It may have been a dark and stormy night

but we still went out on Monday evening.

Regular readers will now be saying to themselves, well of course they went out, Monday night is her yoga night, and this is true but it wasn't Yoga I went to.

In fact yoga has been more honoured in the breach then the observance lately. I did four weeks, then there were two weeks off for half term, following which I was away in Glasgow for one week, the OH was away ferrying Son No 2 about one week, then we had an AGM one week. And this week there was a talk at the library.

 

Now there are often talks and groups and all manner of exciting things going on at the library, most of which I avoid like the plague because I can't be doing with people talking about books in a way that's calculated to show everyone else how clever they are/or talking about what they've done lately to show off what an exciting life they lead. I may have mentioned before that I do not 'do' pretension in any shape or form and have learned that, whatever the temptation, it is better to keep away from things like book groups, knitting groups or indeed any sort of group based around an activity which I enjoy because the other people there, however nice, will just irritate me. Obviously there is some fault here on my side, because no-one else seems to be affected in this way, and I daresay that I have missed out on friendships and opportunities by not taking part in such things. But discretion being the better part of valour I know it is better for me simply to Stay Away.

 

However I got a bit carried away by local enthusiasm last week and bought tickets for Arne Dahl's gig at Kirkwall Library. I'm not really sure what came over me to be honest. I watched the first AD series on TV and found it a bit dull, bought the book on which it was based and found that a bit dull too. We're currently 'watching' the second series by which I mean it is on and I divide my attention almost equally between it and my knitting. And guess what - it's fairly dull as well. But you know it's not often we get internationally successful crime writers coming to Orkney and it was less than a fiver for two tickets so I bought them and we went.

 

Mr Dahl, like his book and his TV series, was dull. Pedestrian may be the mot juste. I wanted him to be understated and funny like so many Scandinavians are, but although he just about scraped through on the understated front, he failed miserably when it came to the funny. I probably realised this very early on when he declared Paul Hjelm to be his alter ego in his books. Paul Hjelm is the dullest most uncharismatic, featureless non-personality in Dahl's police squad....nuff said.

 

As a side story the woman who sat in front of us had just come back from the weekend Shetland Noir crime writing festival, an experience she related in some detail to the lady on the OH's right. It had featured AD (so why on earth she had shelled out to come and hear him again in Orkney is totally beyond me ) but the most exciting thing that had happened the whole weekend was that Douglas Henshall (known, as regular readers here will again recall, in this household as The Woodentop) had been a surprise guest, courtesy of his TV role as Jimmy Perez - and don't get me started on how bad a fit that is- and she had had her photo taken with him.

 

Now here's a thing. Going back to what I said at the start about finding it difficult to cope with people who wanted to trumpet their exciting lives, here s a prime example. What specifically is so exciting about meeting a total stranger, a middle aged man known mainly for his attempts to pretend to be someone else, and getting some other random stranger to take a photo of the two of you together? I genuinely don't get it. Why is that so exciting that a) you do it and b) tell other people about it? I could just about understand it if she herself  had taken a photo of DH when he was on a panel, as something to remind her of the occasion, but having her photo taken with someone who would have forgotten all about it in two minutes? Is that really squeak worthily exciting? Well maybe it is. But I wouldn't find it so.