After I left university—we’re talking some years ago now, when Queen Victoria was still on the throne and the Crimean war was raging—I found myself within the orbit of a group of broadly left-wing young people who were looking for an alternative kind of society. Green before the ecology movement acquired the label, some were anarchists, some were marxists, some were artists or going to be, and all were deeply earnest. Many cigarettes were smoked and much coffee was drunk into the small hours; there seemed to be a general belief that we could somehow get to the truth of things by talking, ideally while listening to Abraxas by Santana or The Concert for Bangladesh. It was a time of flamboyant dress and facial hair, some of it worn by the men.
Under a Rookery
Well, all I can say in our defence is that we were very young. Or, no, not all: for they were also idealistic, friendly and fundamentally good-natured. There was no harm in any of them, and I remember that was what first attracted me to them. Because even if I felt they were on some points misguided, I saw that they were, like the Cavaliers in 1066 and All That, “wrong but romantic”. (What sorts of things were they wrong about? Well, I remember one young man solemnly assuring me that the Anglo-Saxons held all land in common and there were no wars until the coming of the Normans; as if the Welsh had been dispossessed by a curiously persuasive leafletting campaign.) There’s a lovely song by Jethro Tull, Inside, which captures perfectly what it felt like to be part of it all, to belong on the inside of the outside: “Can you cook, can you sew/ well I don’t want to know/ that is not what you need on the inside”. Looking back, there’s a fragile sepia innocence about that time, like the golden summers before the war.
The Old Lifeboat House
It couldn’t last, of course. There was one night I heard we were getting a visit from one of our leading lights who’d left town a couple of years before. No one knew quite what he’d been up to since, but everyone was excited to see him, and we threw him a party. I can see it now: he turned up looking very out of place in a suit and tie, told us he’d made a career in insurance and—with a fatal misreading of his audience that makes me fear for his future prospects—spent the evening trying to sell us all life insurance.
And so, just as Christopher Robin eventually has to leave the Hundred-Acre Wood, so society took us and shaped us to her courses. Haircuts became a thing, and it was a shock to discover that your friends had so much forehead above their faces. Human kind cannot bear very much reality; and, alas, neither it seems can the ideals of sweet-and-twenty; youth’s a stuff will not endure. Turns out, life insurance is not what you need on the inside either…
Interested Bystanders
TECHNICAL STUFF
As the title suggests, this will be a gansey cardigan. The pattern is from Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire, a very simple but effective combination of moss stitch panels alternating with cables. There are a lot of cables, 20 in all (by the time I’ve done a few rows of moss stitch and cables Margaret has to get the steam iron out to straighten out the kinks in my fingers). The only change I’ve made to the original pattern is that my cable is six stitches, rather than four.
I found it quite hard to come up with the right number of stitches. I usually add a stitch for every cable, to compensate for the way cables draw in the yarn; but there’s already a steek of 18 stitches running up the front of the body, and it will be slightly wider because of the cardigan’s zip. So in the end I made a guess and hoped for the best.
The gansey (excluding steek) is to be 22 inches across. 22 x 8 (stitches per inch) = 176 stitches. Excluding the steek I’ve added an extra 5 stitches to the front and back, and am hoping that—between this and the steek/zip—it will all work out. But we won’t know for sure until we’re just about at the armholes, so we’ve got a few weeks of blind faith ahead of us…
Sunlight was streaming through the windows into the breakfast room of 221B Baker Street as I took a seat across the table from my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes. It was week five of the lockdown and the strain was beginning to tell.
“Everything all right, Holmes?” I asked, unfolding my napkin.
“Never better, my dear Watson. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that when I came in, I thought I heard you saying to the toast rack, ‘Tell me everything, omitting no details, however slight.’”
Holmes coloured. “Possibly you heard Mrs Hudson singing ‘A Wandering Minstrel, I’ in the shower?”
Plum Blossom
The door behind me creaked open.
“Ah,” said Holmes looking over my shoulder, “Professor Moriarty. I’ve been expecting you.”
I turned in my chair.
“Holmes, that’s the cat.”
“I call him Professor Moriarty,” Holmes said defensively.
“His name,” I said, “is Tiddles. Listen, Holmes, he’s a cat, not a bloody Napoleon of crime.”
“Cats can be Napoleons of crime. Look at that fellow Macavity in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”
“Holmes,” I sighed, “the only practical use for a cat is to stick a broom handle up its wossname and use it for a mop.”
Daffodils by the riverbank
Holmes reached for a croissant. “Look, I’m sorry, Watson. But my mind is a finely-tuned mechanism. I can’t theorise without data! Even that child Wiggins and his Baker Street irregulars are shut up inside.”
“Well, after Mrs Hudson served us that tin of prunes she found at the back of the cupboard that was way past its sell-by date I’ve been something of a Baker Street irregular myself.”
Holmes took a moody bite of his croissant. There was a sound not unlike the cracking of a walnut and a small projectile whizzed past my ear. Holmes gingerly explored what was left of his tooth and gave the bell a violent ring.
A minute or so later our landlady Mrs Hudson appeared.
“Yes, gentlemen?”
‘What,’ demanded Holmes, rapping the table with the croissant and watching the corner splinter off like a disintegrating iceberg, “is the meaning of this?”
Mrs Hudson wrung her hands in her apron.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Holmes. It’s just with the shops being sold out of flour and all I’ve been making do with what I could find.”
“Which is?”
“Well, plaster.”
“Plaster?!”
“Mixed with, and I know what you’re going to say, cat litter.”
Holmes groaned. “Well, I suppose we should just be grateful it was clean.”
“Ahaha, well, it’s funny you should say that, Mr Holmes—“
“Er, did I hear you going out earlier, Mrs Hudson?” I interrupted hastily.
“Well, now, here’s a thing. I went to bank wearing a face mask like the doctors say and they thought I’d come to rob the place.”
“Good Lord!” I cried. “I hope there was no unpleasantness?”
“Oh, no,” Mrs Hudson said. “The cashier handed over £1,000 in used fivers, so I legged it.”
And with a curtsey she picked up the cat and left the room.
A Rainbow of Fish Boxes
In the silence that followed I turned to today’s edition of the Times.
“Holmes,” I said, “what’s happened to the paper? There’s only half of it here. You know I’m not myself till I’ve read the latest Peanuts comic.”
“Oh, that.” He said. “It’s this shortage of toilet paper, Watson, after all that panic buying. Luckily for us, the Times lives up to it’s motto, ‘Soft, strong and very long.’”
“Ah, I’m pretty sure it’s ‘All the news that’s fit to print’, Holmes.”
“And that,” said Holmes, pouring himself some more coffee, “concludes the case of the missing newspaper.”
I sighed and reached for a croissant. It was, I feared, going to be a long spring…
I celebrated my 60th birthday on Sunday—celebrated in the broad sense that I was conscious when it happened—which is as good an excuse as any for the above. Now, when I first started this blog as a mere stripling of some eight-and-forty years, I promised myself that this would be the cutoff date, assuming it (and I) lasted this long; after which I would embark on a well-earned retirement. And yet, here we are: I’m 60 and a day, and a new project (which I’ll say more about next time) is already growing on my needles. Promises are foolish things in these uncertain times, so I won’t offer a hostage to fortune by promising to carry on for another X number of years. Instead I’d like to record my thanks to all our readers, especially those who’ve been with us from the start, and hereon in let’s just take things one week at a time…
The historian Max Hastings relates an anecdote about Winston Churchill. There was once a game shoot at Blenheim Palace, where Churchill attempted an absurdly long shot at an apparently oblivious hare, and duly missed. A youth asked him why he’d wasted a cartridge on it. “Young man,” replied Churchill blithely, “I wished that hare to understand it was taking part in these proceedings.” Well, I imagine that hare’s feelings pretty closely match mine as I read the news on the pandemic—so far I seem to be out of range, but I definitely feel part of the proceedings.
The Old Lifeboat House
It’s week four of the lockdown, and I’m delighted to say that I’ve finished the gansey. As I’ve said before, you have to wait till it’s washed and blocked to really see it in all its glory; and very glorious it looks. I do love the Hebridean patterns. Yorkshire has my heart, Caithness my loyalty, but as Lady Macbeth once eulogised her own Hebrides gansey: “Others abide our question, thou art free”. I plan to knit a few more of them before I hang up my needles (to quote the great Bob Dylan, “Mama take these needles off of me/ I can’t see too good any more/ it’s getting dark, too dark to knit/ feel like I’m dropping’ stitches galore…”).
Tower of St Fergus’ through the hawthorns
It’s a double-header this week, two for the price of one: Judit has come up trumps again with a very impressive variant on the pattern from The Lizard in Cornwall. This has always been one of my favourites, ever since I first saw it in Mary Wright’s book, so simple and yet so richly textured. Congratulations again to Judit!
Now here’s a thing. I was reading a book about Henry VIII, and it said he had someone executed for treason—well, of course he had loads of people executed for treason; you had to make your own entertainment in those days. But in this particular case, several courtiers attended the execution “disguised as Scotsmen”. And I thought: you what?
Tulips
I’d always thought of executions as rather sombre affairs, and not so much as fancy-dress parties (“Going to the execution tomorrow?” “Yes, thought I’d go as a pirate. You?” Oh, as a Scotsman.” “Good show!”). But just how would you go about disguising yourself as a Scotsman back then? Leaving aside the jimmy hats so beloved of Edinburgh’s souvenir shops, and passing hastily over Mel Gibson in Braveheart (in which he wears blue woad face paint, which went out of fashion several hundred years earlier, and a kilt, which came into fashion several hundred years later), 16th century Highlanders wore the belted plaid that would later evolve into the kilt—though it’s not exactly what you’d call a disguise, and was hardly national.
Oh well, a mystery it must remain, I suppose. But it’s got me wondering: if I were ever to be executed for treason—the contingency appears remote, but you never know—how would I like the crowd to be dressed? I’m currently going with clowns, preferably copiously provided with buckets of whitewash and ladders; on the grounds that if I’m going to meet my maker, laughing seems as good a way as any.
This week marked the 30th anniversary of the first broadcast of Twin Peaks, and so of course I’ve been thinking about owls. (One of the memorable phrases coined in the show was the enigmatic “The owls are not what they seem”. What they were was never explained, but such was the genius of David Lynch that a slow-motion shot of an owl launching from a branch felt somehow significant, and laden with doom.)
Daffodils and parish church
Owls are all over mythology like a rash. To the Greeks and Romans, they were associated with Athena/ Minerva, the goddess of wisdom—hence the “wise old owl” of folklore. But my favourite is the dark Welsh legend of Blodeuwedd. It’s your typical hackneyed boy-meets- girl-made-of-flowers story: girl’s lover tries to murder boy, boy turns into an eagle and then kills the lover, girl is turned into an owl (community service not apparently being an option at the time).
Creels at harbourside
The German philosopher Hegel famously observed, “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk”—and then wondered why no one invited him to racy cocktail parties. What he meant, of course, is that we never truly understand events until they’re over, that wisdom always comes too late. But really when it comes to wisdom, I’m with Yeats: “Wisdom is a butterfly/ And not a gloomy bird of prey…”
Well, with no pretence to wisdom I’ve spent this last week on holiday; and with nowhere to go but up, I’ve been knitting, as you do. The second sleeve is almost finished, with the pattern section completed (same number of trees as the body, which was unplanned but nice). With just the end of the sleeve and the cuff to go, this week will see the completed gansey washed and blocked.
Finally, here’s an extract from another of my favourite poems. It’s by the Scottish poet George MacBeth, and is simply called Owl. It’s well worth reading in full, but I love it especially for the ending. The owls may not be what they seem—who among us ever is?—but their seeming is enough, and more than enough. Am an owl…
Owl lives by the claws of his brain. On the branch in the sever of the hand’s twigs owl is a backward look. Flown wind in the skin. Fine Rain in the bones. Owl breaks Like the day. Am an owl, am an owl.
In times of stress we naturally cleave to what is familiar and comfortable; and so I’ve found myself recently working through my extensive back catalogue of classic pop albums. But it wasn’t until Led Zeppelin IV that doubts began to creep in. If you recall, towards the end of side one they sing of a lady who’s buying a stairway to heaven (clearly a very wealthy lady, as the cost of the stair rods alone would seem prohibitive); who if, when she gets there, the stores are all closed, “with a word she can get what she came for”. Well, I thought, she’s lucky she’s shopping in heaven and not, say, looking for toilet roll in Tesco’s in Wick just now.
Yes, it’s week three of the coronavirus lockdown and I’m starting to view reality as something small and distant, like the earth seen in the rearview mirror of a spaceship. I’m rewriting old song lyrics to suit our troubled times: “We all self-isolate in a yellow submarine”, “Are you going to Scarborough Fair/ Well don’t bother/ ‘Cos it’s shut”, and the Dylan classic, “Stuck inside of Mobile with the social-distancing blues again”. (The late, great Bill Withers classic, “Stand By Me”, actually works fine, so long as you replace “by” with “about six feet away from”.)
Folk songs, of course, are ideal:
One misty, moisty morning,
When cloudy was the weather
I met a withered old man
A-clothed all in leather,
He was clothed all in leather
With a cap beneath his chin,
Singing, “Keep at least two metres away
And bugger off home again”.
View from the end of the riverside path
In gansey news, I’ve finished the first sleeve and made a start on the second, viz.: I’ve picked up the stitches around the armhole and laid the foundation row. As is my custom these days, I’ve made the cuff six inches long so it can be folded back to suit. (Sleeves can be tricky to judge correctly in my experience, and this adds an element of flexibility.) Another fortnight should hopefully see it finished.
It’s been a pretty intense few weeks—so much so that I’m actually taking this coming week as holiday, absurd though that may seem. It’s Easter week, always a special time for me: I’m not religious as such, being more of a floating voter, so to speak but, like Christmas, this is the closest I get. A time of reflection, for feeling thankful and making one’s peace with whatever might be out there, for listening to Parsifal and the St Matthew Passion, for eating far too much chocolate and nice things tasting of cinnamon; and for knitting: ‘cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to stay indoors…
After I left university—we’re talking some years ago now, when Queen Victoria was still on the throne and the Crimean war was raging—I found myself within the orbit of a group of broadly left-wing young people who were looking for an alternative kind of society. Green before the ecology movement acquired the label, some were anarchists, some were marxists, some were artists or going to be, and all were deeply earnest. Many cigarettes were smoked and much coffee was drunk into the small hours; there seemed to be a general belief that we could somehow get to the truth of things by talking, ideally while listening to Abraxas by Santana or The Concert for Bangladesh. It was a time of flamboyant dress and facial hair, some of it worn by the men.
Under a Rookery
The Old Lifeboat House
Interested Bystanders
