I don't know what it was that I did to Inverness, but it must have been something truly awful because I cannot go near the place without disaster following. We can't even drive past it without the car dashboard making strange noises and flashing up generally incomprehensible messages about depollution systems being faulty. As for the occasions we take it there to get the car MOT-ed, well, the least said the better.
Since my teens it has also been the centre of two miserable holidays and a truly horrendous overnight stay on the way home from Orkney. That was a long while ago now; but I still remember the B & B, and the expression on the owner's face when we asked where we could get an evening meal. In Inverness? On a Sunday?? After 7.00 pm???
It also saw the death of a very important student relationship. It's possibly a bit unfair of me to blame Inverness for this one, since it had been on/off for a while and it had almost been given the death blow in Guidlford a year before, but it was in Inverness that I finally realised that it really was over. Since realisation dawned on Wednesday and my train ticket home was booked for the following Saturday I put in a few unhappy days.
So I was on the look out last week for the Curse of Inverness. I wondered if I had hit it Monday afternoon, when we finished early, courtesy of the management guy who couldn't cope any longer without more caffeine and who therefore brought his session to a premature end. I decided to trek through town to a wool shop and buy some sock wool. Good idea. Except by the time I got to the shop it was 4.20 and the shop shuts at 4.00. Every week day. This was disappointing but light stuff for the curse. So I shrugged it off as just One of Those Things that can happen anywhere.
There again it seemed to hit on the Tuesday morning when I developed an unsightly blotch, a bit like a birthmark, under my eye. It didn't hurt. It didn't itch. It wasn't even very big, although there were shaky moments while I tried to decide whether or not it was spreading. It just looked horribly red, and then as the morning wore on, it looked horribly purple. This is it, I thought, I'm going to worry myself sick about this, I won't be able to take in anything anyone says and then this evening when I don't have anything I need to concentrate on, it will fade away as quickly as it came and I will feel stupid.
This was foolish of me. I was planning to stay in this town that hates me for three nights and I thought the best it could do was a facial blemish? Oh boy, was I wrong about that.
It was lunchtime when the blow fell and I didn't see it coming. A very nice woman from UHI Postgraduate admin sidled up to me in the lunchbreak and truly I thought she was seeking me out for the pleasure of my company. I may even have smiled at her as I passed a plate of sandwiches. It transpired that there was a problem with my registration. In fact I couldn't register. Well not yet. Yes, I had been told that I could. Yes, I had been invited to Induction. Yes, I had been told that a previous problem had been solved. But the fact was I needed to be patient, just a little while longer.
Inverness 1 - Anne 0.
I took two books away with me to read. One was Ann Cleeves' Red Bones and it was a re-read. The BBC are doing a TV version this autumn and I thought I'd like to remind myself of it before seeing it on the small screen. OH is dreading it, because in its wisdom the Beeb have cast Douglas Henshall in the main part. I think it is fair to say that Dougie is not one of OH's favourites. In fact he has frequently been heard to compare his acting abilities unfavourably with the stars of that childrens favourite of yesteryear, The Woodentops. I don't have that sort of problem with Mr Henshall msyelf. OK, he's not a great actor, nor do I think he can do accents. I base this belief on having seen him in a TV series in which he and Hugh Bonneville were cast as brothers who lived in Bristol? Manchester? somewhere in England anyway. And they both spoke with Scottish accents, which seemed odd in the circs. HB's was beter than you would expect if you've watched him doing all those posh parts on the telly. But even though I'm not unduly concerned about the acting I do wonder; Cleeves has written a quartet of novels set in Shetland with the same protagonist, so to me it would make sense to dramatise the first one, rather than No. 3. which is what Red Bones is. But then who amongst us can fathom the ways of the meejer?
Anyway I knew before I went that Red Bones wasn't going to last me all my time away so with a conscious sense of virtue I also packed Eric Linklater's Magnus Merriman. This was Ph D related in the sense that it was background reading for 20th C Scottish Literature, and also features, in thinly disguised form, several lumnaries of 1930s Scottish life. I had made reasonable headway with it, but it wasn't the most enjoyable experience of my reading life and I was so cross after the news about my delayed registration that I threw it into my suitcase for the trip home, planning on buying something more to my taste on my way. By which I meant somewhere between my Guest House and the bus station on the morning of my departure. Sadly the only purveyor of fiction that fell into that category also fell into the category of 'not open until 9.00 am', and I was passing a wee while before that. What is it with shops in Inverness. Don't open until 9.00 and close at 4.00. How do they make money?
Red Bones and a bit of lookng at the scenery got me to the ferry, but once actually on the boat and faced with the prospect of gazing out to sea for 90 minutes I was forced to buy a book in the ship's shop. They have one (yes, count it, one) of those carousel things with a selection of paperbacks on it; the choice is limited. This would explain why I passed over hard earned cash for a novel by Camilla Lackberg.
Now generally I think Nordic Noir is a good thing. This is partly because it is Nordic, since OH and I are both big fans of Scandinavia and Scandinavians. I love watching the Swedish Wallander partly because of the scenery and partly because I can try and tune in to the Swedish and do some half hearted revision. I never learned any Danish but I loved The Killing, and not just for Sofie Grabol's sweater and Lars Mikkelsen's cheekbones. But just because I think the new interest in crime fiction from the northern climes is generally a good thing, it doesn't follow that I like it all. Jo Nesbo - yes. Hakan Nesser - no. Anne Holt - if I'm in the mood. And so it goes. Just because it's written by a Swede doesn't mean it's good, although it does mean I'll give it a go. Which is what I did months and months ago with Camilla Lackberg's first Fjallbacka detective novel. Borrowed it from the library and gave it a go. After two weeks and stalling at about page 84 I finally admitted to myself that I had absolutely no interest in who killed the victim or why, and since discovering these two things are the main reason for this sort of book, the sensible thing to do was to take the thing back to the library.
It is a well known fact that author's books often improve over time, and I have found this to be especially true of crime series. The Mermaid,which is the book I bought, appears to be Ms Lackberg's 8th or 9th trip out, and the back cover made the plot sound fairly interesting, so I gave in and bought it. Although it must be said that there really were no other candidates on the rack. I haven't managed to finish it yet but I have got far enough to realise that a) I will do so and b) half the problem is that her translator is not very good. Anyway I will see if the denouement is satisfactory. Meanwhile anyone looking for a good Scandi crime novel that is well plotted, well written, haunting and serious in intent would do well to check out Mons Kallentoft's Midwinter Sacrifice. Lyrical, atmospheric, and rooted in swedish society, it's one of the best crime novels I have read for many years.
Enough for now. I'm summoned on Friday to have my research skills audited. We're doing it over coffee so I suppose it won't be too painful. It will all be fine as long as no-one mentions the dread word methodology.
Red Bones and a bit of lookng at the scenery got me to the ferry, but once actually on the boat and faced with the prospect of gazing out to sea for 90 minutes I was forced to buy a book in the ship's shop. They have one (yes, count it, one) of those carousel things with a selection of paperbacks on it; the choice is limited. This would explain why I passed over hard earned cash for a novel by Camilla Lackberg.
Now generally I think Nordic Noir is a good thing. This is partly because it is Nordic, since OH and I are both big fans of Scandinavia and Scandinavians. I love watching the Swedish Wallander partly because of the scenery and partly because I can try and tune in to the Swedish and do some half hearted revision. I never learned any Danish but I loved The Killing, and not just for Sofie Grabol's sweater and Lars Mikkelsen's cheekbones. But just because I think the new interest in crime fiction from the northern climes is generally a good thing, it doesn't follow that I like it all. Jo Nesbo - yes. Hakan Nesser - no. Anne Holt - if I'm in the mood. And so it goes. Just because it's written by a Swede doesn't mean it's good, although it does mean I'll give it a go. Which is what I did months and months ago with Camilla Lackberg's first Fjallbacka detective novel. Borrowed it from the library and gave it a go. After two weeks and stalling at about page 84 I finally admitted to myself that I had absolutely no interest in who killed the victim or why, and since discovering these two things are the main reason for this sort of book, the sensible thing to do was to take the thing back to the library.
It is a well known fact that author's books often improve over time, and I have found this to be especially true of crime series. The Mermaid,which is the book I bought, appears to be Ms Lackberg's 8th or 9th trip out, and the back cover made the plot sound fairly interesting, so I gave in and bought it. Although it must be said that there really were no other candidates on the rack. I haven't managed to finish it yet but I have got far enough to realise that a) I will do so and b) half the problem is that her translator is not very good. Anyway I will see if the denouement is satisfactory. Meanwhile anyone looking for a good Scandi crime novel that is well plotted, well written, haunting and serious in intent would do well to check out Mons Kallentoft's Midwinter Sacrifice. Lyrical, atmospheric, and rooted in swedish society, it's one of the best crime novels I have read for many years.
Enough for now. I'm summoned on Friday to have my research skills audited. We're doing it over coffee so I suppose it won't be too painful. It will all be fine as long as no-one mentions the dread word methodology.
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