Gansey Nation

It’s been the wettest May on record across the U.K. We’ve escaped the worst of it up here, but this last week’s been pretty soggy, and cold and windy withal. This has somewhat given the lie to the handful of warm, sunny days we experienced just a few weeks back. Rather than bring the harbingers of spring, it turns out they were just God’s way of saying “Let me show you what you could have won”, and sending us away with only the bus fare and a pocketful of memories for our trouble. Still, if it deters the tourists it’ll be a mercy, our roads are so bad. The other day I passed a council repairman looking into a pothole, shaking his head and muttering, “The dwarves delved too greedily, and too deep…”

The Trinkie

In fact, it’s been so miserable I’ve been reworking some old Christmas carols. For example, there’s “In the bleak mid-spring/ Frosty wind felt numb/ The ducks on the river all took flight/ Saying, Siberia here we come.” Or, “Good King Wenceslas looked out/ On May bank holiday/ When the strong winds blew about/ And the tourists stayed away”. Another favourite would be, “I thought I saw three ships sail by/ On Saturday, on Saturday/ But it was just more rain on the way/ At John O’Groats in the morning”. Or how about, “Oh little town of Latheron/ How still we see thee lie/ For you were devastated/ When the storm front came on by”.

Tern with sand eel

Meanwhile it’s new gansey time, which is always exciting. This one’s another Flamborough pattern, one of many tucked away in the pages of Gladys Thompson, and it’s for a friend-of-a-friend. The yarn they chose is Frangipani Helford Blue and my first thought is, where has this colour been all my life? I’ll say more about the pattern next week, but so far I’ve just reached the top of the welt. (I would have been further on, except I’d knitted about an inch of ribbing, knit two-purl two-ing away merrily, when I realised I’d cast on the wrong number of stitches. With mickle care and Margaret’s assistance it was all ripped out, and I grimly started again—only to realise that I’d been right the first time. D’oh!)

The North Baths

And of course a blustery spring is nothing new: Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 tells us that rough winds were shaking the darling buds of May as far back as the sixteenth century. By a happy coincidence, scholars have recently unearthed an early draft of that poem. Perhaps it’s not surprising he revised it: here’s the opening—

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
Thou probably thinkst thou art more temperate and fair,
But like the summer, wind troubleth thee always,
And so disheveled art thou, birds nest in thy hair…

The Water Rat was sitting by the window, watching the rain fall on the river and writing what he liked to think of as poetry. He was just trying to come up with a rhyme for ‘bulb’ when the Mole burst in, clutching wildly at the fur on his head.
“Why, old chap,” the Rat said, startled, “whatever is the matter?”
“Quick! What’s my name?”
“Your what, my dear fellow?”
“My name! What is it?”
“Why, it’s Mole, of course.”
“No it’s not! That’s my family. What’s my name? What’s yours? And don’t say ‘Ratty’.”
The Rat opened his mouth and shut it again.
“You see? Why aren’t you called something like Gerald? Or Brian? Or Penhaligon? Why aren’t I?”
”Penhaligon?”
“And another thing,” said the Mole. “Why is there only one of each of us—one toad, one rat, one badger? Where are all the women? How do we reproduce?”

Creels

The Rat laid down his pen with an austere look. “I’d have thought someone might’ve explained this before now. Still, better it comes from me than one of those low weasels with dirty minds. You see, it’s like this: when a daddy mole and a mummy mole love each other very much they give each other a special kind of hug, and—“
The Mole interrupted him coldly. “Mummy mole? Have you ever seen one? Or a mummy badger?”
“Hmm, well, now you come to mention it…” The Rat brightened. “What about the barge woman who gave Toad a lift? Or the gaoler’s daughter? They were women.”
The Mole sighed. “You know perfectly well they never existed. Toad imagined the whole thing after eating those mushrooms we found in that field last year, remember? The ones that upset his tummy.”
“Oh yes.” The Rat chuckled. “Poop-poop.”
“I tell you, Rat, none of our lives makes sense. We’re living in the Matrix.”
The Rat frowned. “Matrix?”
“I took the red pill, the one that opens your eyes to the truth. I found it on the kitchen table this morning.”
“Red pill? Did it have a white M on it, by any chance?”
“Yes! I assumed it was M for Matrix.”
“That was an M&M, you wazzock. Look, why don’t I make some tea and you can help me find a rhyme for ‘circus’. Then if the weather clears we can fetch Toad and go for a walk in the Wild Wood: there’s nothing like lording it over a bunch of working class stoats for curing an existential crisis.”

Breaking waves

“Oh all right. But there’s still one thing bothering me.”
“Fire away, old chap.”
“You know we’re animals, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, why do we wear clothes?”

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In gansey news, I’ve finished the first sleeve and expect to finish the other this week. A word on the cuff, which is unique in my experience. It alternates knit 2/ purl 2 ribbing with a six-stitch pattern band involving yarn overs. The overall effect reminds me of shoes threaded with laces, very distinctive, the sort of cuff Galadriel might have added to his gansey if Celeborn had switched elvenkinging for herring fishing. Again, the Cordova yarn shade shows the pattern very nicely.

It’s my birthday, and I’ve treated myself to some cds of Bob Dylan performing live during his born-again Christian phase (because nothing says “happy birthday” like two and a half hours of hellfire and damnation set to a jaunty rhythm and blues). My only regret is that they’ve edited out the sermons he used to deliver between songs—sermons apparently so excoriating they made Savonarola, and I quote, look like a big girl’s blouse. Dylan once said that music attracts the angels in the universe, but after listening to these tracks I assume they turned up here to ask him to play the likes of “Blowing in the Wind” instead of “Gotta Serve Somebody”.

Daffodils by the Old Library

Actually, as I get older, of all the religions I don’t believe in it’s probably Taoism that appeals to me most. Tao—alternatively spelled Dao and pronounced as though it should have the words “Jones Index” after it, which opens up an intriguing parallel universe where America embraced meditation rather than capitalism—means “the Way”. And while I like to pretend I admire it for its message of humility and compassion, and its principle of wu wei, or doing through not-doing, I suspect the real reason is that it’s the only major religion founded by an archivist: the “old master” Lao Tzu, keeper of the archives of the royal court of Zhou. (Did he keep them in a Zhou box? History, alas, is silent.)

Nets on the harbour quay

Meanwhile in gansey news, I’ve almost finished the front and reached the joining-the-shoulder stage. This is an important psychological moment, with the jumper two-thirds done. But as Robert Frost said, or would have done if he’d been a knitter, which he wasn’t, instead of the traveller stopping by woods on a snowy evening which he claimed to be, I still have many rows before I sleep. Next comes a brief flirtation with the collar, and then it’s on to the sleeves.

St Fergus & Hawthorn

Lao Tzu is of course credited with the Tao Te Ching, the classic Book of Virtue and of the Way. Its famous opening is, “The Dao that can be spoken of is not the true Dao”, which at least means no one can tell you you’re doing it wrong. And after years of struggling with the tangled philosophies of Wittgenstein and Kant, as soon as I read, “That which is, is, and that which is not, is not” in the Book of Chuang Tzu I knew I’d found my personal spirit level. But is any of this stuff actually true? Ah, the answer to that, my friend, is blowing in the wind…