It’s back to work this week, something I’m looking forward to with the same kind of foredoomed anticipation with which Ishmael viewed his final confrontation with the white whale Moby-Dick. Not only will this involve working in an office, but, which is worse, I’ll actually have to interact with other people. Having to work as such, though, won’t be a shock: I’ve been working all through lockdown, most recently on a sort of definitive handbook of the records of the nuclear industry, and have filled no less than 150 pages of an A5 notebook accordingly, using my natty new fountain pen. And it’s led me to think of names.
You can tell everything you need to know about Britain and America from the respective codenames they gave to their secret atomic projects during the War. The British project was called “Tube Alloys”, a brilliantly dull title which sounds like a type of zinc cream for haemorrhoids. It’s boring even to type the words; anyone coming across the dossier would probably have fallen asleep before they opened the cover. But the Americans of course named their atomic research “The Manhattan Project”: a title so cool and mysterious it immediately suggests men in sunglasses with blank faces denying you access, possibly to an alien autopsy. Of course you want find out more. (Equally brilliantly the British committee overseeing atomic research was known as the “MAUD Committee”. But the letters “MAUD” didn’t stand for anything; it was just the name of Danish physicist Niels Bohr’s housekeeper, Maud Ray.)
Overgrown bench by the riverside path
I’ve taken great strides towards the completion of the gansey this week by finishing the first sleeve and starting the second. The one part of knitting a gansey that I don’t particularly enjoy—apart from all the maths involved in planning them, casting on, picking up stitches round the neck and darning in all the loose ends at the conclusion—come to think of it, why do I knit them again?—is picking up 140-odd stitches round the armhole. But the joy of knowing that there are no more stitches to be picked up by this stage is equally great; and as the rest of the gansey is just a gentle freewheel down to the cuff, it feels like a holiday. Another fortnight might even see it done.
In parish notices, a big shout out to Linda for bringing her gansey safe to fruition. You can see the pictures here—it’s the splendid Filey ladder and cables pattern, and from the pictures looks like a perfect fit. Many congratulations to Linda!
Textures of the marsh
And speaking of names, did you know that no one actually knows what the “moby” part of the white whale’s name means, or how Melville came up with it? Though there was apparently a famous whale called “Mocha Dick, the white whale of the Pacific”. The best that anyone can come up with is that it’s a blending of “mocha” and “Toby” (though no one can explain what Toby has to do with anything). Ah well; a mystery it is, and a mystery it shall probably remain, and I find that curiously satisfying. It’s not good for us to know everything. Ishmael, as in so many things, got it about right: “Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth”.
To celebrate our new-found freedom out of lockdown we’ve been revisiting some of our favourite haunts, going round each place to make sure they’re still there, like a cat just back from the vet’s checking out the neighbourhood; though, unlike the cat, so far we’ve drawn the line at scent marking. And everything is just the same, exactly where we left it: the cliffs and the boulders and rivers and geos and trees. Also the seagulls and skuas, the ravens and crows; even, alas, the flies.
Caithness usually has enough of a wind—the equivalent on an average day of, say, the slipstream of a fighter jet—to keep the flies away. But even the wind needs a breather now and then, and when it drops the little buggers pounce. Walking the cliffs by Sarclet last weekend I brushed my sleeve across my forehead which had become bedewed with honest perspiration, only for it to come away black with the crushed bodies of a disconcerting number of ex-flies which I’d just inadvertently sent into the Great Beyond. (Not for nothing is the Scottish currant and raisin cake known colloquially as “fly cemetery”.)
Grass in the wind
Worse was to follow. Next day we went to Camster Cairns, the semi-reconstructed 4,000 year-old monuments a few miles south of Wick. It was a still, muggy day and within a few minutes of leaving the car I was beset with my own personal entourage of blowflies, possibly sent by Beelzebub in vengeance for my midge-assassinations of the previous day. In my jerking, spasming efforts to shake them off I waved my arms like someone taking a speed-reading course in semaphore. I tried to reason with them—pointing out the fragrant sheep droppings liberally dappling the field in which we stood—but they would have none of it: only my ears, nostrils and eyes would do. (Margaret, incidentally, was scarcely affected, leading me to suppose that Caithness has now evolved a new strain of blowfly that feeds exclusively on archivists.) I duly fled to the car, trailing a cloud of flies, where I amused myself for the next ten minutes or so repeatedly winding down the window, waiting till a cluster of the black devils had got my scent, then quickly winding it back up again and watching them thud into the glass, giving themselves concussion and making tiny boi-yoi-yoi-yoing noises.
Cliffs at Sarclet
Meanwhile, in gansey news, I have real progress to report. I’ve finished the front, joined the shoulders, done the collar and started the first sleeve. As I said last week, there are good reasons why this has gone so quickly; but it also helps that it’s a pattern I could probably knit in my sleep; and although I worked out a pattern chart, I’ve never needed to refer to it. It’s always a sign of a good pattern that it practically knits itself. All things being equal, I should finish it by the end of the month: the last gansey of (sob) summer.
Beset by flies at Camster
Finally, we all know that Beelzebub is styled the Lord of the Flies—of the flying insects, that is to say, not trouser fastenings, though there was that one time I caught my… but the less said about that the better. There are however also times when I feel there’s another minor demon out there, one who persecutes archivists and record-keepers in general, and all owing to a tragic misprint in some ancient text: the lesser imp Dampmould, the Lord of the Files…
By way of distracting myself from my toenails—which, if allowed to grow, end up more like a selection of Swiss army knife blades made out of keratin than anything human—and the cutting of which, as I get older, increasingly resembles someone trying to defuse an explosive device using robotic arms while trying not to sneeze—we took a trip over the border to the lovely coastal village of Helmsdale in Sutherland. It was a fine day, so we parked in the middle of the village and went for a walk a mile or so up the strath, along the banks of the broad, shallow River Helmsdale. We’d hoped to see some wildlife, and in a way we did, for every hundred yards or so there was a fisherman up to his knees in the water, casting his line.
Sandy Goe
I remember when I was little reading something about the art of fly fishing, how the fisherman “pitted his wits against the wily salmon”; and even at the tender age of twelve that struck me as odd. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have the highest respect for the pastime and those who practice it—it’s the closest humanity has come to turning meditation into a sport. But I can’t help feeling that, generally speaking, a random specimen of genus homo and species sapiens ought to be able to defeat salmo salar in a battle of wits, surely? It’d be like me boasting that I beat a labrador in a game of Monopoly; or scoring higher than, say, an ocelot in a cognitive test that might be considered hard even by an American president.
Fly Fishing at Helmsdale
You never see a salmon knitting, either; I suppose the yarn would get too wet. Anyway, I continue to make good progress on the Flamborough gansey. I’ve finished the back, and am well embarked on the front. The speed at which I’m knitting can be explained by two things: this gansey is rather narrower than the ones I usually knit, so the recipient will have to swear off junk food for the foreseeable; and as I’m working from home I can use my commuting time and coffee breaks to knit a row here and there, which results in half an inch extra a day by this stage.
Heading Out
Now, about that duel of wits with a salmon. Try asking it to count to twenty and I bet it’d struggle, even if it took its socks off—that’s one nil to humanity. But ask me to navigate my way back to the breeding grounds where I was hatched without GPS and I’d be hard put to it—that makes it one all. Let’s see what another US President, George W Bush, had to say in 2000 on the subject: “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” Hmm. Tell you what, let’s call it a draw…
I’ve been thinking recently about famous last words—not, I hasten to add, because I plan to utter any in the near future, but rather because there are more of them around than I’d imagined. Of course, we all know Oscar Wilde’s witty last words: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” (Although knowing Oscar’s habit of preparing his witticisms carefully in advance, I have a vision of him being carried in extremis from hotel to hotel until he found a room sufficiently ghastly for his quip.) In terms of dying as you lived, the French grammarian Dominique Bouhours is one of my heroes. As he expired he said, “I am about to—or I am going to—die: either expression is correct”.
On the deck
Imagine going down in history as a black joke, your last words revealing how badly you’d misjudged things. This happened to the American Civil War general John Sedgwick, who berated his men for taking cover under fire with the immortal words, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—”. Running him close in the misplaced optimism stakes we have William Pitt the Younger, British Prime Minister, whose last words were, “I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.” (Spoiler: he couldn’t.) It’s also a good time to settle old scores. Told that his time was short, the Spanish playwright Lope Félix de Vega Carpio memorably exclaimed, “All right, then, I’ll say it: Dante makes me sick!”
Hogweed at Sarclet
Leaving last things for a moment, it’s time to ring in a new gansey. It’s another old favourite, Flamborough III in Frangipani pistachio yarn. I’ve amended the pattern slightly by narrowing the diamonds from the previous time I knit it, because the intended recipient is somewhat less broad across the beam than yours truly. It’s a truly classic pattern, one of the best, and the pastel shade really suits it. (Of course this isn’t really week one: I’ve been beavering away quietly on it for the last few weeks.)
Duncansby Stacks
Staying green for a moment, Judit has been busy in Finland, turning corona-lockdown to advantage. She’s sent pictures of this green gansey, a future Christmas present. The pattern is taken from Beth Brown-Reinsel‘s book, and is a really effective combination of bands of different patterns which set each other off to a “T”. Congratulations once again to Judit! And a reminder that if anyone has a completed gansey they’d like to share, please send us pictures (completed ganseys only, I’m afraid).
Turning back to last words, the French, as ever, do it with the most style. Take the philosopher Bernard de Fontenelle. His last words were the marvellous, “I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.” (To be fair, this is how I feel most Monday mornings.) But pride of place surely goes to the celebrated atheist and writer Voltaire—or it would do if it were true, which it probably isn’t; but, as another man once said, unless it turns out he didn’t either, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”. Where was I? Oh, yes: Voltaire. On his death bed, and urged by a priest to renounce Satan, he is alleged to have told him, “Now, now, my good man; this no time to be making enemies…”
I’ve mentioned before my deep and abiding love for fountain pens. I think of buying one anytime I feel low in spirits and in need of a treat to cheer myself up (about four times a day on average). They’re tools of such elegance and beauty that even writing a shopping list becomes a pleasure, doubly so if you’re out of chocolate biscuits. The best pens have gold nibs, and you can buy superb examples that will last a lifetime for about £80-£150; above that and you’re mostly paying for a fancy barrel (there are hand-painted Japanese pens which get me into trouble with the tenth commandment) or rare editions.
Wildflowers at Nybster
There’s a simple way to find out if someone is a fountain pen addict: tell them you’ve seen one for sale for £525. If they say, “What, are you nuts? It’s only a pen for chrissakes!” then you know there’s still hope. If, on the other hand they say, “Actually, the more expensive model costs £725, so when you think about it it’s really a saving of £200, keep them talking while I get my credit card”, then they’re probably past saving. This is, alas, a true conversation I had with myself recently, the pens in question being Montblancs, the most famous luxury pens on the market. It came down to an argument between my good and bad angels, with the bad angel fighting dirty. (“Listen, you know Gabriel the recording angel? He’s a friend of mine, you think he uses a biro?”)
I already own a couple of luxury pens by the celebrated German company Pelikan. They’re lovely and write like a dream; plus the whole barrel is the ink reservoir which you fill by means of a piston mechanism built into the end; not only does one filling last for ages, but on a slow day you can happily spend hours filling and emptying it, back and forth, hypnotised like a cat staring at goldfish. The only downside is, they’re almost too nice: I daren’t take them to work, where I do most of my writing, in case I drop them or lose them. They mostly live in their boxes, which seems a pity. So did I buy the Montblanc? Reader, I did not. (What, are you nuts? It’s only a pen for chrissakes!) I bought a different pen at half the price, very nice but not excessively so. Now, about those hand-painted Japanese pens…
As you can see from the photo above, the gansey is in the process of cardiganification. Margaret will now take over and explain the process.
Firstly, the gansey is blocked, as you saw last week, with the stitches for the steek basted closed.
Secondly, the centre line is marked with basting thread of a different colour, and then the basting for the steek is removed.
Step 3
3. Machine stitch a line of stitching either side of the centre line. I’ve used a fancy stitch on the machine but you could use a triple zigzag or regular zigzag.
4. Moment of truth. Get your scissors out and cut between the two lines of stitching (see main pic, above).
Steps 5 & 6
5. The edges were wrapped in bias binding made of silk organza. The machine-sewn edges shouldn’t ravel, but the bias binding gives a nice finish.
6. Baste the centre opening closed. Press the basted seam open.
Step 7
7. With the gansey wrong side out and on a flat surface, place the zipper face down over the basted seam. Pin in place, then hand baste. If the zipper’s too long, position the excess at the neckline.
8. Hand stitch the zipper using matching yarn.
9. If there is excess zip at the top, trim it to about 1.5 inches. Fold it under the seam allowance and secure.
Step 8
10. Check the seam allowance at the bottom of the zip. If it shows below the bottom edge of the ribbing, stitch it neatly so it is hidden on the inside. In this instance, the outside and facing have been duplicate-stitched together.
Step 9
11. Remove the basting. Give the zip a bit of a steam if it looks a bit irregular. If the seam allowance on the inside is a bit floppy, stitch it down with herringbone stitches. In addition to the zip, I’ve added a neck stay of elastic encased in bias binding, to discourage the neckline from getting too floppy.
It’s back to work this week, something I’m looking forward to with the same kind of foredoomed anticipation with which Ishmael viewed his final confrontation with the white whale Moby-Dick. Not only will this involve working in an office, but, which is worse, I’ll actually have to interact with other people. Having to work as such, though, won’t be a shock: I’ve been working all through lockdown, most recently on a sort of definitive handbook of the records of the nuclear industry, and have filled no less than 150 pages of an A5 notebook accordingly, using my natty new fountain pen. And it’s led me to think of names.
