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The snowdrops haven’t grown much over the past weeks, but just seeing them is hopeful. Other plants are budding too – the hydrangea peaking over a neighbour’s wall, the greening iris leaves along the path, the shoots of daffodils, the roses next to the house. The river is still high, but the path is no longer impassably, deeply flooded. In places the path is covered in a wrack of grass stems, trodden down or intertwined with other grasses or wire fences. As a further sign of the change of season, the birds are starting to sing, and the crowns of the black-headed gulls on the river are changing to a dark brown.
 Snowdrops peeking Over the few days following the service, Gordon’s brother and I went on some drives around the county, visiting tourist hotspots and notspots. One stop was at a cold John o’Groats, because you can’t not visit when you’re this far north. It’s a pleasant drive to get there, passing dunes, bays, brochs, and bogs, finally cresting the hill a few miles away to see Orkney spread out before you, but the place itself isn’t that interesting.
 Rainbow at Camster Another stop was Camster Cairns, where the skies were steely dark with approaching rain. With the sun behind us as we faced the cairns, we were welcomed with a full, double rainbow. We didn’t get close to the cairns – the boardwalks were treacherously slippy from overnight frost. Our final stop of the drives was at Sarclet, one of Gordon’s favourite places. Much of the drive that day was through gatherings of fog, disappearing and reappearing on a whim like playful spectres, but at Sarclet it was clear. The sun was near setting, with a beautiful pearlescent light over the cliffs and sea.
 Sunset at Sarclet The list of ‘things to do’ to settle affairs is slowly being ticked off. As in the sense of, ‘I’ve marked these things as completed’, not ‘I’m so ticked off’ or ‘ he has been ticked off for misbehaving’. I’m following the principle of ‘one difficult thing a day’, which can include going to the supermarket, where memories abound. So many things don’t need to be purchased any more . . . but it is getting easier. Difficult things can also include writing Christmas cards, making phone calls, preparing and sending paperwork. It’s a bit whack-a-mole at times, where one task is completed only to have another pop up. But the mountain is being eroded, one grain of sand at a time.
In gansey news, good progress has been made on the sleeve. I’m nearly down to the cuff, where six inches of ribbing await. I’m still trying to figure out Gordon’s notes. It’s an ongoing puzzle, and this week I found I’d misinterpreted them, thinking there were far more decreases. One penny dropped when I realised that a circled number denoted the number of rows, not the number of stitches. Everything will make sense at some point, but at the moment I wish he’d left a key to the symbols!
As a final note, thank you so much for all your lovely, supportive, and heartfelt comments. I can’t possibly answer them all individually, but can only say to all of you how grateful I am for your support and confidence as I continue the blog.
During the break, I’ve been working on a sneaky side project. Last year, Gordon showed me some Christmas ornaments he’d seen online. They were clear globes with miniature pieces of knitting inside, complete with a little ball of wool and tiny needles. The stingy Yankee inside me said, “I don’t want to pay that much, I can make my own.” At the time, I sourced some clear plastic baubles, but didn’t buy any. This year, I re-sourced them, and bought some at the end of November. I hoped to get at least one done, with a mini gansey-in-progress inside, as a Christmas surprise. Even though there was no longer a recipient of the project, I decided to go ahead as a break from knitting the ‘big’ gansey.
 Attendees wearing ganseys Gordon knit for them One little gansey (the blue one on the right) was complete by Christmas, but is too big to fit in the neck of the ornament – the 5-ply Frangipani is just a bit too heavy. The second one, in red, is of laceweight, with the same number of stitches. The third, in grey, is of Rowan Fine Lace, with fewer stitches. The two in baubles don’t lie well, so the pattern isn’t visible, and the one in red lace weight wool is too dark to see. But it was a worthwhile experiment.
 As a complete surprise, the Wick Heritage Museum brought their gansey display, and set it up outside the room where the service took place. Gordon knit all but one or two of these. This past week, Gordon’s Celebration of Life service took place on Friday morning. It was a long, busy day for Gordon’s brother and me, from arriving at the venue at 10:15 to dinner with Gordon’s oldest friends in the evening. There was a few hours’ rest in the afternoon, of which we took full advantage. The service was well attended – all the seats were taken, and some were standing. People came from the south of England and Wales, or from within walking distance. A friend who viewed the service online said there were 50 attendees. So, if you were there, thank you very much for attending; I know it wasn’t the best timing for many of you. And if you couldn’t make it, I will update the blog with the link to the recording as soon as I have it.
 The service covered Gordon’s life and career from birth in New Zealand to becoming Nuclear Archivist, detailing his education and positions from east to west, south to north. I had honestly expected to break down in floods of tears, but having seen the service, tributes, photos, and chosen the music beforehand, this helped greatly to ameliorate bouts of sorrow. Some who worked closely with him were better at grasping the reality than I perhaps have been, and couldn’t hold back the tears. These next few months may well be more difficult than the last, but I know that with the help of friends and family near and far, I will make it to the other side.
 Nacreous cloud on Christmas Eve
 This afternoon I received the link for the stream of the service. It will take place tomorrow, 5 January 2024, at 11 AM UK, on Microsoft Teams. There may be a small delay getting in as virtual attendees need to be approved manually. Here is the link:
Join on your computer, mobile app or room device
Click here to join the meeting
Meeting ID: 346 278 192 327
Passcode: oAPbSj
Download Teams | Join on the web
 I went for a walk up the riverside path on Saturday, as I often do. As I sat on the stones at the end of the path, I thought of Gordon. Well, I’d been thinking of him during the walk too. I remembered the snowdrops we’d seen at a pottery in Devon. We’d gone there during one of my visits when we were courting. They covered most of the ground outside the pottery, a sight I’d not seen before – hundreds of small, white, pendant blooms amid the green sward. And I also thought of how the snowdrops are beginning to poke through the earth here, and how they bloom in the grass of the back garden in mid-late January. I hadn’t linked the memories before, or even thought of it for ages. I look forward with both joy and trepidation to their blooming next year.
 By the Harbour Which set me to thinking, where does the word ‘court’ come from? Fortunately we now have the internet. Unfortunately, it isn’t that interesting. It came into English via French and post-classical Latin in the 10th C with the sense of a group of people attached to a more powerful one, or a place where the group were. For instance, the king’s entourage or the king’s court, or a law court. As well, there was the idea of paying homage or being polite to a powerful person. Over the centuries it became a catch-all for similar concepts, with shifting senses. English started using it as a verb in the mid-16th C, including courtship and courting, where one is aiming to gain the affections of another. But ‘courtship’ and ‘courting’ are both outmoded now.
 Budding Willow More white flowers – roses, chrysanthemums, freesia, Queen Anne’s lace-type flowers, a stem of rhododendron, a lily – awaited on the doorstep when I got home. There was no card attached. This is the second bouquet of flowers, but at least the first had a card. I put it down to the kindness of strangers.
 Fuzzy Sunset In knitting news, it’s been steady but not massive progress. It’s been another busy week, with phone calls from friends and relatives, and Gordon’s employers, and meetings with celebrant and funeral director. Between this and regular walks, there hasn’t been much time to sit down and knit. But now that the Service is mostly in place, I hope to have a bit more time to progress the sleeve.
I’ll have a break next week, as it’s Christmas. Have a happy or merry Christmas, whichever you prefer, and I’ll be back in the New Year.
Nitty Gritty Details
The details for Gordon’s Celebration of Life Service have been chosen. The venue will be Nucleus: The Caithness and Nuclear Archive in Wick, where Gordon worked. The date and time are: 5 January 2024, 11 AM. Additionally, the service will be live-streamed via Zoom, and there will also be a recording for those who can’t make it ‘live’. I apologise to US readers, I know this is really early for you. When I have the link, I will update the blog, and post it on Facebook and Ravelry.
 Can you see the difference? Well, no, isn’t much. Until Friday evening I didn’t feel like knitting, not even my own. Instead, I took out Gordon’s notebook and tried to make sense of his system of lines, dots, and five-barred gates. He did explain it multiple times, but I never took it in. I think there’s a blog post somewhere … I’ll be able to use both his notebook and the first sleeve to continue.
 Stormy weather Saturday evening, I knit one row. It was a start. As I lifted the knitting into my lap, examining it to see how to proceed, there was a faint odour, a waft. I realised it was his. It’s hard to explain the feeling that brings. On the one hand, you know they’re gone, but on the other, it’s as though they are still with you. It’s strangely comforting, and I may miss it, but when the gansey is done, it will be blocked and sent to the recipient. It must have been the same with the other ganseys he knit, but I never handled them apart from repairing errors, washing, and blocking.
 Caithness Potholes The start of last week was relatively calm, just notifying friends and work colleagues via social media and telephone, and starting the process of the paperwork. The dam broke on Thursday, with multiple phone calls and appointments to make. The most important things are progressing; the smaller things will be taken care of as and when. The service arrangements should be sorted soon. There are many decisions to make regarding that. A streamed service is necessary, because of friends, relatives, and blog-readers living around the world. I will post a link as soon as I receive it. And then there’s all the other paperwork.
Clear Frosty Morning I am slowly finding my rhythm of life. It’s like being part of a binary star system, where one of the stars has, for some reason, shot off into space. The remaining planet then takes a while to settle down into its own orbit. Balance will be achieved, but, as with any process, it will take time.
And finally, many many thanks for your condolences, sympathy, and best wishes. I am touched that so many of you wish to continue reading the blog; I’ll try not to disappoint.
Regarding the donation button at the bottom of the blog. I hadn’t really thought about it last week, apart from having a working one available. Over the week, I’ve decided to give all donations from 1 December – 28 February to two charities. Gordon made regular donations to Cancer Research UK, so that is one. The second will be the Johnston Collection of the Wick Society – it was the source of many of the patterns that Gordon knit in the past five or six years; it seems appropriate.
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