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 And so here’s the new year, all unwrapped and shiny and ready to go—or it would be, only this year the batteries don’t seem to’ve been included. (To misquote St Jethro of Tull, it was a new year yesterday but it’s an old year now…) But then, I’ve never been much of a lad for Hogmanay. This may of course stem from a bout of food poisoning I contracted one memorable New Year’s Eve in my childhood, after which I was a little surprised not so much to find I still had a stomach lining, but that I still had lungs. (If I’m ever visited by three spirits to teach me the error of my ways, the Ghost of Hogmanay Past had better bring a mop and a couple of buckets.) Besides, given I was born eleven thousand miles away, I can’t help remembering each year that technically my New Year already happened twelve hours ago.
 Pancake ice in the river The origins of Hogmanay, like those of most traditions, are lost in the mists of time. No one even knows where the name comes from, though the most likely bet derives from the French hoginane, meaning a gala day (and not a rather fatuous pig, as I’d first thought). After the Reformation the Scots didn’t really observe Christmas until about 1950, and instead put all their energies into making drinking an olympic sport every New Year’s Eve. Most of the old Hogmanay customs have since gone the way of the horseless carriage and the VHS tape, and it’s not hard to see why: for example in places where the traditional New Year ceremony “would involve people dressing up in the hides of cattle and running around the village whilst being hit by sticks”, presumably the supply of sticks gave out, or possibly the supply of people. You can see how staying in and watching television instead might appeal.
 Ice on the path In gansey news, I’ve made spectacular progress: in fact I’ve completed the lower body as far as the half-gussets, and am well advanced up the back. (Not bad for a fortnight!) It helps of course that this is so much smaller than the ganseys I usually knit. I return to work this week, so my knitting time will be considerably reduced (as will the number of hours I can devote to listening to Bruckner symphonies, alas and alack and Alaska). And now you can see more of the pattern I think you’ll agree this is one of the very best.
 Calm day at the riverside And speaking as someone who’s never gone in for new year’s resolutions—resolution not being something I’m usually associated with, along with speed over distance or a waistline—this year I made one: to do whatever it takes to make it to next New Year’s Eve (God willing). We’ve made it through this far; let’s not do anything foolish now. So here’s to a happy and safe 2021; at the end of which even I might raise a dram to celebrate Hogmanay in style…
 It’s the last post of the year, a time when traditionally we take stock of the previous twelvemonth and look forward to what the future might bring. But, I say—given how ghastly 2020 proved to be, and how uncertain 2021 looks just now, what say you we all just avert our gazes from current affairs and save the haruspicy to another, more fitting occasion? Instead, let us turn our attention to my favourite nature story of the year: octopuses randomly punching fish, apparently just out of spite.
Until I read this my highlight from the natural world in 2020 was the discovery of a new species of fungus that infects flies, turning them into “zombies”, until at a certain point the spores explode out of a hole in the insects’ abdomens “like rockets“, a fact which is going to liven up my reboot of the Alien franchise no end. But I must admit, the thought of bad-tempered octopuses patrolling the seabed looking for inoffensive fish to punch is way more fun. (Fun for the octopus, that is; less so, one feels, for the fish.)
 Frosty Path Ahead Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that an octopus has a separate brain in each of its eight arms, thus making hangovers so much worse; or maybe one arm just wakes up in a particularly foul mood. (This is even better than my previous fun fact about octopuses, that they sometimes eat their own arms when they get bored; which always takes me back to a stunningly tedious lecture on the history of land law during my archive training in the winter of 1985, when gnawing my own arm off seemed like the only sensible alternative.) Anyway, I shall be disappointed if the coming year doesn’t bring us footage of two octopuses holding down a clown fish while a third beats it up for its lunch money.
 St Fergus’ and hawthorn In parish notices, and just in case you missed it last week, I was invited by the Scottish Fisheries Museum’s important Knitting the Herring project to write a short article on how I got into gansey knitting and where it has led me (spoiler alert: it led me to Wick). You can find the post here, as well as lots more information on the project.
Now it only remains for Margaret and me to wish all our readers a very happy—and safe—New Year. See you in 2021!
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TECHNICAL STUFF
 My new project is another of the superb patterns from Yorkshire, this time in Frangipani Denim yarn. The pattern is recorded in both Gladys Thompson as “Filey Pattern IX”, and in Rae Compton (pp.58-59) under Flamborough, but knit by Carol Walkington of Bridlington for her husband Fred, coxswain of the Bridlington lifeboat.
You can tell it’s a good pattern because the cable rows, falling every sixth row, coincide with the plain rows of the chevrons, so you scarcely need to keep count. I’m following the pattern exactly, so instead of cabling every seventh row as I usually do, I’m cabling every sixth. In a certain light, the slant of the cables seems like an extension of the chevron.
It’s a pattern I’ve always wanted to try, but have in the past been put off—in a weak and feeble sort of way—by the sheer number of cables involved. (Of course, it’s the cables that help make it special.) Anyway, the chance to knit it has come at last, as this is a gansey for a work colleague who is, I suppose you’d say, fashionably svelte (the gansey will measure a trim nineteen inches across the body).
This als o explains how much I’ve managed to get done in a week; well, that and the fact I’ve eaten so many chocolates over Christmas it currently takes a rope and pulley to get me out of the couch, like Henry VIII being winched onto horseback. I average three rows per hour, so I set myself a target of twelve rows, or two cables per day, the equivalent of four hours’ knitting spread through the day.
 It’s the winter solstice, that ancient festival devised by our pagan ancestors to celebrate the fact that there’s only four more sleeps till Christmas. (Sunrise in Wick, 9.01; sunset 15.21.) Normally Margaret and I’d be heading south around now to spend the holidays with family in England; but this year, like everyone else, we’ll be hunkering down and having a quiet Christmas at home. I’m on leave until the New Year, with plans for a little reading, a little writing and a lot of knitting as I listen to all my Christmas CDs.
 Captured Christmas Baubles My navy gansey project ended just before the year did, and I must say adding cables to the yoke worked a treat. Next up—but that would be telling. We’ll just have to wait till next week.
In the meantime, we’d like to wish all our readers a very merry, very safe Christmas, and we’ll see you next week for the turning of the year.
Now it’s that time absolutely no one everyone’s been waiting for, the traditional Gansey Nation Christmas singalong. All together now…
We three kings at John o’Groats are
Wishing we hadn’t stopped for a jar,
Did too much drinking,
Now we are thinking,
Where did we park our car?
We tried to follow the star through the rain,
The sat nav packed up somewhere near Tain,
Now it’s increasingly clear,
Bethlehem’s nowhere near,
And Balthazar’s drunk the champagne.
Oh, star of wonder, star of light,
It’s far too cloudy to see you tonight,
So Caspar eats a
Takeaway pizza
While Melchior hopes for a bite.
 We lost the frankincense and myrrh,
And spent the gold on some hookers* at Bower,
Moving at speed,
We stocked up on weed,
Now everything’s just a blur.
The evening quickly got in full swing,
Ended up in a mass Highland fling,
We got too merry
And missed the ferry,
Now we’re stuck here till spring.
Oh, star of wonder, star of light,
Star that’s always just out of sight,
Oh we of little faith,
Here in the Ness of Caith,
Grant us our wish tonight…
- Look, we signed up a couple of chaps to play in the number 2 position in the Nazareth and Judea Combined Rugby Union Team, all right…?
 On Saturday Margaret and I strapped on our wellies and made for Dunbeath, about half an hour’s drive south of Wick, to visit Graeme Bethune at his farm of Ballachly. You may possibly remember that back in 2016—I’m now starting to add the suffix “BC” to historic dates, which stands for “Before Covid”—I knit a gansey for Graeme’s father George. The Bethunes have lived in Dunbeath for almost two centuries, and a photograph of Graeme’s great-grandfather in his gansey appears on page 37 of the Moray Firth Gansey Project book, Fishing for Ganseys. So there’s history there.
 Expectant Faces Graeme is a sheep farmer who trades as Caithness Yarns, and the reason for our visit was his recent foray into gansey yarn. But first we met his sheep, or “sheepies” as I shall now think of them, some of them in an open barn, others out in the fields. Even on a cold, wet, December afternoon, with bands of rain blowing in from the ocean on an icy wind, it’s a beautiful location: the fields sloping down to Dunbeath Strath, the river full and fast-flowing at this time of year, and the farther banks rising to gently sloping wooded hills, all exposed beneath the wide, sweeping Caithness skies. There are, you feel, worse places to be a sheep. The main breeds are North Country Cheviot and the smaller, horned Castlemilk Moorit, all traditional to the area. Graeme has adopted an ethical approach to his farming—as he says, his main crop is wool, and all aspects of oviculture on the farm, especially grazing, are designed to improve the quality of the fleece.
 Treat time for the Castlemilk Moorits Graeme’s first gansey yarn has been a traditional grey-black worsted, and he’s about to add an Ecru Cheviot and a Cheviot and Castlemilk Moorit blend to his range—what I think of as “cream” and “light brown”. Of course, his yarn isn’t cheap; but sometimes you really do get what you pay for, and what you’re paying for here is a commitment to quality and animal welfare. Like many farmers Graeme’s been hit hard this year, with the cancellation of so many wool festivals and shows where he would normally be able to sell his yarn and tell his story. It’s a good yarn and an important story, and one that deserves our support. So even if you’re not in the market for yarn just now, can I ask you please to spread the word? And when the world eventually emerges from hibernation, keep an eye out for Graeme at the next wool festival; and for the splendid yarn from his sheepies.
 Shepherd & Sheep Meanwhile, my current gansey is approaching the finishing line. The first sleeve is completed, and I’m about a third of the way down the other. (This is Wendy’s “A” dye lot, some of the last available, and I’m not pleased to note that I might run out before the cuff—the first time this has happened. Harrumph.) Will I finish it this week? To quote the famously equivocal President of the Neutral Planet from Futurama: “All I know is, my gut says maybe…”
 It’s December, and the days are getting shorter—by which I mean that sunrise happens later every day (8.45 am today), while the dial on the old sunset-o-meter will hover around 3.20 pm for the next month or so. I assume there’s a good reason for this, probably something to do with physics or whatnot, but it catches me out every year. It’s something of a moot point up here in Caithness anyway, “hours of daylight” being something that happens to other people. I tried to change my phone settings to reduce the brightness of the screen at night and was disconcerted to hear Siri cry despairingly, “How on earth am I supposed to tell?“, before muttering something about Cornwall being nice this time of year and what time did the pubs open.
Well, thanks to the miracle of electricity—a miracle in the sense that I don’t really understand it, despite numerous electricians patiently explaining to me why it doesn’t leak out of the sockets if you leave the switch on—I have enough light to knit by. Just. And as I’m still trying to rest my ankle as much as possible, I have the means, motive and opportunity to clock up a few rows. So I’m well advanced on the first sleeve and should finish it this week, when the end will definitely be in sight. By the way, I made the two pattern bands on the sleeve slightly narrower than their counterparts on the body, otherwise they’d have reached further down the sleeve than I like.
 Winter Sunset In parish notices, Judit has lapped all us once again and has finished another gansey: this very attractive reddish number. It’s the classic Eddystone lighthouse pattern from Cornwall, and I particularly like that the intended recipient is a sailor: how thoughtful is that for a Christmas gift? It’s another triumph for Judit, many congratulations again to her, and a reminder of all the cracking patterns hidden away in the books, just waiting to be unleashed and turned into ganseys.
 Distant Rainbow Now, winter is the season for ghost stories, and I had a dream about ghosts the other night. Not that my ghosts were the scary kind; in fact they were just an ordinary family—mum, dad and two kids. Now I think of it, they were obviously inspired by some old photos from the nuclear industry I’d been looking at (I’m trying very hard not to use the phrase “nuclear family” here, but—well, too late). Anyway, I met them in a friend’s house, and they explained that ghosts like staying in people’s houses after the owners have gone to bed, “otherwise it seems such a waste”. They were particularly pleased with internet television, because it meant they could watch programmes on catch up.
 St Fergus Church I bade them good night and walked home, and when I got inside I was surprised to find them in my own living room. “How did you get here so quickly?” I asked. They told me that they used to have to travel on the wind, like the tormented spirits in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol; but now they used electricity cables, which was so much faster. The only thing that worried them, they said, was the change to wifi, because they couldn’t travel wirelessly. At which point I woke up. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. On the one hand, it wasn’t the kind of dream that leaves you too traumatised to risk going to sleep again—I’ve had quite enough of those, thank you very much—on the other hand, I can’t help feeling a touch shortchanged if the movie of my life has the tagline, “I can see dead people… mostly they watch tv…”
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And so here’s the new year, all unwrapped and shiny and ready to go—or it would be, only this year the batteries don’t seem to’ve been included. (To misquote St Jethro of Tull, it was a new year yesterday but it’s an old year now…) But then, I’ve never been much of a lad for Hogmanay. This may of course stem from a bout of food poisoning I contracted one memorable New Year’s Eve in my childhood, after which I was a little surprised not so much to find I still had a stomach lining, but that I still had lungs. (If I’m ever visited by three spirits to teach me the error of my ways, the Ghost of Hogmanay Past had better bring a mop and a couple of buckets.) Besides, given I was born eleven thousand miles away, I can’t help remembering each year that technically my New Year already happened twelve hours ago.
