100 Books to Read Poster - Number 9

Yes, I have finally finished listening to The Help. 

I had forgotten how difficult it was to take good photos of the little pictures under the rub-off squares on the poster.  If you have read the book you'll know the relevance of the picture, and if you haven't I can't explain it because that would be a major spoiler.

I know I've made passing reference to listening to this a couple of times. It was a hard listen for three major reasons

1) There is too much time taken to  set-up the main situation, so that by the time you get to the major developments of the book you have almost lost interest in every single character who is in it. 

2) It was read by several different voices all with good southern states accents. The trouble is that's one accent that gets into my head and for days afterwards everythin' ah say or think is comin' out in a southern drawl. It's SO annoying. 

3) The subject matter is hard to take. It's astounding to me that this book is describing a situation that lasted well into my lifetime, and although I'd like to think that the hateful attitudes laid bare within it are no longer extant, I can't delude myself to that extent. 

For all that, the book is powerful, moving, shocking, and sometimes even funny. I would never ever read it again but I have to say that it was a hit rather than a miss. 

And on a more positive note ....

... here are pictures from today's walk, which was rather longer and steeper than the others we've done recently. It pleases me to reflect that a couple of years ago I couldn't have done this walk at all and today I managed it without breaking sweat. Although I did rest a couple of times on the really steep bits. 

So, a silvery sparkly sea

a fire breathing Chinese dragon in the clouds

the first bee of the year. We also saw and heard skylarks which was exciting.

Our destination, the Burray trig point. Which I suppose explains why so much of the outward leg was upwards! 

The OH ruminating on something or other - possibly on whether we were going to beat the rain back. We didn't, quite. 

A couple of northwards-ish views from the trig point. There are worse places to be in lockdown than Orkney. 

A Bijou Rantette

It's been a while since I ranted, which is possibly a good thing because maybe it means that I'm taking things more easily as I get older - talking of which here's a great quote from the Radio Times for next week. Interviewing the actor Adrian Dunbar, and after a brief discussion of his good health considering his current age   the interviewer asks 'so you would recommend being 61 then?' To which the response, is 'I'd recommend being 30 if you were giving me a choice'. Dunbar 1 - Interviewer 0 I feel. 

But I digress. Yesterday a real life friend posted this on her Facebook timeline. To be fair, it's not something she created herself, she re-posted it from some page or other that specialises in platitudes and motivational speak. But she had the choice to repost it or not, and she chose to post it. 

Passive Aggression lifted to an art form. Almost.

My first reaction, lasting only seconds, was to feel guilty. My second reaction, which lasted slightly longer, was to feel got at. My third reaction, which hasn't actually left me yet, was to feel angry. 

I am doing my best to check in with family and friends. E-mails, phone calls, private messages on Facebook and Ravelry, brief letters in pretty cards to brighten far flung letter boxes and let people know I am thinking of them. And I don't want anyone to think I'm not on the receiving end of similar gestures from friends, because I am and it's lovely. I appreciate the time and care people are putting in to getting in touch and telling me how they are coping and asking how I'm doing. 

Few of us can do it all. None of us can have done it all yet. But none of us needs this sort of garbage floating about trying to put the hard word on others for not pulling their weight when it comes to keeping in touch. Because, apart from anything else, would you like to guess how many times the friend who re-posted this on her timeline has been in touch with me in the current crisis to find out how we are? If your guess is somewhere between -1 and 1,  you are correct.  Stones and Glasshouses, friends, Stones and Glasshouses. 

Lockdown: Some Books Wot I have Read. (1) Historical Novels

I am still fighting my way through listening to The Help so can't report back on that for yet awhile. I'm not sure how many more hours there are to get through, but at 15-20 minutes a day, it's going to be a while. I think we can take it as read that the review, when it comes, will be less than positive. 

The library may be closed but just before lockdown it had swapped from the Libby to the Borrowbox app to allow members to borrow books remotely. The choice was at first very limited but they have put a huge effort, and presumably a large amount of money into increasing the available books since then so that I have found a few things to borrow. I am also still working my way through some physical books that I borrowed just before the world fell still. 

So first up is one of  yer actual physical books: Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor. This was on the Walter Scott Prize longlist . I don;t know that I would have chosen it to go on that but I suppose I don't know much about the competition. Shadowplay is set in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and is about, if it is about anything at all, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Bram Stoker and their time together at the Lyceum Theatre. I knew little about these people before I started, and I can't hep feeling that I know very little more now that I have finished the book. I think if you have read Stoker's Dracula then you might get more out of it: I haven't read the book but picked up names that I know are used in it, Helsing, Mina, Harker, and various themes including someone sleeping in a coffin, and ship's ballast being made of coffins full of earth. I am sure there must be many many more. I am undecided about whether this is subtle allusion or authorly showing off. If I incline to the latter it is because I also find Mr O' Connor's writing style too self consciously striving to be 'fine writing'. He is a poet I gather from the biographical note on the back of the jacket, and that may be the problem with his prose. 

That said, to paraphrase, it may be a case of 'it's not the book, it's me'. It's been well reviewed so I am patently missing something. 

Turning to a well reviewed historical novel that I love, I reread Alasdair MacLeod's No Great Mischief in February. This was not just to enjoy it (although I did), and to see what I could decide what it was about this time (every time I read it, I decide it's about something different, and this time was no exception). I was rereading it so that I could send off a proposal for a conference paper on it next winter, by which time I hope we will  be back to something approaching a normal that allows for travel once more.  I did not expect great things really and in fact was a bit leery of submitting it at all, but the conference is in Toronto where son no 1 and his family live so although it was a  bit of a bow drawn at considerable venture I thought it was worth a punt.  I am happy to report that, rather earlier than was anticipated, the paper was accepted, which is very pleasing. Quite how well I might cope with Toronto in January remains to be seen! 

Baking subscription April

So this was banana caramel muffins.

Remember how I'm always saying how these baking boxes can be a bit of a faff when it comes to finishing off.

Well this month, first you made the muffins

After that you made caramel

So while I appreciate that might not be the best caramel you have ever seen it was a case of third time's the charm, because my previous efforts have resulted in hot sticky messes with no relation to caramel at all. This might have been a tad grainy, but it was, nonetheless, caramel. (Incidentally since the ingredients did nothing for ages when I first put them on the hob I suppose I have now learned that when the instructions say 'medium heat' what they mean is 8. Out of 9. Because on what I would call a medium heat ie 5, they just sat there looking at me.  It was reminiscent of the l-o-n-g lemon curd stir ...)

Anyway, after that you cut holes in the top of the muffin and spooned caramel into them, then put the plugs back in. Then you made caramel buttercream. The instructions were to put the buttercream in a piping bag, and pipe a swirl of it onto the top of each muffin. Regular readers will know that the odds of that happening were infinitesimal. The way I see it, who needs a piping bag when they have  a small palette knife? 

I put the buttercream on the muffins and swirled them round with a palette knife. And decorated them with the dried banana chips. And then, you are thinking, they were finished. Do not be misled. Ther e was still one step to go, but it was step too far for me. As a result it was the OH who melted the chocolate and drizzled a little of it over the top of each muffin. 

And the final result looked like this

except there were twelve of them. We have given some of them away, twelve is too many in a household where one person is supposed to be avoiding sugar and the other one fat! 

At Long Last

I can bring you a photo of the latest Lego Brickhead. It's a rather charming sheep. It reminds me a little of the sheep in Alice Through the Looking Glass, although it is probably somewhat younger and more energetic. 

And there you go. The OH bought it for me as an Easter gift and I made it on Sunday but since then I have struggled with a recalcitrant camera , a reluctant photo program on the laptop and the discovery that I can no longer post photos to the blog if I am using Microsoft Edge so that I have had to revert to Chrome. 

Reverting to Chrome is something I have had to do with my Duolingo Gaelic course as well. Speaking of which yesterday I hit these dizzy heights 

I have in fact worked at it for more than 100 days it's just that in the early weeks I didn't necessarily look at it every day so it took me longer to build that  100 day streak than  100 days.  I have not quite finished the course, there are two units left to do, after which I will have to find somewhere else where I can continue learning, - although there are extensions due to the Duolingo version soon. 

Meanwhile, since we're looking at small achievements (these days you have to take you comfort where you can I find)  here's something else I finished earlier this week

It' not a puzzle I would have chosen myself  ( this was a birthday present from son no 1) as generally I don't go in for landscapes and the top left quadrant was an absolute pain to do but it is a pretty picture and I'm glad I've got it done. 

Well, I wasn't.

Well that is. I was quite poorly for a lot of last week, with what appeared to be a gum infection. This was a bit of a wake up call for me as it is a long time now since I have actually had a dentist and when you have  gum infection, who're you gonna call? Your dentist. Because even in normal times, if it's your mouth, your doctor doesn't want to know.

The OH has a dentist. We both had a dentist a long time ago but the practice closed down and one of the partners set up on his own and the the OH went with him. Since I had always refused to see him (after the first time when he was exceedingly rude and told me that if I didn't; floss my teeth I was going to die of a heart attack) I did not follow suit. I decided I would save myself the monthly fee plus the cost of treatment, because finding an NHS dentist on Orkney was like finding -well, hen's teeth, to be honest and apt both -  and manage without. Which I have done now for several happy trouble free years. well trouble free until now. So after we are all let out of our incarceration and can lead what will pass for normal lives again I must apply myself to finding a dentist. It still won't be the one who prophesied my death though. 

The other concerning thing about this was how long it took to shake off. I have had these sore spots on gum/cheek before and they disappeared within 3 days. This lasted much longer and I suppose is just a reminder, as though anybody needed it just now, of how the immune system becomes less efficient as we get older.

Anyway I took to treating it with some revolting Corsodyl stuff the OH had that is supposed to be good for treating gum disease and things started to improve, possibly because of the revolting stuff and possibly just coincidentally, but either way by Saturday I felt almost human again, although not energetic enough to write the blog.  This would have been a different post had I not been having trouble with the photo app on my laptop but I am hoping to get that sorted shortly. I certainly hope so because realising it wasn't working was ne of several very irritating things today, and I'd really rather the irritation didn't spill over into tomorrow.  

Spinning Silver

No, not a new and lucrative hobby, but the title of a book I read and enjoyed recently.

It's by a writer called Naomi Novik who is most well known for writing a series of fantastical counter factual history books about the Napoleonic War,  which include air divisions made up of dragons. Not my sort of thing; nothing against dragons, but counter factual history isn't really me. However she has written a couple of stand alone fantasy books  based on eastern European folk tales, Uprooted and Spinning Silver. I read Uprooted ages ago and really enjoyed it, although I thought it was a tad too long. Spinning Silver I saw at the library on my last visit before The Great Shutdown so I grabbed it while the grabbing was good. 

The premise of Spinning Silver is that a  human girl knows how to turn silver into gold. Because of this she's abducted by The Staryk, sort of winter elves, because they need her gift to hep them in their struggle against the demon Chernobog ( a name that will resonate with those who have read Gaiman's American Gods). There are three intertwining stories of young women overcoming adversity; the silver spinner, a duke's daughter given away in marriage to the Tsar for her father's political advancement and  a young peasant girl who  escapes from an alcoholic and brutal father. I loved it, but possibly not as much as I loved Uprooted. 

Talking of Gaiman's American Gods it occurs to me that this might be a good opportunity to get back to 'reading the poster'. It got a bit put behind me in the race to get my thesis done and really hasn't figured much in my life  since. I did get one of the books, Kathryn Stockett's The Help, in an audible version, but honestly I got very bogged down and it was easier to listen to other things. But I could go back to it and listen to a short piece each day. Also somewhere about I have John Julius Norwich's The History of Venice and if I can find it, that might make another good kick start to my good intentions! 

Morven

That is Morven, the reindeer we are sponsoring. Morven is part of The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd and the income they depend on to look after the reindeer comes from visitors. Current times mean their facilities are all closed - ergo: no income just now, but continuing costs.

I had decided in the post election post brexit gloom that my charitable giving this year would all be animal based, because it seems to me that all sorts of animas suffer from all sorts of things inflicted on them by humans. Humans know what they are doing, but the animals don't. It's not that humans don't do terrible things to other humans, but at the beginning of the year I rather despaired of humanity so animals it was. 

I fear I may be turning into mad old cat lady but there again maybe as we get older lots of us despair of the human race and that's why old ladies leave their money to animal charities. Who knows? For whatever reason, it's animals this year, and this was my March  donation. 

I hope that when the world gets back to normal, or at least when we are once again allowed to travel freely, that we will mange a visit to the CRH and attempt to see Morven for ourselves. If we do there will doubtless be a report of the visit here and more pictures.