Filey – Mrs Hunter’s Pattern: Week 9 – 27 June

Last Tuesday was the Longest Day—no, not the solstice, though it was that as well—when we were scheduled to fly to Paris for a couple of days. And (spoiler alert), scheduled is the operative word here. I was due to attend a workshop on archiving records of nuclear waste, was even going to give a presentation; and the powers that be, having a pretty good idea of how I feel about travelling anywhere further away than, say, Thurso, had invited Margaret to accompany me, on condition we paid the cost of her flights. So it was that we approached the trip with a mixture of dread and anticipation: that is to say, I was dreading it and Margaret wasn’t. Reader, we got as far as Inverness.

Valerian

You may have noticed that Britain is currently in the grip of a sort of collective travel omnishambles, with rail strikes, airport delays and flight cancellations. Our original return flight had already been cancelled, causing a lot of stress finding an alternative at a week’s notice. Well, we drove down to Inverness airport, checking our phones for any alerts that might indicate trouble. Nada. Then, just as we set foot inside the terminal, we, along with all our fellow travellers, were told that the flight was running about three hours late. This meant that we would miss our connecting flight, resulting in a 24-hour stopover at Bristol, and I’d miss the workshop. (On the plus side, we were given £3 vouchers for refreshments, which, given airport prices, meant we could put down a deposit on a cheese sandwich.) We were encouraged to hang on for as long as possible in hopes our connecting flight would also be delayed, but as this turned out to be the only flight on the entire network that was departing on time, after four hours we admitted defeat and drove all the way back home. Where, adding insult to injury, we had to unpack.

Yellow Flag Iris

If there is a silver lining—which I am not at present prepared to admit—it’s meant I’ve got more knitting done this week than I’d expected. And at least I’ve finished the pattern section of the sleeve, which means that, for the foreseeable, cables are no longer part of my life. (All I have to do now is iron the kinks out of my fingers.) As ever, once the second sleeve is underway it really looks like a jumper, and what a striking pattern this is: the photos in the books don’t do it justice.

St Fergus’ in the fog

I spent part of the time at the airport chatting to a French lady booked on the same flight as we, who also had to be in Paris next day (“But I ‘ave a plumbeur coming tomorreau!”). She was understandably inclined to take the pessimistic view—to be fair, Inverness airport can have this effect at the best of times—and her opinions on the current state of the world would might caused even the prophet Jeremiah to urge her to lighten up a bit. In particular she deplored what was happening in her own country, how people had become selfish and no one cared for their neighbours any more: “France used to be a great country,” she sighed, “but now eet ees just sheet!”