May Books

 

Not quite sure how I only managed eight books in May, but there it is. I would say My List Cannot Lie, except that it can if I forget to record things, but that said, it doesn't apply here, I just didn't read very much. 

I was going to say, let's get the dross out of the way first but a lot of what I read in May wasn't all that good. I did drag myself through the final two Norfolk books by J M Dalglish that I had on my Audible bundle. As before, competent plots, no characterisation and flat writing. For completion's sake, the titles were Hear No Evil and The Dead Call. I retain very little memory of either. To be fair that could be down to my age. Equally it could just be boredom with the books.

Surprisingly they were not the worst books I read this month as the U3A crime fiction book was When the Needle Drops by Colin McIntyre. This was universally reviled by the group with no-one having a good word to say about it, and several members giving up part way through. Mr McIntyre is apparently descended from the great Gaelic poet, Duncan ban McIntyre so the vague rumbling noise I heard all the while I was reading was doubtless Duncan ban turning in his grave. Normally when I don't like a book I am meticulous about saying 'don't necessarily believe me, if you think you might like it, give it a go and make up your own mind' but in this instance I'm going to come right out and say reading or trying to read this would be a waste of your precious time. 

It wouldn't be  a reading month if I didn't have some J D Kirk on the list, in this instance I read two; In Service of Death and A Snowball's Chance in Hell. To complete the crime roster there was Caro Ramsay's The Red Red Snow, which was a great listen, full of characters you wanted to either cheer or slap and an excellent plot twist that tied up two seemingly unconnected murders. Caro Ramsay is appearing at Bloody Scotland this year so that's one talk I'll be booking for. 

I picked up a book at the library called A Party in San Niccolo, purely because it was set in Florence and not realising it was a thriller type thing. It was very readable , lots of detail about life in Florence - the bits where real people live rather than the touristy places; lots of credible characters, some sympathetic and some not. If I have a criticism, and obviously I do, it was too long. A bit of judicious editing wouldn't have gone amiss. I did love one tiny detail; the heroine, who is staying with a friend in Florence recovering from a 'minor nervous breakdown' talking on the phone to her husband who has been left in charge of their three children while she is away. 'Everything is fine' he assures her, 'I get  the children to school on time every morning , I do their packed lunches, the only thing is, there'll be quite  a lot of washing for you to do when you get back as I don't have the time to figure out how the washing machine works'. Bless! I was rooting for her to stay in Florence with a rather nice man she met there. Spoiler - she didn't.  

And finally as an antidote to all things criminal there was Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes. This was just a tad too 'children's book' sadly; I loved Streatfield's books when I was young but reading this as an adult doesn't have quite the same magic. Also I saw too late that it had been 'edited' which presumably explained the rather abrupt ending and some of the more surprising 'swerves' in the narrative. 

I am trying to get away from a diet of unrelieved crime, but it's proving a struggle! 

Falkland

 I'm still catching up with a few of our recent outings on here and one of them was a trip to Falkland. We'd been to Falkland Palace years ago on a very dreich day but even so we'd enjoyed it and have frequently said, we should go back to Falkland one day. And lo! on 26th May the one  day finally dawned.

I didn't remember a great deal about our previous visit, except for the weather and the fact that we had had lunch in a very nice cafe which was on the first floor of an old building. I didn't expect the cafe still to be there tbh but it was! and we even had lunch there again. And it was every bit as good as last time, as far as I can remember. It's  called The Hayloft should you find yourself in Falkland and in need of a light lunch or coffee and cake. 

The weather on this occasion was much much nicer than when we were there before; I would go so far as to say it was hot. I wore a hat and sunglasses. Because of this, rather than staying in the palace, which we did previously to keep out of the rain, this time we stayed outside in the grounds. They're beautiful, and very photogenic. Difficult to decide which photos to put up here really. The problem with the mantra 'to get a good photo, you have to take lots of photos' is that sometimes what you end up with is lots of good ones. Here are a few  

General view of ruined portion of the palace ( look! landscape format!)

Orchard ...

...and apple blossom 

'The Willow Queen', representing Mary Queen of Scots

Gate, reflecting Falkland's origins as a hunting lodge for the monarch

church tower from the orchard

palace tower from the garden

It was another lovely day - if a bit hot. I shouldn't  have moaned about it being hot because it feels like it's been cold ever since. 

Possibly not for the purists....

 

So we went up to Edinburgh today to see the BIG Live ballet production, Dracula. I had not previously heard of BIGLive which seems a relatively young company which started in Australia and is currently touring to various places in Asia and Europe with their version of Dracula ( they also have productions of The Nutcracker, and The Great Gatsby.) Their mission is to open up ballet to audiences who might have previously felt excluded; presumably they are doing this by developing more relevant repertoire rather than  by keeping ticket prices low, because we paid a lot of money for our tickets for this. I mean, not out of the way prices per se, but ballet and opera are not cheap things to attend. (I'm not moaning, nobody makes us go, we choose to do it).

I am not convinced that the financial model of BIG Live is sustainable in the long term as it seems to rely on ticket sales and sponsorship from large companies; the current tour is supported by United Airlines. They cut costs by not having a live orchestra but recording their music which must help, ( one of the reasons that I say this is not one for the purists) but the former accountant in me is thinking 'this will not last'. I hope it does though, because they're young and innovative and full of energy and new ideas, and the performance was - well, I can't say it was a joy, given the subject matter, but it was very enjoyable . 

The story isn't Dracula as it was written by Bram Stoker, nor how it has been adapted over a myriad of films but there'e enough of the original Stoker storyline there. And there's Dracula, and Johnathan Harker and Minna, and ghosts/previous victims and irate villagers brandishing torches. So, you know, recognisable. 

And now I'm going to nit-pick because that's the atmosphere in which I was raised and it's incredibly difficult to slough off so bear with me. In this ballet, Johnathan is bitten by the vampire and takes refuge in a nearby forest to the Transylvanian castle that Dracula calls home. I do not think there is any need, simply because he has run away, for him to lose his shoes and socks. He is not, so far as we know, running away to a forest through a bog. He also has a shirt that is ripped to pieces but I'm giving that a bye , because brambles, low hanging branches etc. After the forest, the program tells us that Johnathan  takes Mina's body back to the English village where we first saw the happy couple; so quite a way from Transylvania then. Far enough, you would have thought to buy a new pair of shoes and a shirt . But no, he is still shoeless, sockless and wearing a shirt in tatters. Once he has worked the villagers up into a frenzy, the program further tells us that they go to attack the castle. In Transylvania. They take their torches with them although to be fait they are not lit before they set out from whatever part of England they live in,  on their long journey to Eastern Europe.  Upon their arrival at the castle in Transylvania I was distressed to note that Mr Harker had still not seen fit to get himself properly shod. It must have been a shockingly painful round trip without anything on his feet. Not to mention cold, what with the tattered shirt and all.

But that is nitpicking (although I do think two minutes thought would have meant they could change the story in the program to make it all more credible. ) Why not have Harker rouse the local village to rise up against Dracula,  rather than say he went all the way back to England - where it also says he presents Mina's body to the villagers during a celebration - not a man who can read a room then, this Johnathan Harker?

But all that aside, I loved the music, I loved the dancing, the costumes were fantastic,  I would go and see it again in a couple of years and I would definitely go and see their Nutcracker were it to land in Scotland. If you enjoy dance this one is 100% recommended by me. 

 

A Very Nice Day

 I went to Edinburgh today to see the BIBA exhibition at  Dovecote Tapestry Studio. I'd had an option on this earlier with two friends but we'd gone to see the Edwardian Elegance Exhibition at the King's Gallery instead ( I really should get around to blogging about that sometime too, before I forget I even went) as to be honest I'm a bit young to appreciate BIBA. But another friend suggested it might be fun to go and see it so we did. 

I really enjoyed it. We both remembered bits about it; mostly when someone mentions BIBA  to me I think of feather boas and eyeshadow palettes and my friend had had a BIBA diary. We neither of us knew how far the branding had been spread - BIBA baked beans and Birds Nest soup anyone? (not in the same tin thankfully!) Some of the clothes were fabulous and some of them were gimmicky and as a notice in the exhibition pointed out they were really only suitable for women with flat chests and no hips, but I did like the line of a lot of them and if I could wear them I would. Equally some of them I wouldn't. I could however imaging Diana Rigg in almost all of them. 

Because I'm a bit of a pedant I couldn't resist taking a photograph of this which  is a quotation from one of the BIBA catalogues

Here's one of the dresses I liked

And here's a photograph of several BIBA outfits in landscape format! 

As well as the exhibition we had a good time catching up with one another's news as well as partaking of various refreshments throughout the day, and I got home about 6 o' clock, tired but with the sense of an enjoyable day behind me. 

Topped off by spotting this new visitor on our bird feeder! Not a good photo as I knew if I stood up he would take wing, so leaning forward on a low sofa and through a window,  this is the best  I could do. Exciting though. We're hoping  he'll come back. 

Sorry, I'm having  a lot of trouble uploading photographs today; not sure what the problem is, but after many abortive attempts to do this last one I'm juts going to leave it for another day.  

Wrapping Up Rome

 although as this is all about a trip out to Tivoli it's not strictly Rome at all. 

Did I say we'd had a choice of Hadrian's Villa (what's left)  or the Villa d'Este? We opted for the Villa d'Este, partly because of the name, as I have a vague interest in the d'Este family and still harbour  hopes of a return to Ferrara one day with the OH in tow. Also because it has beautiful gardens. The few people who opted for Hadrian's Villa said it was fantastic, but then so were the gardens so I don't think we lost by our choice. 

As always in a lovely garden I go mad with the phone camera and I'll let the pictures largely speak for themselves. I have to say it was a very hot day and we spent some of the afternoon happily sitting on a terrace with a coffee, and enjoying what we could see of the gardens from there. They also go a long way down the hill, which would have been fine as a walk but the prospect of then having to walk back up put us off. That said we were still enticed rather further downwards than we had planned.  

Upper Courtyard

Tulips in a tub. I feel someone should make this into a cross stitch chart

Arch and wisteria ( there was lots of wisteria, flowering like a weed )

Lower courtyard

the OH improving the view. (That's the sort of comment he puts on photos of me that he uploads to Facebook) 

There are lots and lots of waterfalls, cascades, fountains and water dribbling down slopes all around the garden which is lovely; it cools the air and makes a gentle background noise, so obviously I had to put in at least one photo of a cascade

And here's a fountain with the hills in the background. The OH is always grumbling at me for doing so many photographs in portrait rather than landscape format, and checking back through this post he possibly has a point. That said,  when I look at things I tend to see strong vertical lines, so when I compose a photograph they look better in portrait view. I suppose I could start training my eye this summer  to see horizontal lines and see where that takes me. 

Giving Moral Support, or

grasping opportunities for stash enhancement? You Be The Judge, as the weekly Guardian column about domestic disputes has it.

Last Friday we went to Aberfeldy to visit Karelia House, somewhere I'm sure I must have posted about on here before. We've only been a couple of times, but it's well worth it; possibly more for sewers than knitters, but don't get me wrong it's a great place for knitters too. They were hosting what they call a Garden Fayre, which basically meant some gazebos in the grounds for craft people of all sorts to fill with their goods and sell them.  It's an annual event and I suspect that on a nice day the place is heaving. Last Friday however was not a nice day and there were  not a lot of people there when we arrived.

We had not gone on the off chance of finding something that we liked, although in passing I note it was a nice long run over varying sorts of road for the new car. No, we had gone because one of the gazebos was being used by Claire of Cookston Crafts and I have been wanting to buy some yarn from  her to knit a particular sweater  for a long time, but it wasn't until I seemed to be being successful with my So Faded sweater that I thought I was justified in spending the money because I had more confidence in my ability to end up with a garment  that fitted. The sweater concerned is the Lace and Fade Boxy which, in a slightly less voluminous form than pictured there, I thought would slip on nicely over a shirt when you need something with a bit of warmth but not too much weight to it. Also I have seen Claire's sample knit numerous times and it is gorgeous. 

We had a nice chat with Claire and it took me a while to decide on the yarn but I ended up with this

I'm hoping it will turn out well.  After buying that, we popped into the shop proper and had a good wander around; we would have had lunch but you'd had to pre-book a table and although there were a lot of empty tables we didn't want to risk the embarrassment of sitting down and then being told to 'clear orf' because we had no booking. Although I'm sure they would have been a lot more polite than that. I did make one small purchase in the shop; a new set of dpns in the size I use for socks. I'm currently using a mishmash of two sets, a metal one and a wood one; some of the wooden ones got lost along the way and a couple of the metal ones got bent, probably by me sitting on them. So I picked up a set in Lykke Driftwood which will also be prone to snapping if I sit on them so I hope very much I can avoid doing so! They're beautiful. If I were thirty years younger I might embark on a project to replace all my needles with Driftwood ones, but I'm not, so I won't. 

We didn't starve, despite not having booked a lunch table at Karelia House  as we knew there was a very nice place to eat called The Watermill in Aberfeldy, which has the advantage of being attached to a book shop. They had no inside tables, a common occurrence there, so we sat outside and crossed our fingers it wouldn't rain. It didn't. 

My sandwich was mild cheddar with apple chutney and poached pear plus a side salad and of course the ever present Elderflower and the OH treated himself to a vegetable curry with flatbread which he tells me was delicious. As was my sandwich. We had a quick browse around the bookshop, a brief foray into the normally excellent second hand bookshop that is just a short stroll away, but which this time threw up nothing I felt compelled to buy, and then came home. 

On Saturday we went up to a place called County Fabrics; where again a friend, coincidentally another Clare, was having a pop-up shop. There were a few others, including a coffee stall raising funds for CHAS  so we had a cup of coffee and a piece of very delicious millionaire's shortbread there. County Fabrics itself was having a sale and so I was interested to see what William Morris Fabrics they had as I am thinking of a bit of a Morris decoration in our bedroom when we get around to it. (Not imminent) In the event they didn't have the one I would want, and which I know you can get from John Lewis already made into curtains so we didn't succumb there but we did buy a couple of tings from Clare's pop up.

I'd decided before we went to get the fox kit because I thought it would be fun knit and not too expensive. We then saw the pattern for the Orkney Hat. Regular readers may well have seen my previous Clare Hats; Stirling and Glasgow skylines and the Forth Bridges. I have lost the latter, I can't remember whether I've posted that sad news on the blog before. I really ought to knit it again because it was lovely to knit,  and my favourite , but not yet....meanwhile I knew Clare had been working on an Orkney hat pattern and I knew the OH would want one, so this seemed a good opportunity to buy the pattern and for him the choose the colours that he wanted, Obviously there was a bit of a green theme going on over the two days. 

So you be the judge; altruistic support for yarn-y friends, or just an excuse to buy more wool? 

Bloody Scotland Launch Event

 

This took place last Thursday and I don't know that I would normally have bothered to go, except that this year the speaker was J D Kirk, so that was a bit of a no-brainer. 

The OH was off to Glasgow to see the new Star Wars with Son No 2 so we parked the car in town and I caught the bus to Stirling (it would have been the train but as we were walking past the bus station the Stirling bus was in, and although my Senior Railcard gets me cheap rail travel, my age gets me free travel on the bus. Also it was still five minutes walk to the rail station and it was chucking it down with rain, so the decision to get on the bus was also a no-brainer. (Coming back something similar happened, I had to walk through the bus station to get to the train station in Stirling and the bus for Alloa was in and due to leave in five minutes as opposed to twenty five for the train, so again, not  a hard decision. Hooray for buses1) 

I spent several happy hours mooching about Stirling visiting the sort of shop where I like to browse and the OH stands stock still and gives off. why are you looking at that? vibes. He says this is unconscious and I daresay it is, but it doesn't make for comfortable browsing, so it was nice to be able to go into whatever shops I fancied and spend as long as I wanted in there without feeling guilty. Despite this I didn't make it into my all time favourite shop in the city which is Made in Stirling and is a delightful place, but I just didn't have the time. This was partly because it took an unconscionable amount of time trying to find somewhere with a spare table where I could have lunch. Stirling sees its fair share of tourists and so it isn't shore of cafes/restaurants/pubs but even by 11.45 they were mostly rammed. To be fair I can't speak to the pubs because I'm of a generation which brought girls up not to go in pubs on their own so I don't. 

I was fortunate enough to find someone from he U3A Crime Fiction reading group also at the event, and with a spare seat beside him so we had a good chat before proceedings began. Once it started JD was very good value; rather more so than his interviewer Nicola Meighen, previously encountered at the Rebus event at last year's Bloody Scotland, and who has an irritating habit of interjecting when her subject is in full flow, usually to try and show off how clever/thoughtful/well read she is. To be clear, I'm not saying she isn't all of those things and more; what I am saying is that if your interviewee is holding the audience all on his/her own you don't need to chirp up every few minutes for the sake of it. Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the event. 

We were given a physical copy of the brochure for this years festival which was great because previously, as in  before we moved, I struggled to make sense of the on-line one. So that was a good thing. All the more disappointing then that I struggled to find anything very much to get excited about. I marked up eight possibles, and reduced those down because of timing issues to three and I'll sort out some tickets at a later date. I have a couple of friends who might be keen to go to some of the other events and I'll happily tag along; I suppose part of thre fun of these events iss getting introduced to authors you don't already know and who might be great to listen to in person and whose books might become firm favourites. 

More to come on this, but probably not until September, which is festival time.