Wick (George Bremner): Week 2 – 25 July

The funfair’s back in town, on the meadows down by the river near where they used to dry the fishing nets back before car parks were invented. If it wasn’t for a merciful row of trees lining our street we could see it from our bedroom, but if we can’t see it, we can certainly hear it. Imagine the type of music you like the least—let’s say jazz, since nobody really likes jazz—played over loudspeakers at very high volume, and you’ll get the idea, not so much a funfair as a sort of psychological warfare with moving parts. There’s usually an amplified voice shouting over the beat, too; it’s probably inviting us to roll up, roll up, but I can’t make out the words and it sounds disconcertingly like a drunken Dalek singing along to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. 

Fog rolls into Sarclet harbour

But then, I’ve never liked funfairs, amusement arcades, or any form of entertainment involving candy floss and motion sickness. Not that I have anything against candy floss qua candy floss; it’s just that once you grow a beard any chance eating it with dignity disappears (see also: cream cakes). This puts me at odds with my fellow men, as I know the return of the funfair is eagerly awaited each year, so I just have to lump it for a few weeks every summer. Many years ago I shared a flat with a vegan friend who had studied philosophy at university, majoring in logic. Although he was healthily emotional in many respects, when it came to reason he was as cold and logical as Mr Spock. One night the flat across the hall was having a party, and by 3.00 a.m. it was still impossible to sleep over the noise. My friend offered to go and tell them to turn it down. Ten minutes later he returned, with the music, I noticed, continuing as loud as ever. “What happened?” I asked. “Oh,” he said, “it’s a question of the greatest good to the greatest number: since there are more of them than there are of us, they convinced me they should leave the music playing…”

Lochans in the peat bog at Forsinard

[Editor’s note: Margaret’s off on her travels just now, so all photographs are courtesy of me and my iPhone. Can you tell? Normal service will be resumed in a couple of weeks.]

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TECHNICAL STUFF

Alert readers will have noticed that the designated pattern has changed from last week. This is because, having previously agreed I’d knit another pattern from the Johnston Collection held by Wick Museum for my charity project, I promptly forgot all about it and defaulted to a Filey pattern, only for Deb G to remind me. D’oh! Not that it will make any difference to the project, as I hadn’t started the pattern yet; and in fact I do this quite often, starting projects and changing my mind before I get to the pattern, or indeed starting a project and leaving the choice of pattern open until I get to the yoke, to see what mood I’m in when I get there. It’s only having to show my hand in the blog that forces me to declare the pattern upfront. (Now I think of it, this is a perfect illustration of quantum indeterminacy, where anything is possible until I make a choice and the waveform collapses into a single project. There you go: I’ve invented a new discipline, quantum knitting. Now, where’s my research grant?)

Anyway, we’ll have to wait a couple more weeks to see it, but this is a very nice pattern of alternating horizontal bands of chevrons and open diamonds in a lattice. Meanwhile, I can relax with lots of nice, gentle, plain knitting, none of which, thank heaven, requires me to remember anything…