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 I was contacted by a very pleasant journalist this week, who was researching a piece on the ganseys of the north-east of Scotland.
Now, I’m always wary of dealing with the media. Partly this is because, like Mr Toad, I do rather get carried away when faced with a receptive audience (“Well, well,” he said, “perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am—my friends get round me—we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories—and somehow my tongue gets wagging”); so I have to watch myself.
 Ye Front But then there’s the tendency of journalists to behave, well, like journalists. It’s as if they can’t help themselves, the creatures.
Many years ago, when I lived in Wales, I was contacted by the local paper about claims that the Victorian founder of the town of Llandrindod Wells had kept a brothel. This was news to me, but acting with a discretion beyond my years I made a guarded reply, merely saying that I was not aware of any evidence to suggest that was the case.
Next week the headline on the front page of the rag in question read, “County Archivist Denies Brothel Claims” and my mother was on the phone…
Well. Now you can understand why I await the eventual publication of the article in question, much like the dying man in Yeats’ poem, “dreading and hoping all”.
Rainbow south of Wick – I went for the pot of gold but the leprechaun had a knife… In gansey news, I have reached the beginning of the first shoulder, just the rig ‘n’ fur shoulder strap to go. I made the neck a full diamond deep, or 22 rows, so with a decrease every second row that meant I had to take 11 stitches from the centre to make a nicely indented collar (I hope). Over the next week I hope to finish the other shoulder and the collar.
Wick Marina in what is technically ‘summer’ Meanwhile, Margaret is on her travels again, in America this time. (I’m joining her in a fortnight, once she’s established that it’s safe.) So, once again I’m having to cope with tying my own shoelaces and, more immediately, take my own pictures for the blog—which is why the gansey once again looks blue, instead of the seaspray that it really is.
Finally, a short poem in honour of the true hero of the Wind in the Willows:
“Those fisher girls of olden days
They knitted and they sewed,
But none of them could knit half as well
As gansiferous Mr Toad..”
 As I’m feeling knackered today I’m going to cop out of writing a regular blog, and instead regale you with one of my favourite jokes. It’s an old joke, and you’ve probably heard it before, but every time I think of it I can’t help but smile.
Before we get to the joke, though, I’d better explain the general beknackeredness. You see, I spent a large chunk of Saturday at Berriedale Church down the coast from Wick, beautifully situated on cliffs high above the ocean; I took some old maps and documents along for the church open day, and by the time I’d carted all those heavy boxes up and down the fire escape at work I was about ready to be put down myself (the original meaning of the word “knackered”, of course). As a result today I feel every bit of the aged and decrepit 55 year-old I truly am, instead of the sprightly and nimble 54 year-old I believe myself to be inside.
 The Back In gansey news, I have finished the back. As you can see from the photos the yarn and the pattern make a splendid combination, though you won’t see it in all its glory until it’s properly washed and blocked. (It’s only just struck me that this is a close variant of Matt Camnish’s gansey pattern.) I almost used up an entire 500g cone of yarn in finishing the back, and have started a second cone with the front.
 Cromarty Firth Well, and so here’s the joke. I’ve copied it out from Daniel Wallace’s wonderful novel Big Fish. Just don’t blame me if you’ve heard it before…
 And another thing . . . One day Jesus was minding the pearly gates for St Peter when an old man walks shuffling up the path to Heaven.
“What have you done to enter the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus asks him.
And the man says, “Well, not much really. I’m just a poor carpenter who led a quiet life. The only remarkable thing about my life was my son.”
“Your son?” Jesus asks, getting interested.
“Yes, he was quite a son,” the man says. “He went through a most unusual birth and later a great transformation. He also became quite well known throughout the world and is still loved by many today.”
Jesus looks at the man, then embraces him tightly and says, “Father?”
And the old man hugs him back and says, “Pinocchio?
 View from Berriedale Church
 Autumn has come to Caithness, as the nights draw in and the leaves turn burnished gold—at least I assume they do; it’s hard to tell, as the wind is gusting so strongly there’s just a vague suggestion of yellow as the leaves are stripped from the branches and sent scything at passers-by like ninja throwing stars. On our street alone there’ve been three leaf-related fatalities this week.
I treated myself to a new ebook reader, one of those fancy ones you can read in bed without having to turn on the light. Partly I bought it for ease of reading; partly because I got fed up reading a heavy iPad in bed, losing both my concentration and my grip and having it slam into my face (it got so embarrassing turning up to work with a bruised and swollen nose so often I had to pretend I moonlighted as a bare-knuckle fighter).
 Waves at JoG I’m a big fan of ebook readers. I know their main selling point is being able to read 50 Shades of Grey in public without anyone knowing, or in my case Ulysses without being beaten up, but I love having all my favourite books with me wherever I go. And, yes, I love the physicality of a good book—but the binding of a number of paperbacks I bought in the 70s has cracked and broken, so that all I’m left with is a handful of loose pages and some fading memories. Typeface or electronic ink—in the end, it’s all written on water; it’s the words that matter.
 Giant reels at the harbour. Alas, they’re not loaded with yarn. In gansey news, I’ve finished the half-gussets, divided front and back and am now well advanced up the back. You can see the pattern more clearly now: although it’s another very simple pattern, and delightfully easy to keep track of, the combination of knit and purl stitches, light and shade and cables, make it a something of a classic.
 Finally this week, I was told the following story which comes from the Second World War. Well, the county’s Home Guard platoons all took part in a great exercise in which they had to pretend to attack one of the small villages on the east coast of Caithness. All the way there, this particular contingent argued as to how best to make their attack; some said one way, some said another. The arguments dragged on and on until at last they agreed to attack along the coast. They crept along the cliffs until they finally reached the command post and rushed in—only to find everyone was sitting around drinking tea. They’d spent so long arguing about how to attack the exercise was over before they got there…
 The world turns, as Michael Tippett so memorably said in his great oratorio A Child of Our Time, on its dark side. And this is certainly true in Caithness, where it’s dark, and cold, and wet. (On Saturday the Met Office forecast was for 9º, but “feels like 7º”.) Summer, which seems to have lasted from about 3.00pm to 4.30pm on August 17th, is well and truly over.
John O’Groats, in 35-mph gusts and horizontal rain, resembled nothing so much as the heaving deck of one of those Deadliest Catch fishing trawlers in a storm (Deadliest Groats, coming soon to a Discovery Channel near you). One by one cars would pull up. After a few minutes a couple would get out, run up to the famous signpost, stand hunched miserably in the rain for as long as it took to have their pictures taken, and then run back to their cars and drive away.
 But there were rainbows! While there we met a very soggy Australian couple: he was in shorts, and she was just a voice of misery hidden under about seventeen layers of gore-tex. She looked around, taking it all in, and then said simply: “This a bad place. Let’s get back to the car.” And, I have to say, she had a point.
 Well, and so to ganseys. Here at last is the big reveal, the pattern emerging from the plain knitting of the body like a newly-hatched chick from its shell. You won’t be able to see it properly for another week, of course, but there’s enough to get the idea. It consists of diamond panels alternating with betty martin and cables: it makes for a nicely chunky effect, quilted like Robin Hood’s archer’s jacket. I like it a lot, and it’s not surprising it’s been recorded more than once (there’s also a version from Whitby that has moss stitch diamonds instead).
 It also has the advantage of being very regular, and thus easy to keep track of. Every two rows are identical, both for the diamonds and the betty martin, so you always know where you are—indeed, once you’ve laid the foundations, the pattern chart’s not necessary. I’m cabling every 7th row, though, so I do need to keep track of that.
 An apology to Suzanne, and to anyone who wanted to comment on her gansey pics last week—a technical glitch shifted things around and wouldn’t let anyone post on her page. Anyway, it’s sorted now.
Finally, on Saturday we dodged the showers and visited the wonderful Neolithic Camster Cairns, hunched and brooding on the secluded hillside. There were a few other visitors there, and some of them were getting down on hands and knees and crawling in for a look at the dark, enclosed interior chambers. As we left we heard one of them call out cheerfully to another of the party who’d just disappeared inside, “Look out! There’s a ghost in this one…!”
 I’ve been suffering from a small migraine, more of a migrainette, today. This isn’t one of the really bad ones—I can tell because the walls aren’t melting and I haven’t tried to gouge my eyeballs out with a teaspoon—but I feel as if a small, invisible baboon is sitting on my chest and, with each heartbeat, inserting a needle into my temple.
When a migraine’s really bad nothing makes sense; I even lose my ability to understand simple English. I remember once standing for about fifteen minutes in Northampton town centre trying to grasp the meaning of a sign which read: “Parking limited to 30 minutes. No return for 1 hour.” (In all seriousness, I couldn’t work out how the car could only be parked for 30 minutes but I couldn’t come back to it for twice that long before I could drive it away—if I’d been an evil robot in Star Trek I’d have exploded in a puff of logical paradox.)
 Eventually a policeman happened along and I asked him to explain it to me. He did so, though he gave me a very dubious look and asked, “Do you know where you live, sir?”
Still, I’ve made good progress on the gansey this week, which now stands at 14 inches long (or it would do, if it didn’t collapse under its own weight like an imploding blue-green star). Another inch or two and I’ll start the yoke and the pattern, which I’ll post next week.
In parish news, Suzanne has sent pictures of this superb gansey-inspired jumper, knit in New Zealand merino-possum yarn, and showing once again the versatility of the gansey concept. (Though I must admit, I’m troubled at the thought of just how they got the merinos and possums to mate…)
 John o’Groats: All in one view Finally this week, I came across this great anecdote from World War Two. It’s from the book “Operation Mincemeat” about the British plans to deceive the Germans over the invasion of Sicily. Apparently the submarine and crew which took part in the operation had previously smuggled US general Mark Clark to Algeria for a secret meeting. At one point after midnight the whole party had to hide in the cellar when the gendarmes happened to call, and one of the British commandos developed a cough he couldn’t control.
Obviously, discovery would have meant disaster but Clark hastily passed the man some chewing gum, and the danger passed. Afterwards the commando thanked him, but observed, “Your American chewing gum has so little taste.”
“Yes,” Clark agreed. “I’ve already used it.”
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I was contacted by a very pleasant journalist this week, who was researching a piece on the ganseys of the north-east of Scotland.
