Wick (Thos McKay): Week 10 – 19 August

I’ve noticed that the seasons have started to turn while I was away.  The frothy white heads of the umbellifers lining the paths have been replaced by the miniature space stations of their seedheads.  The green fields are now golden.  Alas, they’re not amber waves nowadays; ‘improvements’ in agriculture have shortened the stems.  So why does wheat currently have shorter stems?  During the mid 20^th century, wheat was selectively bred to produce shorter stems.  Shorter stems meant the grain was less likely to topple over in the field, and lead to higher yields.  (Thank you, internet.)

 There are also the thistles – there are so many varieties I don’t even try to identify them.  The bright purples and pinks have turned to white fluff, soon to drift off in the autumn winds.

Black headed gull

There are changes in the wildlife too.  Most notably, the black-headed gulls are starting to lose their black heads, changing to the winter plumage of a white head with black ‘ears’ – a dark spot behind the eye.

To drift off to another subject, a word I started to wonder about this week was ‘butter’.  It just popped into my head during a walk.  I thought that perhaps it was called ‘butter’ because cream is beaten, or by extension, butted, to make it.  But another surprise awaited in the ever-useful Oxford English Dictionary:  it’s a borrowing from Latin!  And the Romans borrowed it from the Greeks!  To quote the OED:  “from classical Latin būtȳrum (also būtūrum) butter from ancient Greek βούτυρον butter from βοῦς ox, cow (see Bucephalus n.) + τυρός cheese (see tyroma n.).”  The first known use in English is before 1150 AD. 

Thistledown

Coming back to the future with a jolt, tomorrow the landline in the house will be switched to a digital voice service.  What does this mean?  Instead of the telephone line being routed through the old copper network, it will come via the internet.  The UK is switching off the copper network at the end of 2027.  Essentially, communication needs have changed drastically since the network was first developed in the 19^th century.  Broadband is faster, more reliable, more resilient and easier to maintain. The landline doesn’t get much use now, perhaps the switch will future-proof it.  The only thing I need to figure out is how to connect the phone handset to the router.

Finally, we reach the sparse paragraph where I detail this week’s progress on the gansey.  The photo gives a false impression, because last night I realized that yet again I’d made a blunder, and a rather colossal one at that.  If you get out your rulers and measure your screen, you will see that the top repeat of the fishbone pattern is too tall.  Annoyingly, I didn’t notice until the end of the repeat.  The last 9 rows will need to be ripped out.  Due to the nature of the pattern, this can’t be done in sections, amending a stitch here and there.  They’ve all got to go.