Wick (John Macleod II): Week 4 – 30 January

When did the British lose their stiff upper lips? Not that I ever really had one: when exposed to pain—a crushing handshake, say, or the news that a tooth needs a filling—I tend to scream unnervingly like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and display all the bodily self-control of someone stepping on a landmine. But the British as a whole have long been held up as the inheritors of a sort of Roman stoic discipline, and I’ve seen it persuasively argued that this stems from the English Civil War, i.e., that the people of Britain saw where passionate convictions led to, and so decided for the next 350 years not to have any. No longer. Nowadays we don’t so much wear our hearts on our sleeves as take photos of them and post them on Instagram, blood, arteries and all.

Swirl of tulips

This is most obvious in sports commentary. Once upon a time we made tv programmes to laugh at excitable foreigners, now even football commentary sounds like it’s being delivered by a Dalek who’s ingested something dangerously chemical before the match began and it’s just kicking in: “And Scrunt on the outside of the box goes past one defender, goes past another, puts in a high cross and Blotch heads it in! It’s gone in! He’s scored! And OHMYGOD THE COLOURS AND FLASHING LIGHTS! It’s, I can’t believe this, it’s an actual alien mothership, it’s come for me at last to take me home, ohmygodohmygod—no, er, wait, sorry, my mistake, as you were, it’s just the binmen reversing up the street. And, er, meanwhile, the goal was ruled offside…”

Though I still remember when I had my nervous breakdown a few years back, and was talking to the doctor, explaining all the circumstances that as I saw it had led me to my current situation. He heard me out, and asked some probing questions, and then asked me what I wanted at this point. I thought for a moment and then, as is my way, made a joke of what were really some pretty deep anxieties: I’d like, I said, to be able to watch Beauty and the Beast and get to the end without crying. And the wonderful doctor laughed uproariously, pushed his glasses up on top of his head, and said, “Ach, we’d all like to be able to do that! Maybe focus on something more achievable to start with…” And suddenly about 50% of my anxiety vanished.

Parish notices. Firstly, there’s still a couple of weeks left to enter the raffle to win a gansey hand-knitted by me. It’s all in aid of the Caithness Fishermen’s Mission, full details in last week’s post, but you can enter by clicking the “Buy Gordon a cuppa” button and making a contribution. Tickets are £1 for a strip of five tickets. If you leave a note saying it’s for the raffle we’ll email you back to tell you your numbers for the draw. And secondly, I’m giving a talk on ganseys to the Killimster Women’s Institute on Thursday night, which as ever seemed a good idea last summer when it was comfortably six months away…

Interesting clouds

There’s not much to say about the gansey this week, it’s pretty much a case of rinse and repeat. But it shows the value of just sticking at it, even if you don’t seem to be making a lot of progress, for I’m just about at the end of the body ribbing (8 inches from the welt) and in the next few days should start the chevron border that separates the body from the yoke pattern. Time to do some maths!