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 It was a cold, wet, dreary autumn afternoon, and the three Fates, rulers of men’s destinies – let’s call them Snap, Crackle and Pop – were bored. Earlier, they’d tricked some angels into trying to dance on the head of a pin, it being one of the modern rounded ones so they kept flying off, but it was some hours now since the angels had left in disgust.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Snap said suddenly. “Why don’t we tribulate that Reid chap some more?”
Pop frowned. “Reid, Reid… Didn’t we give him boils and kill all his goats?”
“No, that was Job.”
“Oh yes, the one James Bond electrocuted in Fort Knox.”
 Waves breaking over the lighthouse Crackle sighed. “No, that was Oddjob. This one’s the knitting feller. Why, the last few years alone we’ve given him macular degeneration, a sinus infection, a chest infection and an elbow infection.”
“And don’t,” Snap added, “forget the three cancer scares.”
“Three?” Pop asked.
“Yeah, you remember: vocal cords, lymph nodes and thyroid. Remember when they tried to do that biopsy via the throat and we nudged the doctor’s elbow and triggered that epileptic fit?”
“Oh yeah. Man, that was funny. I was eating breakfast, I laughed so hard I had cornflakes coming out my nose. The last time I saw projectile vomiting like that was an anniversary screening of The Exorcist.”
“Here, hand me that medical dictionary,” Snap said. “There must be something fun we haven’t given him yet. Let’s see, A, A… anthrax, hmm, maybe not.” He looked up. “What about amnesia?”
Pop shook his head. “No point. The guy already can’t remember what day of the week it is, give him amnesia he’s not even gonna notice.”
 High seas at South Head “Got it!” Snap cried. “Anaemia! He hasn’t had that yet.”
Crackle leaned forward and, in a burst of nominative determinism, loudly cracked his knuckles. “Well, he has now…”
All of which rather explains why I shall be visiting Inverness hospital this week for a battery of tests. For it turns out that yes, I do indeed have anaemia, so much so that the doctor who gave me the news advised me to avoid unnecessary exercise like walking or driving until I can see the consultant on Tuesday. On the plus side, at least it explains why I’ve been so tired and run down lately. Hopefully it’s an easy fix, but first they have to try to pin down what’s causing it, and why it’s come on so suddenly. In the meantime, I’m counting my blessings. After all, I suppose, at least it’s not anthrax…
 Happy Halloween!
 For a time there, I thought we might get away with it. Storm Babet had barrelled in on Wednesday night, winds up around the 50-70 mph mark, shaking the windows and rattling the walls like someone taking Bob Dylan way too literally, and three days later it was still at it, but by that point there had been surprisingly little rain. Then Saturday afternoon the rain arrived, and boy did it make up for lost time. As I discovered to my cost, standing outside got you soaked to the skin in a matter of seconds. For a brief moment I thought of copying Gene Kelly and start singin’ and dancin’ in the rain, but Gene didn’t have to contend with winds like the exhaust of a jumbo jet; besides, there weren’t any policemen around to see me, so what would be the point?
 The day before the storm Of course, it’s always windy in Caithness, if not usually this windy. That’s the main reason we don’t get midges: the little beggars can never get a foothold because as soon as they poke their tiny noses out the front door, whoosh, next thing they know they’re in Scandinavia. (I never quite recovered from reading that midges make their bites with minuscule teeth. I’d always assumed they operated like mosquitos using the jab-and-suck principle, but no: having lacerated the skin, they then roll up their mouthparts into a tube and use that to suck up your blood. Hmm. By coincidence I’ve got a blood test coming tomorrow at the doctors’, and all I can say is, if the nurse makes a sudden dart at my arm with her teeth, I’ll be ready.)
 Wick Outer Harbour on a calm day In parish notices, Penelope has sent in a picture of another cracking gansey. This one is based around patterns from Filey, double moss stitch diamonds flanked with Betty Martin and cables. It’s a classic combination of patterns, and more proof in any were needed that Yorkshire patterns rock. It’s knit in Frangipani Greystone, possibly my favourite Frangipani shade, which really shows the pattern off nicely. Many congratulations to Penelope, and many thanks to her for sharing.
 Masts reflecting in the harbour And now it’s Sunday, the storm has finally passed, and we look out on a drowned world, shining in the weak autumn sun. The fields, those of them that aren’t actually underwater, are waterlogged. Everywhere looks bedraggled. The roads are littered with broken branches, twigs, and leaves, and a new peril has arisen: the flooded roads hide the potholes like camouflage to trap the unwary. Still, water tends to stream off the promontory of Caithness like breakers off the prow of a ship, so I expect it will subside soon. Though I wonder if this what Noah must have felt when he finally made it back to land—relief that it’s over, coupled with dismay at all the tidying up to be done…
 Well, I’m back, as Sam the Hobbit says at the end of The Lord of Rings; but whereas he’d just seen the last of the elves and wizards of Middle Earth sail away to the Undying Lands, I was at a conference in Stockholm, considering issues around archiving records of nuclear waste. And I honestly don’t know which of the two of us, Sam or me, got more emotional in the end.
I knew I was going to like Sweden right from my immigration interview. The lady behind the counter asked me the purpose of my visit, and I told her about the conference. She wrinkled her nose and said, “Waste?” So I explained I was an archivist, and was there to discuss records. “Records, huh?” she said, and gave her computer monitor a dismissive flick of her finger. “So what do you think about these things?” she asked. “Trouble,” I grinned. She slammed her palm down on the desk in delight, and exclaimed, “Finally! Someone who agrees with me!” And with a flourish of her stamp, I was in.
 Margaret visited the museum of the Vasa shipwreck Mind you, I had to wait till my return to Britain for my most surreal conversation. While we were waiting to depart from Heathrow in the departure lounge, I caught my shin (tibialis anterior) the almightiest crack against one of the fold-down tables the chairs at the ends of the rows have. It made quite a hole, and such was the force of the impact, and the intensity of my howl of anguish, several windows shattered, and pigeons took flight to a radius of several miles. Well, a couple of weeks later the wound still looked pretty nasty, so I went to the chemist and asked their opinion. The charming young assistant heard me out, then rather nonplussed me by asking if I had a picture of it with me. “No,” I told her, “but I have brought my leg, if that’s any good…”
Meanwhile, in parish notices, Judit has come up trumps again. This time she’s knit a Flamborough design, taken from page 68 of Rae Compton’s book, a very pleasing combination of open diamonds and double moss stitch, in light blue. It looks great, and, as ever, many thanks and congratulations to Judit for bringing another pattern back to life, and for sharing.
 . . . and went on a tour of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s Old Town GETTING MY EXCUSES IN EARLY
So, let’s get this out there: sure, I’ve almost finished the back but, you may think, that doesn’t seem like a lot of progress for nearly a month’s absence, does it? And you’d be right. But apart from all the time spent conferencing and travelling, I do have a couple of excuses.
 Part of the reading room at the National Archive of Sweden First of all, not only did I come back from Sweden with a lot of happy memories, I also brought back a nasty cold. This flattened me out so much that when I got back, for the best part of a week I didn’t have the energy to even lift my arms enough to knit. (I’m much better now, but I’m still a bit behind the curve.)
The other reason is that, when I did start knitting again, I made a mistake all along a row, but didn’t notice at first. By the time I did spot it, I’d knit another 2.5 inches, i.e., over two days’ worth. I did all the usual things—looked at it from different angles, held it further away, tried shutting one eye—in the hopes it wouldn’t be noticeable. But it was. In these cases, there’s really no alternative but to rip it back and re-do it. So that’s what I did. It hurts at the time, but it’s better than leaving it uncorrected. And, as the poet says, we rise upon the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things. (Still can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner, mind.)
 The wind has a sharp edge that wasn’t there a fortnight ago; the leaves are falling from the trees, the lawn glistens with morning dew, and the skies are filled with migrating birds. Autumn has come to Caithness. This time of year always makes me wonder what it must have been like in Victorian Wick, when mid-September marked the end of the fishing season, so much activity packed into just a few short weeks.
It would all start in late spring, when the great schooners came with their cargoes of wood from the Baltic from which barrels were made and salt to cure the herring. The salt was stored away in cellars, whose gratings can still be seen in the wall below the brae above the inner harbour. Then, around the end of June, when the first reports of shoals of herrings began to come in from the Western isles, the curing yards would be auctioned off to the merchants, or “fish curers”. These merchants owned the boats, many of which were drawn up on the harbour quays over the winter, and which were now lowered into the water.
Gutters at work. (c) Johnston Collection Now people would flock to Wick from all over the Highlands, some of them walking a hundred miles to reach here. The population doubled for these few short weeks to 12,000 souls. The merchants would contract with certain skippers, promising to pay so much per “cran” (the measure for herring) to each crew, usually with whisky and tobacco thrown in, and lodging. The skippers would then hire their crews, up to eight men per boat, mainly family and friends, or people they’d worked with in previous years. Men looking for a berth would gather down by the harbour wall, and the skippers would look them over and hire those they needed to make up the crew. The merchants also recruited teams of gutters, mostly young women or girls, three or four to a team, and signed up coopers to make the barrels.
Wick Harbour c1863. (c)Johnston Collection And then the shoals of herring would reach Caithness. By mid-July, including boats from the Hebrides and Orkney which had followed the herring round the north coast, there might be 1100 fishing boats in Wick harbour. The boats would put out to sea late afternoon, find a likely spot and shoot their nets, and pass the time till the following morning when they’d haul their nets in and return to port. They’d moor at the curing yard of their merchant, and young boys would be paid pennies to go fetch the merchant’s gutters if they weren’t already there. The herrings were tipped out into the great gutting troughs, or farls, and the girls would begin the back-breaking work of gutting and packing the hundreds of fish, sometimes working until it was too dark to see. Meanwhile the merchants would give the skippers a “cran token” for every cran of herring landed.
 Studio portrait of two gutters. (c) Johnston Collection And so it went on, from mid-July to mid-September, every day except Sundays. By early September the quality of the herring was declining, and the shoals were moving south. Within a few weeks the crews would be paid off, the boats hauled back onto the quays, and the “strangers”, as the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were called, would start the long trek home. The skippers would sit down with their merchants and redeem their cran tokens, receiving the agreed amount of cash in exchange. They in turn paid their crews, and everyone would go round the shops and inns paying off their debts; for the whole town ran on credit from the start to the end of the season. And the great schooners came back, bookending it all, filling their holds with barrels of salted herring for the German and Russian markets.
 St Fergus’ from the riverside By the 1880s the system had been transformed as crews had saved up enough money to buy their own boats, new or second-hand, and followed the herring all around the coast, from the Western isles to East Anglia. Fish curers would now bid for each catch as it was landed at the auction mart, as traders still do today (in other ports). But if I had a time machine—and a set of nose plugs—top of my list of places to visit would be Wick in about 1860, just to see the bustle, and the noise, and the fleet of small boats putting out to sea under sail, and to see a whole sub-economy working like a well-oiled machine.
Please note that Margaret and I will be taking a short break, returning on Monday 16th October. We look forward to seeing you all again on the other side.
 So that was summer. Lord, it’s been hot: last week Wick experienced its highest temperature in 68 years. Granted, that was only 25.2c (or 77.4 degrees in old money), but even so it was hot for us. Things were getting serious: I even considered taking off my pullover at one point, but then remembered women and children might be present and refrained.
 Dunbeath Harbour from the south For a marvel it stayed warm into the weekend, so on Saturday we went back to Dunbeath, another former fishing village about half an hour’s drive south of Wick. We’ve usually stayed on the north side of the harbour, but this time we crossed the river and walked south along the shingle beach towards the castle. It really was a glorious day, the blue of the sky merging with the blue of the ocean somewhere around the shimmering horizon. The beach was deserted, save for a British family paddling in the rock pools; we knew they were British, because although we were the only people for several miles, we all looked the other way and pretended we hadn’t seen each other.
 Dunbeath Castle Dunbeath castle had a moment in the spotlight of history during the Civil Wars, when the royalist James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (“wrong but romantic” in the immortal words of 1066 And All That) landed at John o’ Groats from Orkney in March 1650 and, after wasting a few at days at Thurso trying to recruit—the local clans having none of it—marched south to Dunbeath. After a brief resistance the castle was surrendered, on condition that “persons and property should be respected”. Montrose left a garrison there and moved into Sutherland, where he was quickly defeated at the battle of Carbisdale on 27th April. The rising having failed, Dunbeath Castle was retaken by government forces soon after, and it more or less sensibly kept its head down ever since.
 But the day was so hot, even the sea breeze seemed to have wilted. The air was humid and sticky and deathly still. Bees and butterflies tried their best, but after a couple of flowers you could see them lying on their backs, panting, waving their little legs resignedly in the air. So we called it a day, and retreated to the car and modern miracle that is air conditioning. Summer’s all very well for a visit now and then, I thought; but you really wouldn’t want to live there…
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It was a cold, wet, dreary autumn afternoon, and the three Fates, rulers of men’s destinies – let’s call them Snap, Crackle and Pop – were bored. Earlier, they’d tricked some angels into trying to dance on the head of a pin, it being one of the modern rounded ones so they kept flying off, but it was some hours now since the angels had left in disgust.
