a link to the classic Fairport track Crazy Man Michael which he wrote with Richard Thompson, from their 1969 album Liege and Lief. The fiddle is perfectly understated, accompanying but never dominating, giving the singer (the late, great Sandy Denny) and the lyrics room to breathe. Other tracks demonstrate his skill more flamboyantly, but this shows how delicate and sensitive he could be.
Well; the world is a little bit smaller today. RIP, Swarb.
 Finally this week, a historical anecdote that made me smile. It’s from Iain Sutherland’s book on the Caithness fishing industry. He tells of a pompous harbour trustee in the 1920s who used to stand self-importantly down at Wick harbour, as if overseeing all the activity, but really not having a clue. One day a tourist searching for a public convenience came up to him and asked if he knew where the Urinal was. The trustee scanned the crowded docks lined with boats before asking, “Is that a motor boat or a drifter…?
 As I look out my window fog is blowing in like cannon smoke, obliterating distance and mercifully blocking the view of Tescos. It’s the sea fret, or haar—a word it’s almost impossible to say aloud without sounding like Ahab on the Pequod, or the Sea Captain from the Simpsons, or some other salty dog (“What’s that dank, chilly mist that rolls in from the sea, Captain Silver?” “Haar, Jim lad”).
 Like the balancing mechanism of a clock, this is Caithness’s way of ensuring we don’t all get sunstroke: any time the sun shines for more about 20 minutes, in rolls the haar. Sometimes living up here is the nearest thing to a nuclear winter outside a Stephen King novel—I was going to say, without the cannibalism; but as I don’t go down the meat aisle in Tescos all that often, who knows?
 We drove down to look at Sarclet, an abandoned harbour a few miles south of Wick, in the fog. Usually I stand on the cliffs and gaze longingly out to sea as if I was modelling an exotic aftershave, Guano Pour Homme. But the haar was swirling in and so we watched the seabirds instead, wheeling around the cove from their nests below us, appearing out of the mist and disappearing again as though Caithness had evolved a new species of gull, one with its own cloaking device.
 Sarclet is a wonderfully atmospheric place, the past almost close enough to touch. The buildings have fallen into ruin but the harbour, known as The Haven, endures. Shards of splintered rock rising from the ocean, churning white foam at the base; nesting gulls, a cliff face dappled with primroses and, if you’re lucky, an occasional passing seal. It’s a haven in more senses than one.
 Meanwhile, in gansey news, I’ve finished the first sleeve, and am well embarked on the second. Maybe I’ll finish it this week, if I put in the hard yards, maybe not. Here’s a chart of the sleeve pattern again, a slight simplification from the original, but close enough for jazz.
Incidentally, thinking of Captain Ahab, I wonder if anyone has ever tried turning Moby-Dick into a Christmas pantomime? It’s just that I’ve been reading the book recently and can’t get this image of the ending out of my mind: Ahab calls to the audience, “Hast seen the White Whale?” and the audience cries back, “It’s behind you!”
Funny thing, getting old. I’m observing myself age, like a scientific  experiment, monitoring the changes year by year: observing the gradual emergence of my scalp in the barber’s mirror, shining pinkly like a Japanese mountaintop fringed in cloud; not being able to see my toes past my stomach in much the same way that I can’t see Australia owing to the curvature of the Earth; and of course, wondering why no one writes music with really good tunes any more, dammit.
All these symptoms, however disappointing, are hardly unexpected. (As Philip Larkin, contender for Britain’s Least Optimistic Poet, once put it, “This is the first thing / I have understood / Time is the echo of an axe / Within a wood.”) But then there’s the whole mind thing, which is a little unsettling.
 Last week I took a bath, towelled myself off and, after footling about a bit in the bedroom, started downstairs. I was vaguely aware that something wasn’t quite right—a sort of airiness around those parts of my anatomy that aren’t normally exposed to playful breezes—until, on looking down, I discovered that I had absent-mindedly neglected to get dressed.
Now, I know I’m not alone here: the great Archimedes, upon discovering the principle of displacement, had a similar bath time experience: and he gets his own Wikipedia page. All the same, when I get to the stage where I have to remember to check I’m wearing pants before leaving the bedroom, I fear a line has been crossed.
Ah, well, I have at least been making progress on the gansey (or “emergency modesty blanket” as I now like to think of it). The pattern on the first sleeve is completed and I’m well underway on the plain section to the cuff, decreasing two stitches every 7th row. This sleeve should be finished by next week’s blog.
 In parish notices, the ganseys come thick and fast. This week Karen has sent me a picture of a very natty gansey based on Gladys Thompson’s Whitby patterns, with an elegantly shaped neck and a really pleasing combination of cables and diamonds and moss. (What did I say? Yorkshire ganseys—they’re the cat’s pyjamas, as Bertie Wooster would say.) Many congratulations to her.
And as for aging—well, I’m interested to read that some theoretical physicists have questioned whether time actually exists. (Though, as others have pointed out, they’re still suspiciously punctual for meals.) I like the idea that everything that has ever existed, or will exist, will endure simultaneously as long as the universe does, and that our consciousness just rides the rails of time like a runaway train. But if I have to get old, well, at least it’s better than the alternative; which is, to quote Philip “Mr Chuckles” Larkin again, “the only end of age”…
 Last weekend we went off to look at something old. (Though it occurs to me now that in future I could achieve the same result just by staying at home and staring at my reflection in the mirror…)
Just up the coast between Thurso and Dounreay lie the ruins of St Mary’s Chapel, set back from cliffs overlooking the Pentland Firth. It’s about a mile’s walk from the road: you go along a track and then slither down a steep path to the valley floor where a river tumbles over rocks before spilling into the sea. You cross the river by a footbridge and clamber up onto the cliffs on the other side. At the top the land falls away and you see the whole vast heaving ocean spread out before you.
It’s a stunning location, and you’d get a real feeling of isolation and atmosphere if someone hadn’t carelessly plonked a bloody great technology park next to it. Still, you can always turn your back on the future and lose yourself in the past—it’s what I do for a living, after all.
It’s the oldest building in the north Highlands, though no one knows how old: maybe 12th century, maybe 9th. Only the nave survives from the original chapel, as it was substantially rebuilt in 1871. In other words, it keeps its mysteries: and that feels entirely appropriate. To walk there now under the burnished sun, hearing the crash of the waves on the rocks far below, gulls riding the wind as through straining to an invisible leash, at the wrong end of God’s microscope, it doesn’t just seem right that there’s a place of worship here: it feels inevitable.
 Meanwhile, as you’ll have noticed, the gansey marches on: I have joined the shoulders and knit the collar, leaving a neck width of about a third the width of the jumper, as was traditional. And as I sometimes do, I’ve picked up the stitches round both armholes, and left one on some holding yarn while I finish the other sleeve; the shameful reason is simply that I don’t enjoy picking up stitches, and it’s good to get all the bad things out of the way in one go…
In parish notices, the ganseys keep on coming: this week I’ve been sent pictures by Elisabeth of a splendid and unusual gansey featuring cables and a lattice pattern (more photos on her Ravelry project page). Congratulations to Elisabeth on a striking and original design!
Finally this week, I attended a job fair for the nuclear archive and got talking to a gentleman who used to work at Dounreay, the nuclear facility just up the coast from the chapel. He told me a great story. One time, a team of four or five guys were tasked with cleaning out an installation; it was a totally enclosed space, so they had to wear ear protectors, which also served as headphones. One of the guys discovered they could all be hooked up to a walkman, so they could all listen to the same music at the same time. So they put on a tape of Jeff Wayne’s classic album of The War of the Worlds and got to work, singing along.
The supervisor came in unnoticed at the point on the album when the Martian war machines utter their famous war cry, “Ulla! Ulla!”—whereupon the guys all joined in, shouting, “Ulla! Ulla!”—totally freaking out the supervisor, who of course was unable to hear the music. All he saw was a bunch of busy guys suddenly pausing in their work as if at some signal, raising their heads, and shouting this strange cry in unison. And all this in a nuclear research establishment, too; he must have felt he’d stepped straight into an episode of Doctor Who…!
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It was Wick Lifeboat Day on Saturday so we joined the crowds down at the harbour and braved the bunting and watched the Pipe Band. There’s something about the skirl of the pipes—it always makes me want to take the ancestral claymore down from the mantelpiece and engage in a mild spot of border reiving (though as it’s 300 miles to the English border, then again perhaps not).
It was a cool, grey day, and the strong east wind blowing in off the sea eventually drove us from the quay onto the marina, to visit the Isabella Fortuna, the restored fishing boat belonging to the Wick Society. Now, I’m not much of a lad for boats as a rule—I get seasick in the bath and just looking at choppy water is enough to give me that “elevator going down, lunch coming up” sensation my loved ones have come to dread—but we had to pay our respects to the old girl.
This was 19 August 1848. A sudden overnight storm had caught the fishing fleet unawares and as the boats desperately ran back for the safety of the harbour many were wrecked in the bay, their crews drowned, and all in sight of land while their loved ones looked on helplessly. 37 men died here that day.
Margaret was also kind enough to chart out the pattern for me and knit a swatch while I was busy finishing her damson gansey. As far as I know this is another pattern that has never been publicly charted before, the leaf effect really effective in navy blue and a nice variant on the more usual herringbone.
And here it is—our homage to Fergus’s gansey, washed and blocked and ready to go, the patterns properly visible at last. (And bearing in mind that the original is even more detailed, and more finely-knit, than this, you really have to doff your cap to the original knitter.) You know, the more old photos of Wick fishermen I see, the more convinced I am that Caithness provides a “missing link” between the Scottish Fleet patterns of the mainland and those of the Hebrides.
