Inter-knit

I learned to knit a few months ago, and it's become a bizarrely large part of my life. Initially something of an obsession; now not quite that, but something I do most days; think about even more; and can't imagine not being there. Quite impressive for an activity I'd previously barely thought about, and when I did it was in the realms of old grannies knitting lumpy jumpers in dimly lit rooms. But as often with life, knitting is not what I thought it was. These are things I've learned about knitting:

   - It's challenging enough to be interesting and easy enough to be relaxing
   - It's an easy way to get that creative buzz
   - It's an excuse to acquire a whole pile of gorgeously coloured and textured wool
   - It's both an involving solitary pursuit and a brand new conversational topic.

More people than I ever could have guessed are into knitting - friends, their sisters, colleagues, acquaintances at parties, ladies on the bus. And we're knitting everywhere: at home; in each other's homes; in libraries; in cafes; on trains and even a lady I bumped into waiting for a ferry in Tenerife. And unsurprisingly, the internet is hooking us all up even more. When I started knitting, my friend Rosie told me about Ravelry, which has played a key part in my knitting epiphany. Ravelry is a wonderful (ok, if you're a knitter) source of inspiration, patterns and, I'm starting to realise, social networking for woollyphiles. I can admire photos of my friends' creations as well as those of strangers, and over Christmas I found time to post my projects there for all and sundry to see. Which was almost as satisfying as finishing them in the first place... Now I really feel part of the online knitting community.

Merry Christmas

This year I didn't make a good job of sending greetings and festive wishes to friends and family. Other things like work and life and knitting Christmas presents got in the way.... But I've been thinking of them and hoping that life is good, and that the future will be better, and that they're celebrating winter festive cheer with their loved ones at this dark, turning time of year. And that the loved ones we've lost are out there somewhere raising a glass to us and wishing us happy. Merry Christmas, all!

Analogue summer in December

I went to Jessops today with a 35mm film to develop. A film that I found in my Diana Mini camera a few weeks ago, which I finished on holiday in La Gomera, but couldn't remember when I'd started. It turns out to be back in July on a camping weekend with a friend on the west coast. One of the long-lost joys of occasionally reviving old fashioned photography is the complete opposite of digital camera instant gratification: it's the surprise reminder of almost-forgotten experiences. Like summer days in December. 

Dementia care and Dad

Went to see Dad today, in the dementia care home where he lives in Glasgow. I hadn't seen him for a few weeks, what with holidays and snowy roads. It was nice to spend time with him, although he fell asleep once or twice. But we were in the lounge, so that gave me a chance to chat to some of the care staff, and get to know some of the other residents a bit more. The staff work so hard and with such good humour to give the residents good care, and as best a standard of life as they can. Sometimes their job is hilariously like herding cats, but they invariably give each resident individual, personal attention, and because of that, respect and dignity.

Dementia care is in the news again today, although in hospitals rather than care homes. Apparently two-thirds of NHS hospital staff in England and Wales say they feel they lack the skills to care properly for patients with dementia. I'm not surprised. Our experience, although in Scotland, has been just that. Dad's ended up in hospital twice, and although I can't fault at all the critical care he got - they saved his life at least once - I can't say the same for his day-to-day care. During a 6 week spell in hospital his weight dropped from 10 to 7.5 stone, because he couldn't feed himself, and the nurses didn't feed him. Getting any information out of the doctors was like getting blood from a stone - everything was told directly to Dad, who of course didn't understand it and couldn't tell us. Mum was even scolded by the ward sister for reading his medical chart, because it was 'confidential' - when it was the only way for her to find out about his condition and treatment. Like the fact that they were dosing him with Haloperidol, an antipsychotic drug, to keep him quiet and manageable (which was why he couldn't feed himself). We still feel guilty that we didn't step in earlier, but we naively assumed he was being properly looked after. It was only afterwards we realised that if we'd been more demanding, asked more questions, he might have had better care. 

Hopefully, now that these issues are being more widely recognised, things will start to improve. It's not rocket science, but by making a few simple changes to training and procedures, hospital patients who also have dementia could get much better care without their families having to nag and demand and be generally awkward.

We won't see Dad at Christmas this year. It's going to be the first time he won't see his family on Christmas Day. Feels like a milestone. I don't think he'll mind; he doesn't know what time of year it is, and the staff at the home always try hard to make Christmas special. But I'll miss him. Merry Christmas, Dad.

Lovely La Gomera

A few photos of the beautiful island of La Gomera. Sheer, stark volcanic cliffs around the edges; dripping with green cloud forest at the top. Sunset crashing into the sea the way the waves crash onto the pebble beaches. Flowers and lizards and tropical fish. Going back one day.

Finca Argayall 

Rainforest and volcano

  Our spot overlooking the ocean...

Health, happiness and levitation through yoga

I just got back from a yoga holiday on the lovely Canarian island of La Gomera. Only a short ferry ride from the full English breakfasts, electric wheelchairs, grey heads, sunburnt overweight bodies and concrete high-rises of Tenerife's Los Cristianos, La Gomera is another world of calm, stark beauty, and wholesome pursuits. And quite a few Germans and hippies, and sometimes German hippies.

Never having been on a yoga holiday before, I'm impressed with the results. I've rarely felt so calm and full of quiet energy. Sadly, I didn't realise just how calm I'd become until this morning, three hours into my first day back in the office, when a familiar feeling of tension crept back into my stomach which I realised I hadn't felt for a week. Hopefully, though, the overall effects will last a lot longer.

It wasn't just the yoga, although that - an hour or two every morning and evening, sometimes looking out over the ocean - was wonderful for loosening the body and calming the mind. It was a heady mixture of the yoga and the sunshine; the peaceful, lush atmosphere at the eco/alternative lifestyle resort Finca Argayall (largely run by lovely German hippies); the amazingly good food three times a day; the (relatively) early nights; the cold beers while watching the sunsets; the swimming in the ocean; the exploring the island by bike and on foot; the excellent coffee; and the time to just sit around, read, write, knit, talk, and watch the world drift slowly by.

All in all, it was just about the perfect holiday before facing up to the inescapable Christmas tunes and winter weather. Did I mention the snow? From bikinis on the beach on Saturday to scraping thick ice off the car on Monday morning. Now there's a welcome home...

Escape!

This is nothing so much as a holding post. Think of it like the canned music while you wait for the bank or the gas company to answer your call. I'm escaping these winter gales for a desert island to unleash my inner hippy. Yoga, the beach, walking, bike rides, a bit of meditation, knitting, reading, talking, spending time together.

This time last November we were up to our knees in snow, and we'd abandoned lunchtime runs for mass office sledging sessions. This time, I think more like this.

Life is change!

Statistical bodies

I'm not really obsessed with corpses and skeletons, but it's funny how often a topic comes up when you start thinking about it. A friend just sent me this nice BBC link about our place in the demographic scheme of things. As well as finding out I was possibly the 3,895,488,147th human alive on Earth, I also learned about a man called Carl Haub at the Population Reference Bureau, who's worked out that some 108 billion people have been born since 50,000 BC, roughly when people evolved into people. Taking away the 7 billion who are still alive today, that's over 100 billion bodies...

I just did my own crude estimate and I propose that since humans turned up in the UK tens of thousands of years ago, somewhere around 850 million people have been born and lived here. And some 790 million of those have died here. Somehow I'm not surprised any more at the number of ancient burials around the place. I'm just amazed there aren't more.

Bodies everywhere

I've had a morbid revelation. Dig just about anywhere around Edinburgh, and you'll probably find a body or three. I've been listening to archaeologists talk about recent digs around the city and the Lothians, and it's eye-opening.

Digs for the tram works turned up 10 burials at the corner of London Road and Elm Row, near the site of a medieval monastery that was converted into a lepers' hospital in 1591. Two were babies; the others men and women all less than about 35 years old, and all of whom had apparently lived lives of poverty and hard manual labour since childhood.

Further down the hill on Constitution Street, more tram works turned up the burials of a staggering 378 people below a stretch of road just 100m long. They were probably buried in the grounds of South Leith Parish Church between about 1500 and 1800; and there are almost certainly hundreds more buried nearby tenement flats. Most died in late childhood or as young to middle aged adults, and like the London Road burials, most had poor, iron-deficient diets, dominated by cheap carbohydrates like bread and porridge.

Out at Musselburgh a dig at a new NHS site has unearthed, among many other things, more than 10 Roman skeletons, some who had their heads chopped after death, and the skulls buried with them, lying next to their hand, by their feet or between their legs. Maybe they were gladiators, like similar burials found in York? Maybe they were from local British tribes who practised headless burial rituals? As well as the human burials there's also a horse buried in a pit below a funeral pyre along with the cremated remains of a human. And all this below a new health centre and Tescos.

I could go on and on and on. The bodies discovered during renovation of the quad at Old College which could be linked to the murders of Darnley (2nd husband of Mary Queen of Scots) - as well as the piles of 18th century lab equipment and experiments buried below the remains of a demolished university building, with the brightly coloured remains of chemicals like arsenic, cobalt and mercury oxides still in their broken dishes. Or the unmarked medieval remains of babies found close to the walls of a churchyard in the Borders, who were probably unbaptised and buried secretly in hallowed ground at night.

I shouldn't be so surprised that with all the people who've lived before us, the earthly remains of quite a few of them must still be hanging around. I'll be going to be going around town with new eyes, wondering just who has been lain to rest below my feet.

A cyclist's view of human nature

What with one thing and another, i've been thinking quite a bit about cycling this week, and about our sense of freedom and responsibility, our relationship with cars and with each other.

Most of the time, I love cycling around town - it's fast, fun, lets me do things that otherwise would take too long and I probably wouldn't get round to, gives me a shot of welcome fresh air and adrenaline just getting to work in the morning, saves money on fuel and parking, and is - generally - good for my health. And yep, it does give me a sense of freedom that I just don't get as a pedestrian, a bus rider or even a driver.

But the downsides aren't just the regular threat of being hit by a wheeled lethal weapon. The worst thing is being reminded almost daily just how depressingly unthinking, and sometimes aggressive, people can be. From wandering out in the road in front of speeding cyclists without looking, to flinging open car doors without looking, to texting and phoning behind the wheel, to aggressive overtaking, to cutting up cyclists on roundabouts, to yelling out of the window at cyclists, to just driving too close and too fast and generally without care and attention to others. A few times I've found myself cynically wondering if I shouldn't stop cycling, just so I can recover my faith in human nature.

Leaving the not-looking-before-crossing-the-road aside, I wonder if our whole personal and cultural attitude to cars isn't to blame. Sitting behind the wheel, we feel safe, free, invulnerable, untouchable. It's probably even reflected in law - for killing someone by careless or inconsiderate driving, the maximum sentence is 5 years in prison. Compare that to the maximum sentence of life for killing someone with any weapon other than a car. We just don't see cars as dangerous. And sitting behind the wheel, we also feel separate, apart, divorced from other people. It's a heady combination and maybe it makes us behave quite differently, as drivers, than we would outside a car. We care less about other people, and we're more blind to the risks and consequences of what we're doing.

Depressingly, that's not going to change. But how about this suggestion to try and make life nicer for cyclists: to pass their driving test, all drivers-to-be would also have to do some cycling , and be taught specifically about how to drive properly around cyclists. It would be a start...

Who are the savages?

A guy in a car just tried to kill me. Well, it could have been a woman. OK, it was dark and I was too busy trying to stay on my bike to check out the gender of the wannabe killer, or at least seriously-maimer, but hey, I'm shaken, I'm pissed off, I've just downed a couple of calming glasses of wine, I'm going to go right ahead and blame male testorone-fuelled competitive aggressiveness.

I was cycling home, lit up like a Christmas tree as I generally am (your archetypal cautious cyclist), just started off from traffic lights, when a small car accelerated past with a hand's breadth of space to spare. I swear I felt it sucking me into his slipstream. I swerved away from him and wobbled around for a few seconds before getting back on track. With heart pounding and adrenaline shooting through my system. Was is that he didn't like me starting off in front of him at the junction? Was his manhood compromised? Was he scared by a cyclist in childhood? Was he texting and didn't see me? Was he just hungry and thinking of the beer and microwave ready meal waiting at home?

Ironically, I was cycling home from an archaeology evening class, all about the people who created some of the most enduring and impressive monuments in Scotland. People who, 5000 years ago in the Stone Age, built the village of Skara Brae, with kitchen cupboards to display their best dinnerware on, and indoor plumbing, no less (3000 years before the Romans! What did they ever do for us?). And Maeshowe, one of the finest Neolithic chambered tombs in Europe, where the builders cannily lined up the long dark entrance passageway so that the midwinter sun shines straight down the passage and hits the back wall of the tomb for 10 minutes before sunset. These people were no brainless grunting savages. To build places like Maeshowe, they had to work together for a common aim. They had community, and individual and communal responsibilities. OK, so I've got my rose-tinted glasses on now. Presumably the Neolithic had its share of aggressive, selfish, unsocialised numpties. But right now I feel there's something to be said for a society where people knew each other; lived and worked together for common aims; felt kinship and responsibility for each other; and only tried to kill the tribe that lived in the next valley. At least they didn't have cars.

The fabulous Skara Brae

El Hierro: volcanic disruption

A new island is being born off El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary islands. Although I'm a geologist, of sorts, I don't know much about volcanoes, but I think a few facts and figures are called for here. It started back in July as an earthquake swarm, with 720 earthquakes measured in one week, of magnitude 1 to 3, at depths of 5 to 15 km. Then around 10 October an undersea eruption began, a few kilometres off the south coast of El Hierro and about 450 m below the sea surface. Since then it's been busy volcanoing away, making new rock and building up and up towards that Canaries sunshine. As of this weekend, it's thought to be about 70 m below sea level, and still rising. It's so close now that the water immediately above the volcanic vents is bubbling away like a jacuzzi, the sea around them is stained brown from volcanic debris, and earthquakes are continuing - the biggest was magnitude 4.3, last Saturday.

The power and sheer force of nature of a volcano are captivating: this is the godlike creation of new land by Vulcan! (who is of course my favourite Paolozzi sculpture - possibly even more now I can sit right at his feet to have coffee and cake in the Dean Gallery cafe). There are some brilliant video clips out there of the water boiling at El Hierro (although watch out for the filmmaker's idea of properly dramatic accompanying music...), or this one that shows the debris slick in the water. It's pretty awe inspiring to be faced with something we have no control of, when we spend so much time creating little worlds we think we're in charge of.

But of course the flipside is...that we can't make it go away when it starts to mess up our lives. The inhabitants of the nearest town, the fishing village of La Restinga, have already been evacuated as a precaution because of earthquakes and possible toxic gases. And the volcano is already throwing pyroclastic rocks and ash into the air, even when it's erupting 70 m below the sea surface. Oh yes, ash. We know what volcanic ash does. And that's the point, of course. I'm not just interested in El Hierro because it's hot stuff and looks good in a jacuzzi. It's all about the little world I try to take control of. J and I are meant to be going on holiday in two weeks time on the island next door, and selfishly I don't want my holiday cancelled because of an ash cloud (and I do want the La Restingans to get home and back to fishing and taking tourists scuba diving again). So, I'm probably going to be watching this webcam quite a lot over the next week or so (if it works), and keeping my fingers firmly crossed that this volcano slows down and doesn't break the sea surface for a while yet, if ever.

At the feet of Paolozzi's Vulcan 

Armistice Day

I've got mixed feelings about red poppies, Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. The symbolism of the poppy is almost unbearably poignant - the lines of John McCrae's poem tugging at the heartstrings with its reminder of the horror and agony of the First World War:

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields

My first memory of Poppy Day is taking part in our town's Remembrance Sunday parade, standing outside in the cold of an Aberdeenshire November morning, aged about 7, wearing my thin Brownie uniform, no coat, and probably thinking only longingly of indoors and Sunday lunch. Later, as a bolshie (I thought free-thinking...) teenage CND member, we wore white poppies, in what i think now was a provocative and pretty misguided kind of protest about militarism. There's no point in deliberately antagonising people.

But this annual social ritual is all mixed up with disquiet at the politics of war; about politicians and generals sending young, sometimes idealistic, sometimes poorly educated men off to fight far from home; about the dubious reasons our governments give for waging war around the world. I'm also uneasy at the seemingly increasing social pressure to support the armed forces, help the heroes, and yes, wear a poppy - or, it seems, risk the ostracism of popular culture. Yes, I admire the courage and dedication of soldiers who voluntarily risk their lives and sometimes behave with astounding loyalty and professionalism. But I don't necessarily admire the unquestioning following of orders in actions which I feel are morally indefensible. Also, I know soldiers have to be trained to obey orders without question, or they would never be able do their jobs. But without free will and accepting responsibility for your own actions, people can do terrible things.

Enough of all this ambivalence. All I am sure about is that if November poppies symbolise a wish for peace, then I wish the world were full of them.

These are some of the poppy crosses in Edinburgh's Field of Remembrance, in Princes Street Gardens by the Scott Memorial, today.

Starting something

Starting something is a rush. A whirl of excitement, nerves, uncertainty, hopes, doubts. This new blog is inspired by many urges: to write; to reflect on things and make more sense of them; to make changes; to share great and little things; to redirect some of my illogical rants and thus spare my nearest and dearest, colleagues, friends, and people i meet along the way; and not at all least, to fend off inertia. I don't know yet what form it will take and where it will go. This blog is my new journey into the unknown!

While writing this I suddenly remembered the first really big journey I took into the wild unknown. Not long out of school, I went to Nepal for two months, with two school friends, a new friend, and someone we met along the way. Pre-internet, pre-email, pre the days of easy international phone calls, when it took over a week for a postcard to get back home. Right now I feel about the same as I did, aged 18, the night before I set off for the airport. That trip was life changing. I don't have quite such high hopes for this blog, but let's see what happens.

Lukla, 8 March 1992. Young, happy and with big sticks!

I think I might have been bending down to say hello to a dog, but then again I was never good at posing for photos.

We were there, on Kala Pattar, looking at Everest. 20 March 1992.

My brother knows this mountain better than most, but that's another story.