More Books I Like - Historians and Spies

 Not real historians in fact. but those who inhabit St Marys, a semi-official offshoot of the University of Thirsk, who 'investigate historical events in contemporary time' ie go time travelling. Their escapades are documented in a series of fourteen novels under the general title of The Chronicles of St Mary's. My friend V told me about them when I was last in Edinburgh and I used an Audible credit on getting the first one. So far I've read the first four and, tempted though I am to race through them all one after another, I'm not going to because that is a sure fire way of getting sick of an author very quickly. Warmth, wit, drama, good plots (if a bit timey wimey as Dr Who aficionados say), lovely characters, and a lot of small but interesting historical facts get smuggled in too. Like the origin of the V sign. Never knew that. These are not going to be to everyone's taste and I had doubts about whether I would like them myself,  but a combination of the history, the characters, and the humour have all drawn me in. Time travel isn't really my thing, as it throws up too many paradoxes but I just go with the flow, in order to enjoy the rest. I am even  the proud possessor of a University of Thirsk T-shirt. 

I'm not a great reader of the spy novel; I did John Le Carre up to a certain point but that was enough. It's partly because spy novels  tend to be  thrillers ( James Bond casts a long shadow) and partly because I get fed up with all the double agent/triple agent stuff. I just lose patience. At this point, enter the great Mick Herron, master of the combination spy/tedious office life novel. Yes, really.  I can't remember how I came to read the first of his Slough House books, Slow Horses but I'm very glad I did. I love them. Well plotted,  with wonderful characters - a collection of MI5 failures who it isn't expedient to sack so who are banished to the revolting Slough House, and its even more revolting boss, Jackson Lamb -   in the hope they will get so fed up they will resign and save everyone a shedload of bother.   Again very funny in places, especially in the interplay of the Slow Horses themselves. There are also some very recognisable figures from our current political scene, scathing satire being one of the books' many features. I can't tell you with what joy I read of the fate of the PM's Special Adviser in the latest one, Bad Actors. He bore more than a passing resemblance to a certain real life Spad with bad eyesight and a belief that rules are only for the little people....

Some of the earlier books have been made into an Apple TV series and, whatever you may read to the contrary in the newspapers, Gary Oldman is not the ideal casting of JL. (IMO) If an author actually describes a character as looking like ' Timothy Spall gone to seed' then you might take the clue when you go calling the casting agents. Apple TV didn't. I've only seen the first 6 episodes, when we had a free Apple sub for some reason which escapes me, but which probably had something to do with the OH's baseball watching, and they weren't anywhere near as good as the books. So I wasn't tempted to pay so that I could continue watching. 

Herron's latest has just hit the shelves and I downloaded it this morning. It will make good company as we embark on out Great Trek South. The GTS itself is going to be fun (I hope) but also exhausting (I know) and is probably not the wonderful idea I thought it was when I came up with it. I fully expect to need six weeks solitude and silence when we get back to recover. We'll see. Anyway we leave this evening, spending the night on the boat as we're on the very early ferry tomorrow and this means the OH will be well rested for the long first stage of the drive. We're not back until late on 24th of this month so the blog is going silent for a while. All other things being equal I'll see you on the far side. 

Some Books I like - Crime

 

In an effort to prove that I don't turn up my nose at everything I read I plan a couple of posts on books I have enjoyed recently and this is the first one. I've mentioned before that my friend E has a habit of passing along carrier bags full of books and her latest one, a wee while ago now, included several of Val MacDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books. I have avoided these in the past, largely due to the fact that they were televised with Hermione Norris as Carol Jordan. I didn't watch them because Hermione Norris has one of those little sneery faces that I don't like, totally unfair I know, she's probably a good actress but I don't like watching her and so I didn't watch them. Also I tried a Val MacDermid once years ago, and obviously it was one of those times when you just pick up the wrong book and it puts you off the author forever. 

But I thought I would give one of these a try, so I did. And got hooked. My interest in deviant psychology possibly has a lot to do with that; I don't want to come up against an instance of it IRL but I like to read about it. Incidentally MacDermid's deviants are shocking and generally kill women, so I was rather annoyed when a man opined on Saturday that her first Tony Hill book was to do with a man who captured gay men and tortured them to death and he 'didn't want to read about that sort of thing'. Which is totally fine and a valid position to take but I thought it was interesting that he didn't want to read about the murder of gay men, but didn't mention not wanting to read about murdered women. I should have challenged him on it at the time but I didn't think of it. 

Anyway, no-one more surprised than me that I enjoyed these so much. There were three in the bag and I've since borrowed another in the series from the library, plus read 1989, which was long listed for several crime novel prizes this year. I've also just embarked on one about a female DI in Edinburgh. I'm pleased really. I've seem Val MacD interviewed and heard her on panels at crime reading festivals and always thought she seemed a lively warm funny person and it was a case of 'You seem fine, I wish I liked your books better'. And now I do. 

We read an Elly Griffiths once at Saturday Slaughters; one of her Ruth Galloway series of which I am a big fan. Most of them moaned about it. I forget what their problems were but possibly they didn't like  the archaeological background. They also thought there was too much of normal life woven in around the detective story; good heavens, there were even mentions of Radio 4. The Galloway series recently ended and I was quite pleased that Griffiths had seen that it was time to do that. She has two others which I have sampled and enjoy but not as much as the RG ones. 

Two crime writers I've come to recently are Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee, British Asians who set their work in India. Mukherjee's take place just after WW1, as some Indians are starting to agitate for independence from Britain and Khan's are set just a few years after Independence has been gained. Both are excellent at depicting the difficulties of Anglo-British relations during and just after the time of the Raj., Their books are also well plotted and with some good central characters who develop as their series go on - always a plus. 

So there you go. I'm not really a negative Nelly. Next up - Historians and Spies. 

Saturday Slaughters; A Beginning and an End

Saturday Slaughters reconvened yesterday after the summer break. The summer read had been The Cliff House   by Chris (aka Christopher ) Brookmyre. I did not enjoy it. It was one of those 'women (all with terrible secret in their past) trapped on island with mad axeman' type things and I loathed it. Not quite credible setting, not very credible characters, totally non-credible plot and a perpetrator you could spot a mile off.  

I haven't read much Brookmyre but I know enough about his work  to know that sub 1980s Shirley Conran isn't really his style so maybe he's 'reaching out to a new demographic' as someone put it yesterday. Or maybe he just wanted to turn a quick buck and looked at the sort of thing that's selling just now. 

It was a minority opinion. Everyone else thought it was a real page turner, and an ideal summer read, and a good book.

And I'm done. I'm done with reading books I really don't enjoy or admire for the sake of going out once  a month to disagree with people.  I'm done with being (usually) the only person with anything critical to say about the book of the month. I'm done with being the sole voice of negativity and looked at like nothing ever does or could please me, because that's just not true. In short, I'm done with Saturday Slaughters. 

Catch Up - A Good day Out No 2

We'd arranged to meet up with some friends who were  on holiday from Cornwall for lunch in Inverness, which was the whole purpose of me coming up by train and the OH coming down from Orkney to meet me there really. We had a free morning so we decided to go to the  Inverness Botanical Garden which we've been sort of saying  we should go and  see for years now, without ever getting around to it. 

And it was lovely. Helped by the fact that it was warm and sunny - not blindingly, stiflingly hot and sunny like it has been these past few days, just pleasantly warm. The gardens aren't huge but they are obviously much loved and I took a shedload of photographs. Here's a selection. 

That tree is really scary, isn't it? 

Lunch was lovely, although we took no photos and in the afternoon we went off to a large garden centre with the idea of perhaps buying some furniture for the patio now that we have a weather tight byre to store it in over the winter. We'd seen some lovely garden furniture there last autumn. Alas, I think! They had restocked and nothing that we saw really sang to us. So we still have no patio table and chairs but it did save us the money, which is a good thing I suppose. 

Catch Up - A Good Day Out No 1.

The past couple of posts have been such downers that it seems more than time that I recorded some very successful days out from earlier in the year. Because when I came back from Paris - (remember that?) I spent a few days in Glasgow and then caught the train up to Inverness where I was met by the  OH and we had an overnight stay there and 'did' a couple of things before returning to  Orkney. And it was all lovely, bar the train to Inverness being well late.

The reason I stayed in Glasgow was so that I could go over to Edinburgh, meet my friends V and D and  celebrate V's 70th birthday, slightly early but not by much. We did this in style, by visiting the Kaffe Fassett exhibition and then having afternoon tea at The Scotsman. The exhibition was amazing; such a riot and celebration of  colour.

Some photos

                            Loved this dress

Amazing to think this is all done with small pieces of quilted and appliqued fabric

Possibly my favourite, although it was hard to choose and the photo does this little justice

I would totally wear this given half a chance

Many of KF's cushion designs from over the years

V's birthday present - as a self confessed pedant she was delighted with her mug which declares 'I am metaphorically dying for a cup of tea'

And the tea at The Scotsman. Not quite Gleneagles standards but it was very very nice. 

Anniversary Adventures

 Although we forget our wedding anniversary more often than not, this was one of the years we both remembered in good time. We thought we might go to Flotta as we've never been and the clock is now ticking, slowly but inevitably, and if we want to visit the rest of the inhabited islands in Orkney that we haven't yet made it to, then we need to get on and tick those boxes. 

The weather forecast for the day itself was not good so instead of going to Flotta that day we booked to go the day afterwards instead and in an unusual Fit of Frivolity went out to our local hotel for lunch on the actual day. We had fish and chips to start with and then dessert. There is little point in taking pictures of fish and chips, but dessert was another matter.

Mine's the sticky toffee pudding and the ice cream is the OH's. 

Thursday we took off for Flotta. It's a small island and the weather was supposed to be good so we had decided not to take the car, just walk. I dithered between a jumper in case it got chilly in the afternoon and my anorak in case it rained. Decided on the anorak. Naturally it didn't rain. We had a picnic and a map and we were all set. 

It all started well. We got off the ferry and walked around the west coast of the island. At some point we sat down and took some photos. Since Flotta is right in the middle of Scapa Flow Harbour there are spectacular views of many of the other islands. We had our picnic and resumed our walk. The day wore on and the sun got hotter. The land started to go a lot more uphill a lot more often than I was comfortable with. And them suddenly I was just in a state; running a temperature, nauseous, breathless, and slightly disoriented.  We were about two thirds of the way round, we had a deadline to catch the ferry and I couldn't manage walking uphill longer than about two minutes without stopping. I did a but better on the flat but basically I had had too much sun and I was suffering. 

We staggered on, constantly checking Google directions for a comparison of how much further there was to go, and how much time it was going to  take against the available time to get to the ferry terminal. With something just under a mile to go and 30 minutes to do it  in, it was looking good. Except that I just couldn't walk. Not properly anyway. I could just about put one foot in front of the other and not feel sick for about five strides at a time. 

We were saved by the  appearance of a car which the OH flagged down. The couple inside it couldn't; have been kinder. They gave me a bottle of water, and took us to the ferry terminal and settled me down inside the waiting room and opened the windows and checked we would be OK before driving off. I staggered onto the ferry and slept all the way back to mainland Orkney (via Hoy - it's a circular route), staggered to the car feeling infinitesimally better, slept all the way home in the car and staggered to bed as soon as we got back. I did very very little yesterday. 

Until I felt too ill to bother I did take some photos of which the following are a selection

Lessons Learned. 

1 Next time the OH says 'it's a small island, let's not bother taking the car' insist that we do.

2 Always take a hat.

3. Always take a bottle of water. 

4 Do not overestimate your lung's capacity for walking uphill. 

A Couple of Days in London

 and this is the only picture I have  from then

The garden at the V & A. 

We've wanted to visit the V and A for ages, and in fact have made two previous attempts; on both those occasions it was closed. This time the museum was open but several of the galleries  we might have liked to see were closed. So no textiles, then. 

We did look at mosaics, some C19 stuff and the jewellery gallery. The items were overwhelming but the museum as a whole was underwhelming, which seems counter intuitive, but basically there were too many things to look at but not enough of the sort of thing I wanted to see. However the garden was lovely and the coffee and breakfast pain au raisin were acceptable especially as the sun was shining. 

The next day the sun was not shining and we had decided to got to the revamped National Portrait Gallery. This was almost as crowded as the Musee d'Orsay was earlier in the year, and not so well signposted. The signage for Sir Walter Scott and the person whose portrait was next to him were the wrong way round so if you wanted to know what WS looked like and relied on the NPG you wouldn't know. Also the tube was riddled with problems that day, which meant packed trains, packed or closed  stations, long waits and longer than anticipated walks in the rain. None of this did anything for my mood. 

When we'd thought about it before we went away two days in London at the end of the Finnish trip sounded like an excellent idea, since otherwise it's a place we never get to,.  In the event it was a bad, and expensive,  one. But we've learned, and we won't do it again.