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 The scene: Middle Earth. Saruman and his servant Wormtongue stand high aloft the tower of Isengard, looking out at vast army of orcs that reaches as far as the eye can see. Saruman sighs happily and turns to Wormtongue.
S: Ah, Wormtongue, is not my army of fighting uruk-hai truly magnificent?”
W: Absolutely, my lord. It’s just—
S: And are they poised to be unleashed upon our unsuspecting enemies cowering in Helm’s Deep?
W: Oh, no question of that, your evilness. Poised, certainly. Unleashed, oh yes, definitely. Though I should perhaps mention—
S: And are the towers and ladders made ready for the siege?
W: Well, you see, about that—
S: I’m sorry, is there a problem?
 Dunbeath Harbour W: Well, your dirty beardedness, you know you made me your health and safety adviser when I lost my job in Rohan?
S: This isn’t another of your misguided attempts at humour, is it? As in, ‘It’s elf and safety gone mad’?
W (hastily hiding behind his back a copy of 100 Merry Jests for Tickling the Fancy of Evil Tyrants): Ahaha, good lord, no, perish the thought. It’s just that the Deeping Wall at Helm’s Deep is twenty feet high.
S: And?
W: Well, you see, everyone’s got to finish their Working at Height training, and we’ve only got a dozen iPads to go round. And then there’s the question of risk assessments.
S: Risk assessments?
W: Oh yes, well, every orc going up those ladders has got to do one for slips, trips and falls.
S (sarcastically): What about having your head cut off when you’re at the top?
W: Technically a workplace injury, your despicableness.
S: You mean they could sue me for being decapitated?
W: Well, we’re already facing a lawsuit for bullying and harassment. Apparently calling your employees terms like “filth”, “scum” and “maggot” is no longer acceptable.
S: Bloody ingrates. What about the staff incentive scheme we introduced?
 Lenticular clouds at Achavanich W: Quite a few are opting out now they’ve discovered it means we whip them to make them run faster.
S: (gloomily): I miss the old days. Seems like the only thing you can take an axe to now is a tree.
W: (coughs anxiously): Ah now, MEEPA have raised an objection.
S: MEEPA?
W: Middle Earth Environment Protection Agency, your moral turpitudishness. I mean, we’re probably not going to meet our carbon emissions targets at this rate.
S (bitterly): Anything else?
W: Um, let’s see… The king’s counsellors you suborned with gold have been arrested under the Bribery Act (3010, Third Age). The people of the Westfold that you enslaved are bringing an action under anti-slavery legislation. Other than that, I think we’re good. Oh, and there is one bit of good news.
 Water flowing to the sea, Dunnet Beach S: Well?
W: All your orcs are wearing armour, so technically we’re compliant for personal protective equipment. Though speaking of workplace harassment, I, er, was wondering if you could stop calling me Wormtongue. My name is Desmond, after all.
S: Hmm, tell me, Desmond, have you done a risk assessment for standing up here on this tower with me?
W: Funnily enough, no—aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh….
S (now alone, musingly): You know, I think he was right the first time: it really is elf and safety gone mad…
 Now, I’m not usually one to complain (Editor, quoting Bender the robot from Futurama: “Ahahaha. Oh wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder”) but I’m starting to think that tourism up here is getting a bit out of hand. A lot of this is down to the North Coast 500, a clever marketing exercise that’s seen the broad loop of road that runs 120 miles north from Inverness to John o’ Groats, then west to Durness, and south down the west coast, taking in Skye, before heading east back to Inverness, rebranded as a tourist trail. And yes, it’s a lovely drive, even travelling at 30mph in a winding queue of traffic. But it’s turned the north Highlands from somewhere to go into something to do.
 Muckle Skerry from John o’Groats In the west country tourists are known as “grockles”, nobody knows why, but it’s a great name. In Cornwall I’ve heard them referred to as emmets, derived from an Old English word for ants (aemete), and you can see the metaphor. The other day we went up to Duncansby, to go for a walk along the cliffs and look and the sea stacks. But when we got there the car park was full, cars and vans were double- and triple-parked, and a solid line of people like emmets at a picnic trudged across the headland to see the view, take a few photos, and trudge back. (Reader, we chickened out, and went to John o’ Groats for an ice cream in the sun instead.)
 In gansey news, it’s always exciting to start a new project. This time it’s another stone-cold classic, Mrs Laidlaw of Seahouses’ pattern, from Gladys Thompson. It’s a pattern I’ve loved ever since I first opened the book nearly 40 years ago, but have scarcely ever knit—well, it’s overdue a revisit. The yarn is Frangipani Breton, a lovely soft russet shade that should capture the pattern definition well. So it begins.
 Stack at Sarclet And do I begrudge other people the chance to experience the beauties of the Scottish landscape? Of course not: I’m a tourist myself every time I get in my car. So I guess I can see it from both sides. After all, what’s the point of scenery if no one looks at it? Here in Caithness there are plenty of quiet places that haven’t (yet) made the guidebooks, which you can visit with nary a camper van in sight. Though I do rather hanker back to wartime, when the north Highlands was a protected area, and you needed a special pass to go north past Inverness. You could limit the number of vehicles coming in, to avoid overcrowding: hmm, about five a day seems about right…
 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…
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The scene: Middle Earth. Saruman and his servant Wormtongue stand high aloft the tower of Isengard, looking out at vast army of orcs that reaches as far as the eye can see. Saruman sighs happily and turns to Wormtongue.
