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 Let’s start with the jumper for a change: the Flamborough gansey is finished, washed and blocked and ready to go. When they’re being knitted, ganseys bunch up rather so you don’t always get an accurate view of how they’re going to look; but equally, immediately after blocking can be equally misleading. They need a couple of days to relax, to find their natural shape. I’m very pleased with how this one’s turned out, though really, it’s such a good pattern you can hardly miss. Now there’s just that anxious period between completion and discovering if it fits the intended victim recipient…
 It’s been finished none too soon, either. In short, it’s gansey weather in England just now. You see, the jet stream usually lies somewhere over the middle of Scotland at this time of year, which means that the Central Belt and England enjoy long, hot summers, while the north Highlands get the kind of weather you see in a disaster movie. Not this year: the jet stream’s gone south for its holidays, so we’re getting a lovely summer and everyone else isn’t.
 It’s been so dry that last weekend’s bonfire is still smouldering, so that it looks like we have a slumbering dragon down by the river. (“So, we are come to the desolation of the dragon.” “No, that’s just the way Wick normally looks, sorry.”) Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want anyone’s holiday ruined. But the BBC national news sent a reporter down to a seaside town in England last week, who filed a report that basically it was wet and windy, but the day before had been quite nice. (Something to bear in mind the next time the Licence Fee comes up for discussion.)
 It occurred to me that if England’s going to get our weather, it might like to borrow a few Scots words to describe it. So in a spirit of brotherly schadenfreude, I looked some up: “dreich” (wet and miserable), “drookit” (soaked to the skin), “greetie” (showery), “smirr” (drizzly rain), “blirtie” (sporadic gusts of wind and rain), “gouling” (stormy winds), “deasie” (to be cold and miserable) and “flindrikin” (small bouts of snow, though it sounds more like a wizard’s cat). Funnily enough, there were far fewer words for nice, sunny days like we’re having now…
 Finally this week, top of the bill is another splendid gansey from Judit of the flashing needles. It’s Filey pattern taken from Rae Compton’s book (pages 66-67), alternating moss and purl diamonds together with double moss stitch panels. It’s a grand pattern and it shows up particularly well in the red-violet yarn she’s used. Many congratulations again to Judit, and again, many thanks for sharing it with us.
 It’s been a week bookended by explosions and drifting clouds of smoke. To start at the end, last night was the finish of gala week, which always culminates in a very pretty firework display down by the river. For once the weather was kind and sunset elided into a clear night of soft blue skies, against which the dark shapes of birds flitted to their nests, the perfect stillness of the night broken only by the pounding thump-thump-thump of the funfair. We watched the fireworks from our upstairs window, breathing in the drifting smoke from the huge bonfire, watching coloured flashes fill the sky and jumping at the bangs. The only problem is, it’s practically August, and here in the far north of Scotland summer tends to leave with the fair. Autumn is just around the corner: the wind has a subtle edge and even the warmest days have a feeling of impermanence.
 Getting ready for the bonfire The week opened with the demise of our microwave oven, which yielded up its spirit accompanied by a loud buzzing noise, like a bluebottle trapped in Metallica’s sound system, together with a cloud of acrid smoke. It occurred to me that this might be a special feature by the manufacturers, if they were Scandinavian, and that each oven departs this world by providing its own Viking funeral; I suppose I should be grateful that it didn’t ritually disembowel and incinerate me as well.
 I’ve been amusing myself by imagining how various writers might have described it. So far I’ve got Dickens (“It was the best of ovens, it was the worst of ovens”), Tolstoy (“All working microwaves are alike; each broken microwave is broken in its own way”), Jane Austen (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an archivist in possession of a broken microwave, must be in want of a replacement”) and Tolkien (“In a hole in a recycling bin lived a broken microwave”). Then there’s Camus: “Our microwave oven died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” Or possibly even Kafka—”As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a broken microwave oven”.
So now it’s off to the home for abandoned microwaves to find a new one, always a depressing experience as you walk up and down rows of cages, with hopeful ovens wagging their little tails and barking optimistically, hoping you’ll take it home. I just hope the new one’s been housetrained. Meanwhile I can only make this appeal, in the immortal words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ovens…”
 “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” Not my words, but those of St Paul marvelling at how swiftly his new windows were installed in 54 AD. And so it was with us—maybe not in the twinkling of an eye (400 milliseconds, apparently), but still, fitting sixteen windows and a door in eight working days is definitely going it some.
 It was done with sort of military precision I usually associate with the Royal Engineers building a bridge, or a colony of ants making off with my devilled eggs at a picnic. It was like being sacked by the ancient Assyrians, if the ancient Assyrians had thought to bring their own vacuum cleaners and tidied up after themselves. We knew some of the old wood was rotting, but the biggest surprise was when the workmen uncovered a large wasps’ nest inside one of the frames (though presumably our surprise was nothing compared with that of the wasps). “They were really loud, couldn’t you hear the buzzing?” the foreman asked, little realising I’d just put it down to tinnitus.
 Grasses in the Wind In gansey news I am well on the way to finishing the gansey, just the bottom of the second sleeve and the cuff to go. At such times I always think of the wise words of the Constable of France in Henry V, an experienced knitter: “A very little little let us do, and all is done.” It will be touch and go to finish this by the end of the month—it’s a meaningless deadline anyway—but the little left to do really is kinda little.
 Meadowsweet One consequence of getting double glazing is that the world seems quieter and further away. The noise of the funfair is reduced to dull pounding far off in the distance, like washing your hair in the bath while listening to Led Zeppelin. It’s already less draughty, too, as you’d hope; last year on windy days the bedroom was so well-ventilated blowflies got discouraged by the headwind. Unfortunately, the rest of the house now looks a bit shabby in comparison. There’s an old “The Broons” cartoon where the family buy a new cushion and end up having to redecorate the entire house, as each thing they renovate makes everything else look shabby, and which ends up with them having to replace the cushion again as the cycle never ends. Hmm. Now I come to look at them, those lounge cushions do seem a bit tired…
 We’re having all our windows replaced. It was long overdue—they were very old, some of the frames were rotten, and one was basically held together with a twisty tie and a rolled-up towel laid across the join to keep the wind out. Things had got so bad the Council proposed we change the name of our property to The House of Usher. The final straw was observing a Himalayan vulture the other day perched amid the seagulls on our roof with a hopeful look in its eye. Yes, it was definitely time.
 Bedroom windows removed It’s been a week of disruption all round, with our house currently resembling a set from Saving Private Ryan and the County Show taking place across the way. Overnight the neighbouring fields were transformed into the kind of tented city that Galadriel might have ordered if the elves had won the contract to run the Glastonbury festival. Tall, white pavilions encompassed the field over the road, and the hills were alive with the sounds of a funfair, motorcycle display teams and vintage tractors. Then it rained.
 A vintage tractor on display Well, I say rained, though that doesn’t really convey the apocalyptic immensity. If I open my thesaurus other, more appropriate, nouns suggest themselves: deluge, torrent, downpour, spate, and perhaps even cataclysm. Then in the early morning it stopped and words like mud, sun, heat, mud, steam and more mud become necessary. At times it felt like a recreation of the battle of Waterloo, which had uncannily similar weather—though I’ve never quite recovered from learning that the Allied and French armies, who got into position overnight in the pouring rain, didn’t have any toilet facilities (water-porta-loos?) and just relieved themselves where they stood or lay; and so, when the sources describe the battle taking place in a sea of mud, well, let’s just say it was brown and leave it at that.
 Backing into the traces In gansey news, I have finished the first sleeve and am now embarked on the second. I’ve just finished the underarm gusset and there’s just the rest of the sleeve and cuff to go. It’s not a long sleeve, and I’ll be decreasing at a rate of two stitches every fifth row. I still hope to finish it by the end of July, so fingers crossed.
And as I write this it’s Sunday morning and the tents are coming down surprisingly quickly—every time I look out the window—or the gaping hole where a window used to be—another one’s gone. Soon it will be as if they’d never appeared, and all we’ll be left with is the funfair; though, without wishing to appear in any way negative, honestly I think I’d rather take the vulture…
 I had a blood test the other day—well, I say a test, in fact I’ve had three in the last few weeks. The first time they didn’t get enough, the second they didn’t like the look of, so it was back to the surgery on the basis of third time’s the charm. Alas, the results are in and apparently my platelet count is low, and they’re clumping. I wasn’t aware until the other day that I had any platelets, let alone that they were misbehaving. But such is life. Now that I know, I’ve been avoiding tasks with the excuse, “I’m sorry, I’d like to help you shift that piano, but I’m afraid my platelets are clumping”.
 Dunbeath Icehouse I took a day off work last Friday, and we went down to Dunbeath harbour, about half an hour’s drive south of Wick. The morning had started overcast and showery, but gradually the sun burned the clouds away and by the time we were sitting on a bench looking out to sea it was warm sunshine clear to the horizon. The east coast of Caithness is dotted with harbours, all built around the 1800 for the herring fishing—Staxigoe, Sarclet, Lybster, Clyth, Latheronwheel, Berriedale—and Dunbeath is another. In its heyday 100 boats fished out of here, and you can tell how prosperous it was from the scale of the salmon bothy, gear store and icehouse just behind the harbour quays.
 Harebells at Coronation Meadow, Dunnet Meanwhile in gansey news, I’m almost to the end of the first sleeve. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve let the pattern run all the way down to the cuff. This is partly an aesthetic choice—I do like a cable running from shoulder to wrist—but also partly practical, as the cables help draw in shorter sleeves and stop them getting too baggy. The cuff will be five inches long, so that it can be doubled back and offer the wearer a bit of flexibility.
 Dunbeath Castle And on a lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer Dunbeath is a beautiful place to sit and let your mind float as free as an untethered balloon. Across the water Dunbeath Castle perches incongruously on the cliffs like a bad photoshop from a Bavarian tourist guidebook. Its foundations are medieval, but it was extensively developed in later centuries when decorative turrets were a thing. (The castle is currently for sale—offers over £25 million—and I’d be tempted if it wasn’t for all the dusting.) There’s said to be a lovely walk upriver, inland up the strath. I plan to walk it one of these days. But maybe not today; at least, not while my platelets are clumping…
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Let’s start with the jumper for a change: the Flamborough gansey is finished, washed and blocked and ready to go. When they’re being knitted, ganseys bunch up rather so you don’t always get an accurate view of how they’re going to look; but equally, immediately after blocking can be equally misleading. They need a couple of days to relax, to find their natural shape. I’m very pleased with how this one’s turned out, though really, it’s such a good pattern you can hardly miss. Now there’s just that anxious period between completion and discovering if it fits the intended 
It’s been finished none too soon, either. In short, it’s gansey weather in England just now. You see, the jet stream usually lies somewhere over the middle of Scotland at this time of year, which means that the Central Belt and England enjoy long, hot summers, while the north Highlands get the kind of weather you see in a disaster movie. Not this year: the jet stream’s gone south for its holidays, so we’re getting a lovely summer and everyone else isn’t.
It’s been so dry that last weekend’s bonfire is still smouldering, so that it looks like we have a slumbering dragon down by the river. (“So, we are come to the desolation of the dragon.” “No, that’s just the way Wick normally looks, sorry.”) Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want anyone’s holiday ruined. But the BBC national news sent a reporter down to a seaside town in England last week, who filed a report that basically it was wet and windy, but the day before had been quite nice. (Something to bear in mind the next time the Licence Fee comes up for discussion.)
It occurred to me that if England’s going to get our weather, it might like to borrow a few Scots words to describe it. So in a spirit of brotherly schadenfreude, I looked some up: “dreich” (wet and miserable), “drookit” (soaked to the skin), “greetie” (showery), “smirr” (drizzly rain), “blirtie” (sporadic gusts of wind and rain), “gouling” (stormy winds), “deasie” (to be cold and miserable) and “flindrikin” (small bouts of snow, though it sounds more like a wizard’s cat). Funnily enough, there were far fewer words for nice, sunny days like we’re having now…
Finally this week, top of the bill is another splendid gansey from Judit of the flashing needles. It’s Filey pattern taken from Rae Compton’s book (pages 66-67), alternating moss and purl diamonds together with double moss stitch panels. It’s a grand pattern and it shows up particularly well in the red-violet yarn she’s used. Many congratulations again to Judit, and again, many thanks for sharing it with us.
