Sulking

This being the last day of the year and me not wanting to carry over any negative emotional baggage into 2013 (ha!) I'm going to say this only once and then move on.

 

Iain Glen, who as we all know, was the one and only cause  of the stumble that broke my ankle, meaning I was immobilised for weeks, never did send me a Get Well card.

 

Obviously the man has no conscience. And no heart.

 

But as I am a big person, and he is a Scot with a beautiful voice I will forgive him.

 

In due course. *

 

 

 

 

* It was really  difficult saying all the above with my tongue in my cheek.  

The Sunday List

There's a double entry this week ( sorry, accountant's joke ) as this is the last Sunday of 2012 and Sundays in 2013 will have a different feature. So here you go

 

Five Very Over Rated C19 Novels



1 Villette

2 Wuthering Heights

3 The Warden

4 Jude the Obscure

5 Oliver Twist

 

and contrary-wise

 

Five Very Under Rated C19 Novels

 

1 North and South

2 Wives and Daughters

3 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

4 The Mill on the Floss

5 Emma

 

Feel free to agree/disagree/discuss!

In which we have a nice day....

Once Christmas Day is behind us, and we have negotiated the dread no-man's land that is Boxing Day we arrive at OH's birthday. This has always been a bit difficult to differentiate from Christmas, especially given people's (totally understandable) propensity for giving joint presents, and the fact that most years thinking about baking a birthday cake just seems like a step too far after all the other food we've been exposed to. I try to make it special, but most years it's a struggle.

 

Not so much this year though, thanks largely to Peter Jackson and the local cinema, as we went to see The Hobbit. I have had reservations about this project since I heard it was going to be two films, and those only increased when I heard it was going to be stretched into three. The Hobbit after all is a very slight work, even in its revised state, and I'm still not totally reconciled to what Jackson did with Faramir in LOTR. Be that as it may, we all agreed that a trip to see The Hobbit followed by a nice meal in our local Italian restaurant seemed an excellent way to celebrate a birthday.

 

And we were right. Despite some negative comments we'd picked up about the film, mainly to do with its length, we all enjoyed it  very much. I did find bits of it tedious (mainly the very unrealistic 'escape' scenes, which are down to the Director wanting to do huge action sequences, and the deus ex machina that is The Eagles, Tolkien's forunner to Dr Who's Sonic Screwdriver, which presumably is down to the author's inability to dream up anything more consistent with his overall scheme) but overall I loved it. Music, sets, landscape, costume, acting - all amazing. I particularly enjoyed Hugo Weaving's younger Elrond, someone more open and much less grim than his later incarnation in LOTR and Richard Armstrong as the haunted, driven leader of the exiled and wandering dwarves. I understand OH's favourite moments were largely those featuring Cate Blanchette's Galadriel. And who can blame him? she looked fantastic and acted up a storm.

 

Afterwards we decamped to Locarnos where we enjoyed some good Italian food and wine, in warmth and light and a friendly atmosphere, then came home for coffee and some of the birthday cake OH had made for himself. I know, how sad is that? But he likes baking cakes and although my ankle is improving I don't know that it would cope with standing around in the kitchen baking cakes. We'll leave that for the new year.



The Best Laid Plans...

It's silly making plans that involve Orkney and travel at this time of year. We all know that and yet somehow, we keep on doing it. Thing is, it's Christmas and families want to be together and so, in a startling example of hope over experience, you plan for it.

 

Weeks ago we had made arrangements for Son No 2's return to Orkney from where he is studying near Edinburgh. College didn't finish until Friday so on Saturday he would make his way up to Inverness by coach, OH would go down to Inverness in the car and bring him back the same day.

 

Which was all fine and dandy until the winds started. It must have been about a week ago. They were high.  They were cold and full of rain. They lasted.  And they drastically reduced the number of ferries that could ply their brave way between Scotland's north coast and the islands.

 

In fact so bad was it that Shetland's ferries stopped running completely. ( Because they all run out of Aberdeen, and Aberdeen harbour appears to shut down whenever the peolpe in charge can hear the wind as well as feel it. Which is quite often. ) And Tesco had to charter a Hercules to re-stock their store in Lerwick.

 

In Orkney both our lifeline ferry servce and the private Pentland Ferries were both managing one crossing each way per day, which saved Tesco a charter flight fee for here if nothing else. But yesterday both ferry lines bowed to the inevitable and cancelled all their ferries. So there was Son No 2 making his way northwards and there was OH not travelling in the opposite direction. And all of us haunted by the spectre of not getting together for Christmas after all.

 

We were so fortunate. We had booked a hotel room for Saturday  in Inverness just in case of delays, so at least the lad had somewhere to lay his weary head. And we caught the Flybe website just right and managed to book the last seat on this afternoon's flight from Inverness to Kirkwall. That just left the possibility of the Barriers being closed when we needed to go and pick him up from the airport. But by this afternoon the wind had dropped and we managed a trip to town, during which we picked up both son and last of the Christmas food shopping and got home to a roaring fire and three very contented cats.

 

We plan a very gentle day tomorrow, some tidying and last minute wrapping and  stacking of presents under the tree. A few friends are expected to drop in, so perhaps we should look out some sherry and mince pies.  (Not sure we actually have any sherry, although we definitley have the mince pies. Whether OH is prepared to share them is another thing).

 

Peace,  warmth, cats and family. Days don't get much better than that.

The Sunday List

Because it is that time of year -

Five Things I'm Thankful For

1 People to love, and people who love me back

2 The beautiful place I live

3 Music

4 Freedom fron worry about where my next meal is comng from and where I will sleep each night

5 Laughter

The Shortest Day

Sunrise 9.04

 

Sunset  15.16

 

That's according to the paper. It didn't get light here until 9.30.

 

And the weather has been foul for days. High winds and the high seas that go with them.

 

OH went into Kirkwall (local town and Orkney's 'capital') on Tuesday, This involves a drive of abour 15 miles and crossing the  the Churchill Barriers. He went early because the forecast was fairly dire and he wanted to get home before the worst of the weather set in. Unfortunately when he tried to get home he coincided with high tide , the barriers were closed to traffic and he was stuck on the 'wrong' side of them for three hours.

 

 

Sensibly he turned round and went back into Kirkwall for lunch. It's not the sort of thing that happens often, but it's a reminder that island life really is a little bit different to that on  Mainland UK.

 

As is the fact that I know it's the Solstice. I find I'm a lot more aware of the turning of the seasons and the changes in the length of days than I ever was in Yorkshire. And, OH's experience this week  to the contrary, we normally make sure we know every day  in winter when it's high tide, because there are days when you want to make sure you time your trips to avoid it.

 

 

A Very Odd Thing Indeed



It occurred to me yesterday that we are ready for Christmas. And have been since Monday.  I find this very strange.

 

You see, normally I hate the run up to Christmas. Forget all that stuff about Season of Joy and Goodwill to All Men. The run up to Christmas for me has for many years been a Burden and a Chore. This is mainly because for many years all the organising has fallen to me.I bought wrote and posted all the cards, had the ideas for presents, not only for my own family but for OH's as well, not to mention being obliged to come up with ideas for presents for both families to buy our children and one another, and quite often being the one that had to buy them too. I did all the wrapping, posting and arranging for visits, deliveries etc. On top of that there are two birthdays; one husband and one son in the four days after Christmas so I was dealing with those as well. I wonder how many years I was given cards and presents to put aside for the birthdays and in the general whirl  forgot where I had put them. Plus the annual saga of where do we go and who do we spend The Day with. Bending over backwards to please everybody, which was always going to be impossible because they all wanted such different things. No wonder I didn't enjoy it!

 

I know I'm not alone. And to be fair, things have eased up a lot over the past few years and  I have managed to negotiate the Festive Season without getting quite so stressed. The advent of the Amazon Wishlist, though scorned and derided by my OH has been a godsend for me, as Uncles and Aunts no longer have to rely on me for ideas for presents. When I am lacking in inspiration for presents for OH's family I tell him to sort it out. This means they generally get food, and quite often direct from the producers so that OH doesn't have to bother with stuff like wrapping and posting, but they seem to appreciate it, so that's fine. There's no longer any question about where we spend Christmas since we are at the opposite end of the country from our one remaining parent, OH's Mum so we have no-one to please but ourselves. Christmas has become more relaxed and so have I.

 

There is still a lot of preparation to do though. So I find it slightly odd that with over a week to go on Monday, we sent off our last lone card and the final presents. Especially since I've been stuck at home for eight weeks with a broken ankle and latterly the bug from hell.

 

I'll tell you what though. It's a great feeling. Ready. With over a week to go.

 

 

The Weekend is Cancelled

Saw my physio on Tuesday. It all seemed good. I told her I had started walking around the house without my crutches, although I still needed them outside, more for confidence, and negotiating steps, than anything else. And she told me I could stop doing exercise set 1 and move on to exercise set 2. I took very little notice of her persistent tickly cough except to assure her she didn't need to keep apologising for it, and we had a joint moan about how small children pick these things up from school, bring them home and spread them, then get better in 24 hours leaving the adults washed out for days.

 

Never gave the matter another thought, not even on Wednesday morning when I woke up with a bit of a sore throat. It wasn't until the early hours of Thursday morning, when a persistnet tickly cough had deprived me of most of my night's sleep that I remembered the physiotherapist and her cough cough cough.

 

Thursday I didn't feel at all well. Annoyingly I had to cancel my trip to the local UHI library where I was booked in for some Ph D related e-resources training. Friday I was much better, and finally manged to wrestle the last of the Christmas cards into submission. The last of the gifts that need wrapping and then forwarding arrived which was a relief. I was in two minds though about cancelling my SWRI Christmas lunch for today, not because I didn't feel up to it, because I did, but because this was obviously a fairly virulent little bugette that I was nursing and I didn't want to be spreading it about so close to Christmas.

 

Woke up this morning barely able to speak, with a throat the pixies had obviously been sandpapering all night. Freezing cold, despite duvet, cat, OH and radiator all in close proximity and a forehead that apparently you could fry an egg on. Limbs like lead and a racking cough. The lunch was off.

 

I was a bit miffed because this year it was my only out-of-house festive meal; also I had chosen pannacotta for dessert. I always choose this when it's on a menu because let's be honest, it's not the sort of thing we knock up in the family kitchen on a regular basis,  so it's a case of have it when you can. And a lot of people I would have seen to catch up with, after my n-week long incarceration in the house I now won't see until after Christmas. I console myself with the thought that they are doubtless grateful to me for not infecting them.

 

After officially cancelling I went back to bed and slept until three, and I'm still trying to decide if I have the enrgy to drag myself out of bed to watch the final episodes of The Killing live at 9.00. The jury is still out on that one.

 

Tomorrow's after service treat of mulled wine and mice pies is also off the agenda along with the associated carol service obviously.

 

I suppose the positive side is that this is happeing before, rather than over Christmas, and I daresay it will all be cleared up in a couple of days. Things could be worse.

 

Bit it's not how I wanted the weekend to go.

 

 

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

It was the day for lighting the Christmas Tree in the Cathedral today.

 

The  tree is gifted to the congregation of the Cathedral from the congregation of the Fjaere Kirk in Grimstad. Grimstad is in an area of Norway where Earl Rognvald of Orkney, founder of the Cathedral, was brought up, and the tree is cut down in a nearby foreat where it's quite conceivable the Earl ran around and played when a boy. They certainly have at least one tree there that is even older than the Cathedral, and we're ramping up for the 875th anniversary of its founding. So that's one very old tree.

 

Usually a few people from Orkney travel over to Norway to watch the tree being selected and cut down, and then a party from Grimstad comes over  to see it installed. This morning we had a consul from the Norwegian Embassy in London at the service and she read the lessons from our  Norwegian Bible. The lights on the tree were switched on by the deputy mayor of Grimstad, and an excellent soprano sang a Norwegian Christmas song and Mozart's Laudate Domine.

 

The tree is placed at the back, or West End, of the Cathedral and when the time comes to light it, the people sitting near to the front make their way to the back, and all the people sitting near the back turn round so that everyone gets to see what's going on. The picture shows the tree just after the lights were switched on. It's not the best photo, because the building is quite dark, especially at this time of year and more especially when the weather is not good ( and it so wasn't good this morning) but it gives an impression of what was happening. .

 

And when we came out of the service the Norwegian Flag was flying over the Town Hall. That happens fairly regularly and is a nice symbol of the genuinely close ties the islands have with Norway.

The Sunday List

Five Things That Get Me Down About Christmas

1 Having to do all the cards singlehanded

2 Having to wrap all the presents singlehanded

3 Being expected to come up with ideas for presents  for every single member of the family to give to  every other member of the family.

4 People saying 'I don't really want anything for Christmas' when you know they don't mean it.

5 People who say 'I love Christmas; I don't understand why you don't.'

A Disappointing Falcon

 

 

No, not the bird. Although if you were to be wanting  a picture of a falcon that would indeed be a disappointing picture, since the bird  therein is not a falcon at all, but a Harris Hawk. A falconer once told me that the Harris Hawk was the most boring bird of prey ever, since they all look, sound and behave exactly alike. Like some sort of clone.  

 

Anyway the Falon to which I am referring is the Sky TV adaptation of Robert Wilson's first two books about Chief Inspector Javier Falcon of the Seville Homicide Group. Regular readers may remember that I was lookng forward to this very much. Great cast, wonderful setting, based on a couple of excellent books; what could go wrong?

 

Well as it transpires, quite a lot. A book re-done for TV is never going to be like (for which read, probably never be as good as ) the original, but giving the scriptwriters a little more space than two hours for the first story, The Blind Man of Seville would have helped. There would have been space to establish the characters better, and to keep some of the subtleties of the relationships betwen them. And let's not kid ourselves, keep some of the subtleties, or even the major themes, of the plot.

 

Then there's the casting. On paper, it looks brilliant. (Well I had my doubts about Celeborn in the main role, but reserved judgement, since seeing someone as an Elf with very few lines and playing second fiddle to Cate Blanchett isn't the best way to assess a man's acting ability). In the event he's not up to the role; he doesn't look challenged, or sensitive, or thoughtful. He tends to look stupefied. And slow. As for the rest, I don't know if they were all affected by the Andalucian sun, but to a man (and woman) they mugged and overenunciated in a very painful way. Additionally, it's true that  the charcater of Juez Calderon is introduced in the book as being 'young'; but that's young, at 36, to be a judge. Not a good idea to have him played by a boy who doesn't look old enough even to have a law degree yet.

 

But the main problem with the cast is that they just don't look Spanish.  The way they  dress isn't Spanish, their body language isn't Spanish, just the way they walk around Seville isn't Spanish. Which is baffling considering that the series is a co-produciton with a Spanish TV channel.

 

They should have taken a leaf from the book of the people who made The Killing. Produce it in Spain with a Spanish script and Spanish actors and sell it with subtitles. Then they might have done Seville, and Robert Wilson's books, some sort of justice.

 



Putting Off Posting

We have a cat - well, no, that's not true, we have four cats, but the one on my mind at present is the oldest of the four. She is very poorly: despite the vet's best efforts this morning she doesn't seem terribly interested in eating, although she is drinking so I suppose that's something. Anyway, no intention of giving everyone a blow by blow, becasue I realise that although she's very precious to us, she's not a prioroty for anyone else. I am in a bit of a state though and not really up to thinking about much else, including both the blog and Christmas. I know there are worse things in the world than a failing cat, but this is my failing cat, and as such is filling my  mind to the exclusion of most other things.

I'll be back though.

Lassoo-ing my Toes

 

 

 

Tuesday saw me at the doctor's surgery to meet my physiotherapist who, in common with everyone I've ever met there, was very pleasant and blessed with a sense of humour. I could tell though that she wasn't overimpressed by my walking with crutches technique.

 

Anyway she poked and prodded and asked questions and it's really all good news, because the injury is healing well and I've been lucky not to have very much pain or any complications. We also had a bit of a chat about how the accident might have happened in the first place and she managed to reassure me that I don't have a nasty muscle wasting disease, just weak muscles round my ankles.

 

She ran through some exercises with me which are designed to loosen my tightened calf and get full rotation back into all the joints in my foot, which are laudable aims, and the reason I try not to mind too much that they're painful to do. I don't mind pointing my toes down like a ballerina (ha!), and lassoing my toes with a dressing gown belt and pulling my foot towards me is quite hilarious, especially when coupled with cries of Hey Ho Silver! But rotating my feet hurts and my ankle aches when I walk now.

 

We also talked a bit about balance and how and why the accident might be affecting that. I had to say that the thing that was mostly affecting my balance at that point was the picture on the wall behind her, which I've put at the top of this post. (Well you didn't want to see a picture of my foot, did you?) I had to avoid looking at it as best I could throughout the consultation, because if I do give it more than a fleeting glance it  makes me feel giddy and sick. Which is not a good thing.

 

 

 

Gone!

 

 

 

For those who might be wondering - Magnus Merriman went back to the libray this morning. I made a heroic effort yesterday and finished it. It was a great relief finally to reach page 308 and see 'The End'

 

I'm not saying it's a bad book, because it really isn't but what I am saying is that it's not my sort of book. It's a comic novel, and  in conjunction those two words  tend to strike fear into my reading heart. It may be a gender thing; I never really understood why people thought so highly of Tom Sharpe, or indeed Kingsley Amis, but plenty did and do. And most of them were male.

 

I did get the occasional smile out of MM, but not often enough to make the experience of reading it an enjoyable one. Or to encourage me to read any more Eric Linklater.

 

But it's another block on my quilt that's got filled in. As it happens it's one of those unsightly blocks that you place on the edge of the quilt and then on the side of the bed away from the door so that the casual observer doesn't see the eye watering colours and garish pattern . And  - you see that acid yellow, badly placed stripe? That represents the way Linklater, and all those who have written about this book, wrote about Rose. If ever a book needed a bit of feminist critique applying to it, it's this one.

Out and About

Once they took off that heavy cast I was able to thnk about actually leaving the house and going somewhere other than hospital, so at the weekend I suggested to the OH that we might take a short trip to the nearby village of St Margaret's Hope. This was not in order to stroll aimlessly round the streets but to visit The Workshop, and admire its Christmas displays.We had been invited to the official 'launch' of this, because it's where OH sells his jewellery mainly, but on the night I couldn't face venturing out in the dark and the cold and the wet, so we didn't go. I had a good snuffle round on Saturday morning though, a nice chat to a couple of folk we know, and a very short walk in the fresh air and sunshine.

 

On Sunday I was able to get to Church for the first time in weeks. We worship at St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall and it's on a slope, has steps up to the doors and you can't park particularly close to it. Hopping along to and then into it with my cast on hadn't been an option. It was good to be there again, and talk to people I hadn't seen for a while although I was rather surprised at how many asked if my broken ankle was the result of OH giving me a kick. My own joke of choice when I meet people who have had a fall is to say something along the lines of 'that will teach you to take more water with it', but the only person on Sunday who came close was the Minister(!) who asked if it was a 'drink related injury'.

 

It did me a lot of good to get out, cheered me up no end. Doubtless the blue skies, blue sea and sunshine helped.

The Sunday List

Five things that made me smile this week

1  Two e-mails from Son No 1

2   A Skype call from Son No 2

3  Having my cast taken off and replaced with ankle splints

4  Glimpsing basking seals from the car window

5 Walking round the house, just because I could!

Faffing About or Why I will always have too much wool

I have quite a lot of wool. In a way this is not surprising since I knit a lot. On the other hand I often think  if I knit so much why does my pile of wool not get smaller?

(And yes, the obvious answer would be that it's because I buy it quicker than I knit it, but then I've hardly bought any this year, because honestly, when you look at the plastic boxes full of yarn, you have to think that really I will never need to buy any more wool ever. In my life. And from a purely logical, non-knitting point of view that would undoubtedly be true. Knitters however  know that  this is not the way the world of knitting works.)

 

Take yesterday as a good example of how things do work in the  world of knitting, or at least the corner of it which I inhabit. Mind you taking yesterday, which was Friday, involves us first  in a visit to Thursday and a Sock Disaster. See how already it's getting complicated?

 

I haven't been knitting socks for long so I'm not hugely experienced. I do know which size needle to use and how many stitches to cast on for socks for me (56) and how many to cast on for the OH (60). And as I was making a pair for brother-in-law for Christmas I thought I would make it the same size as I do for OH since he and this brother have much the same sized feet.

 

On Thursday evening I finished the first sock of the pair. I had made the foot rather longer than the pattern seemed to suggest because any idiot could see that the suggested length was too short. I then called OH to come and try it on for size. I am pleased to report that as far as foot length went, it was just fine. In other dimensions though it was a bit lacking. It was tight on the leg, it was particularly tight on the foot, and all in all my happy certainty that for a man's sock, unless it's for Peter Dinklage or Robbie Coltrane, you cast on 60 stitiches went for a Burton.  

 

Now at that point I had a choice. I could have tried the sock on  and if it fitted appropriated the pair myself. I could have cast on sock 2 in a bigger size, resolving to reknit sock 1 to match when I had finished sock 2. Or I could have pulled out the sock I had just finished and started again.

 

I daresay I know knitters who would each have opted for one of those alternatives. I also know a lot of knitters who would have done exactly what I did, which was to put the finished sock and all associated paraphernalia into a project bag and resolve to start knitting  something else entirely the next day.

 

So now we're at Friday (again). Overnight I had decided what I was going to knit, always assuming that I could find it and get it out, while ensuring I didn't rebreak my ankle - and yes, a lot of my wool is 'stored' under the bed,  how did you guess? And as it happens I managed to retrieve what I was looking for, which was 6 balls of Rowan pure wool 4 ply in a shade Rowan call eau-de-nil. The wool came along with two suggested scarf patterns; a lace one and a cable one  and was a 'gift' several years ago when I briefly joined Rowan International.

 

Now if you're wondering, the reason I didn't knit it up at the time I got it  was that  I couldn't decide which pattern to use. That was because in those days I hadn't knitted any lace and didn't think I could cope with the lace pattern without making lots of horrible mistakes and maybe abandoning the thing half done and totally demoralising myself in the process. Alert readers are now asking why then I did not simply use the cable pattern, or am I perhaps  rubbish at cables as well? And the answer to that is that no, I am not rubbish at cables; in fact I am quite good at them, if you can describe yourself  as quite good at something as mundane and uncomplicated as knitting stitches slightly out of the order they are on the needle to make them twist round one another. And that dear readers  is the main  reason that I didn't knit the cable pattern. It was described as 'an alternative', which meant to my mind that the lace was the 'real' pattern for 'proper' knitters and the cable one was a cop out for the less skilled. I didn't want to think of myself as copping out, or indeed as less skilled,  so I decided to put it all to one side until I could cope with the lace.

And other wool and other projects and indeed a grandchild came along and I haven't thought much about this particular wool since then. Until Thursday night when I thought perhaps I could get that Rowan wool out and knit that lace scarf now. So that was a decision.

Then on Friday morning I looked at the pattern and saw that it wasn't a scarf so much as a huge cowl and lovely though it was cowls aren't that common in the UK and I couldn't think of anyone I could give it to. I wondered about just knitting it as a scarf, but that would have meant working out a border for it and I wasn't convinced I could do that. So then I looked at the 'alternative' cable pattern; because now I wouldn't see that as copping out, but even though that was a scarf and not a cowl I didn't like the beginning or the end of that. It looked like it might curl up which isn't a desirable attribute in a scarf really, although better than curling in, if it comes to it. Ask me how I know!

OK, then. So now I needed a new pattern suggestion. Ravelry is the obvious resource for pattern snuffling and I took myself off for a browse. I didn't put many filters on my search which I suppose explains why, from being sure I was going to knit a scarf I suddenly found myself looking at adult cardigans.  Nice cardigans, and I could do with a cardigan. And toddler dresses. Beautiful, soft little toddler dresses that I would have loved to put on a daughter. If I'd ever had a daughter. Should I make msyelf a cardigan? Even though the colour isn't really me. Some of them looked interesting to knit. Perhaps I should do one of these little dresses, never mind the fact that I don't know anyone with a little girl the right age. Or there again I came here looking for a scarf pattern and there are about a gazillion to choose from.

It's the curse of the modern age, too much choice. I got up knowing I was going to knit a specific scarf with a specific pack of wool and by 2 in the afternoon I was unsure of what I was going to knit and what I was going to do with it when I had, and I hadn't knitted a single stitch.

But the story does have a happy ending because I finally decided to make the Falling Water Scarf, which is a pattern on Ravelry I have often looked at and thought about knitting. And, if I've done the maths right, there should be enough wool left over to make a little dress as well.

So that was a result. But I lost five hours of knitting time to all the faffing about. If I'd just got up and cast on I could have been a ball of wool down by nightfall.

Good News

Today I went to the fracture clinic, expecting to have my current cast taken off and a new, weight bearing one put on. Didn't happen. They took the old one off, right enough, x-rayed the ankle and then decided to send me home with just a brace, which I can wear with a sock and shoe. And I've to potter about at home, watching for swelling and I start physio next Tuesday. I couldn't be happier about it, bar the unlikely scenario of a fairy godmother, a magic wand and instant healing. And joy of joys, tomorrow I get to stand in the shower.

Colouring the Blocks

I sent the OH out to the local library ten days ago. Despite being generally well educated and even though I have an M A in Highlands and Islands Literature I have always been conscious that I don't have the grounding I'd like in Scottish Literature generally. So I'd spent some time checking the on-line catalogue against a reading list and, given that the Orkney library is a local library and not attached to an academic institution, there was a gratifyingly high hit rate. He came back with a pile of six books, and since I had cautioned him against it, not all were about Edwin Muir. (Not surprisingly, since he was a local lad, there is a lot of material abour EM in the library.)

 

I spent the next five days reading in a way I haven't read for years; totally immersed and oblivious to everything else. It was so exciting. And gradually over those and subsequent days and courtesy of another trip to the library by OH, and the patience of the library staff who must be getting very familiar with certan areas of their stack I started to feel better. It was as though when I started the whole field of Scottish Literature was spread out like a patchwork quilt but nearly all the blocks were white and there was no  overall pattern visible to me. Gradually, as I read, some blocks got filled in. Some of the ones that were already coloued changed as my perception of a writer changed. And a dimly discernible pattern began to take shape.

 

And now, with a firmer footing, I feel confident about giving my reading a narrower focus. For the present I don't want to read any more extracts from Catherine Carswell's Open the Door! I don't want to follow any more discusions about the meaning of the end of Nan Shepherd's The Quarry Wood, or about how ironic, or not, is the picture of the eponymous hero of Robin Jenkins' Fergus Lamont. I certainly don't want yet another male perspective on Stella Cartwright, the Muse of Rose Street.

 

I will come back to these writers and the critical debates that surround them. But for now, it's time I think, to go back to the poetry; to the poets I already knew and to the ones that the last couple of weeks have introduced me to or changed my mind about.

 

It seems a long time since I declared to my A level English teacher 'Well besides, I don't even like poetry'. A long time, and I've come a long way.

Yesterday was not a Good Day

I've been generally quite surprised by the way I've stayed cheerful over the past 4 weeks. I've never thought of myself as particularly positive in adversity, good with uncertainty or even patient, so if you'd asked me before this happened how I would cope I'd have said 'Badly'.

But in fact, apart from the odd day, it's been fine. I suppose it's helped that after our busy and noisy summer I was wanting some peace and rest and one way to make sure you get that is to be stuck at home with a broken bone.

Yesterday though I woke up and the first thought that came to me was 'I'm sick of this cast and I'm sick of havingto hobble round on crutches, I just want to be able to get out of bed and walk around the house without thinking about it'. And the negatvitiy stayed with me most of the day.

I did manage to shake it off towards evening and do some work on a piece of cross stitching, charting and sewing, which made me feel better. Pictures after Christmas! There are a few craft projects about destined for Christmas presents whose recipients drop in here and I don't want to spoil any surprises.

The other good thing about yesterday was that it was the last day I had to inject myself with a blood thinner. I won't be missing that little evening ritual - except in a good way.

Competitive Baking Part 2

So there  I was suffering withdrawal symptoms from the Great British Bake-Off and immobilised at home and I came across a link to Den Store Bagedyst, which is the Danish version. Apparently Bake Off is going global - who knew?

 

Actually if I could have got the link to the Swedish one to work I would have watched that instead since I would have had a chance of understanding some of what was said, but I couldn't, so the Danish one it was. And in fact the program is so formulaic that it hardly matters, it's easy enough to follow.

 

It was interesting to see how closely it resembled the British Original, but in one respect there was a radical difference. There were still  three finalists in the last program, but instead of all three competing to the bitter end as in the UK, in Denmark they lost a competitor after day one. Now in the UK, when someone is told it's their time to go they generally manage a brave albeit watery smile, thank the judges and presenters for a wonderful time and give the remaining contestants a big hug while wishing them luck.

 

And here is where we have the parting of the UK/Danish ways. The unlucky Christian, who was the one to be given the chop half way through the Danish final, didn't take his elimination quite that well. I might go so far as to say he was upset. He got up and strode out of the baking marquee swearing loudy and angrily and you didn't need to be able to speak Danish to understand exactly what he was saying. There was a lake with a pier just outside and he flung himself so energetically to the end of the pier that I rather feared he was going to throw himself off it, so great were his anger and sense of injustice. (In fairness, he was a bit of a diva, and remains the only person I have ever seen bake whilst wearing a suit under a pinny).

 

After that Nana and (another) Christian fought it out for the title by baking a wedding cake. And while I do think the wrong person won, yet again the loser, instead of  doing the British thing of shaking hands, smiling and muttering something about what a great experience it had all been, spent the remainder of the program with a face like thunder, generally sending out vibes that said the Danish equivalent of 'I was robbed'. Sadly, however true that may or may not have been, the ungracious behaviour left a bit of a sour taste. Maybe we Brits are just too nice.

 

A Good Time for Crime

of the fictional TV type that is.

 

 

 

While I haven't found the new series of Banks particularly engaging (but then again the old series was/were no better, and let's face it, casting Steven Tompkinson as the central character was a huge huge error, except maybe in marketing terms) there are two promising crime dramas on the near horizon.

 

 

Saturday sees the arrival on BBC4 of The Killing 3. While I have to confess to some disappointment in the second series, I'm still looking forward to the third and final incarnation of Sara Lund. I'm hoping that the rather too military/political concerns of series 2 will give way once more to the  domestic environment that was so central to Series 1. That series' great strength was in recording and displaying the awful outward ripple effect of the central murder of Nana Birk Larssen; excellent acting by a cast who looked like real people, as opposed to the glamorous clones who inhabit all of American TV drama these days, showed the viewer that death, especially violent death, is a diminishment and limitation of those left behind. My heart beld for Nana's parents, and her little brothers; in contrast I can remember little about the victims or their relatives, in Series 2. Incidentally as a knitter I am expected to get excited about Sara Lund's jumpers; generally though  I don't . The patterns tend to be too big.
 

 

  

 

 

Away from the night time gloom and rain that is The Killing's Copenhagen, is the sunny Seville of Falcon. I have read Robert Wilson's quartet of novels featuring Javier Falcon of the Seville Police: three were excellent,and all four absorbing reads. I'm really looking forward to watching the new dramatisation coming up on Sky; it seems to have an excellent cast, and from the trailers, there will be plenty of glimpses of Seville too.

 

 

 

 

 

And still to come later in the season is Ann Cleeve's Shetland, to which I shall also doubtless be glued.

 

 

 

The Sunday List

Five Favourite Artists

1 Carl Larsson





2 J W Waterhouse





3 Jan van Eyck



4 Diego Velasquez





5 Pierre Bonnard



and although he (just) didn't make the top five cut, 



Jack Vettriano. Because I like him too much to leave him out.

Competitive Baking Part 1

 

When we did our major kitchen refurb a couple of years ago we got two ovens. One was a combined oven and microwave and was 'his' for cooking. The other was a fancy one for baking. And that was mine.

 

I've always hated cooking, which I look upon as an infringement on my time. I  resent for example having to hover in the kitchen sticking a fork into a pan of potatoes every 5 minutes to check if they're  done yet, when I could  be in the living room reading a book.   For me cooking is like most other forms of housework; dull and endlessly repetitive. Nor am I all that interested in the end product. Left to myself I'd live on bread and cheese.

 

 Happily for me, OH made an error of gigantic proportions not long before we tied the knot, by telling someone, in my presence, that he was  'a much better cook than Anne' . Not surprisingly perhaps, he's done the cooking ever since.

 

 

Baking though is a different thing. I like baking and I'm quite good at it. In the past I've tended to stick to what I know, but I'd recently resloved to expand my repertoire and was doing OK until the Great Ankle Snap. But now that I'm immobile the path to the baking oven is open and undefended, and  OH has taken full advantage of. As you can see....

 

 

 

 

Top - Lemon Cake

 

Bottom - Raspberry Mousse Cake

 

It has to be said that the lemon one, being batter based, tasted a bit like a pancake, but annoyingly I couldn't fault the raspberry one. I don't like him baking because he never uses a recipe which irritates me, especially when the results are good. Sometimes I can be a bit of an ungrateful cow....

 

The roses in the bottom picture came from my friend J, she of the cat-who-needed-to-be-fed, and they're lovely. The raspberries in the cake came from our garden, a trivial matter to most people but not to me. When we first moved to Orkney we joined the local gardening club, and I happened to mention that we were planning to grow raspberries. Huge intake of breath from several present, all of whom sagely opined that 'we would never grow raspberries in Burray'.

 

I damn well will I thought as we came away. And we did.

 

 

 

 

 

 





Warmth on the Wall Revisited

I was watching Phil Spencer - Secret Agent on TV this afternoon, and yes I do sort of blush to admit it, but what can I tell you? I'm stuck in the living room with my ankle in the air and I can only spend so many hours of the day on Facebook.

Anyway, casting his eye over yet another cluttered but sterile living room, Mr Spencer actually said 'There's nothing on these walls to give them warmth'.  If I'd thought he could hear me I'd have yelled 'Try some cheerful beige gingham wallpaper, Phil'.

Probably lucky that TV sound only goes one way.

Not just me then...

I've been reading Touched with Fire, by Kay Redfield Jamison which is an examination of the links between the creative temperament and manic depressive illness. 'My' poet wasn't necessarily manic depressive, although he may have been, and this seemed a good basic text to introduce myself to the whole area of links between creativity and mental  disturbance.

But the thing I most enjoyed was an extract from the diary of Alice James, younger sister of the novelist Henry. Can you guess who she's talking about?

'...what a lifeless, diseased, self conscious being she must have been...her dank moaning features haunt and pursue one...she makes upon me the impression of mildew, or some morbid  growth - a fungus of a pendulous shape, or as of something damp to the touch'

That dear readers was all about the great 19th century english novelist George Eliot.And while I like some of her books, and admire others, I can't help feeling young Alice has summed her up to a T. I've always thought of her as humourless and far too self engaged; glad to know I'm not alone.

Apparently Alice James' diary has been published; I wonder if it's as entertaining as this all the way through?

Goodbye To All That

A few pictures to sum up the happy summer we had with the grandchild

at the beach

out and about



a new coat

first bacon sandwich!

The Sunday List

Five Favourite Cities

in no particular order

1 Sydney

2 Seville

3 Stockholm

4 Helsinki

5 Edinburgh

Contrariwise

So if someone had said to me a couple of weeks ago 'Anne, how would you like seven weeks with a perfect excuse for not doing housework or shopping, and all day to yourself to get on with your reading and your knitting, with generous swathes of time thrown in for you to surf the net and watch reams of TV I sort of suspect my response would have been 'Bring It On'.

 

This is, in fact, exactly the situation in which I currently find myself, and it's not the unalloyed pleasure you might imagine. Of course there is the slight problem that I'm basically immobile with a sore ankle and a heavy cast on one leg. Injecting myself daily with a blood thinner so that I don't end up with a DVT isn't a barrel of laughs either. But leaving the obvious to one side, it's much more difficult than I imagined it would be to settle down and do all this wonderful stuff I normally don't have enough time for.

 

Reading - either I don't like the book or I'm too tired to take in the graphs and charts, not to mention finding Wordsworth, even in quotable nuggets, hard to take when I'm feeling 100%, let alone when I'm below par.

 

TV - remarkably I have discovered that even the best of property programs can become boring, and do you know how many repeats of unwatchable stuff gets churned out on daytime TV?  The evenings are almost as bad. As for radio - Radio 4 is shortly going to get a whole post to its pretty little self - and it's not going to be a complimentary one.

 

Knitting - second sock syndrome. And a sweater on the needles that looks like it might be far too big, but as I'm doing it in the round I can't try it on to check. Both hugely discouraging.

 

I was chatting to a friend last night and we agreed it's all because I've got no choice. If I could choose to sit and read as opposed to doing anything else I'd probably be happy curled up with the books. But as I have no choice, even the most satisfying of occupations loses its savour.

 

Contrary things, humans.

Men - How Do Their Minds Work?

So today OH had to go to town to see the dentist. Since I am still hors de combat I suggested he might look in the toyshop for a birthday present for the grandson. Good Idea he said and he came home with something.

We will leave on one side the facts that

a) it bears no resemblance to what the child's parents said would be good
b) it bears a lot of resemblance to something we bought said grandson for Christmas
c) it is so heavy it will probably cost more to post than it did to buy

None of this really surprised me.

Once I had admired present ( I know, how do women's minds work, and more to the point, why do they work like that ) I asked if he had bought wrapping paper and a card.

'No' he said 'you never said anything about getting a card or paper'.

You may infer from this that all his presents are given to him in plastic bags and that he never gets a card on his birthday. But you'd be wrong twice over.

The Sunday List

Yes it's a week late, or I've skipped a week, depending on your point of view but I think I'll forgive myself all things considered. I'd planned five things to be grateful for, as a counterbalance to last times rather wistful things I wish I were, but decided that might sound a bit Pollyanna just now, so instead you get, in no partucular order,

Five Life Affirming Films

1 Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing

2 Crossing Delancey

3 Love Actually

4 Moonstruck

5 The Shop Around the Corner

I know - I'm a sloppy sentimental old thing at times.

A Revealation

It came to me in the early hours of Friday morning, when I was being particularly bothered by pain, that obviously my broken ankle is the universe's way of ensuring that I sit down and finish Magnus Merriman. To this end I read rather more than 80 pages of it on Friday before deciding enough was enough and picking up my cross stitch. My cunning plan now is to finish the book before my next appointment at the fracture clinic, because obviously once it's been read, the universe has no further interest in my being immobile. So the sooner I finish the book, the quicker my ankle will heal.

 

Or does the universe not really work like that?

The Cause of All the Pain!

P. S.  I discovered this afternoon that some kind soul has uploaded onto You Tube the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (and  a very young Iain Glen as Hamlet ). If you like the play and haven't seen this before, which I hadn't, I would recommend it. The script is brilliant regardless, but Roth and Oldman are wonderful.

Kind Thoughts from Abroad

OK so the original said Home Thoughts, and the Abroad in this case is only England, which some people hardly consider to be abroad at all.

I still wanted to show off the beautiful flowers my sister sent when she heard about the broken ankle. The photo hardly does them justice - they're gorgeous! And just my colours too.

They went a small way towards allaying the disappointment I felt at the fracture clinic yesterday when they told me the foot was still too swollen to put a proper plaster cast on. Back there on Monday for a 'swell check' and, if all is well,  again on Wednesday for the cast. 

The good news would be that I'm getting better at moving around on crutches.

I blame Iain Glen

OK, so last week was never going to be good. Son and daughter in law, after 6 months of living and working in Orkney, were going south and naturally enough taking our grandson with them. I know all the stuff about how lucky we were to have them near for six months; I've said it myself, I've agreed with other people when they've said it to me, but at the end of the day that wasn't going to make saying Goodbye any easier.

 

Monday actually was OK; in fact I might go so far as to say that it was a pattern day for how I hoped autumn and winter would be. Got up at a reasonable hour, did a bit of housework, a bit of ironing, a bit of baking, had a walk and then did lots of reading. And knitting in the evening. Lovely, constructive, peaceful day.

 

Tuesday it started to go pear shaped. OH, who was taking them south, started to get a wee bit stressed. Son starting to pack, trying to clean ready for landlord inspection. Lots of coming and going. Boxes brought in. Discussions about routes, timings, logistics. Front door left open A LOT.

 

Wednesday was Tuesday in spades. Given that I was getting more and more wound up I resorted to my usual method of overcoming stress and got out a jigsaw puzzle. Experience has taught me that imposing the order of a finished picture on the chaos of several hundred pieces of oddly shaped cardboard is very soothing to my nerves. Sadly, last week this fail safe let me down. Seems some stress is just beyond the reach of the calming effects of puzzling.

 

Friday came, inevitably. I spent a lovely morning with the grandson while his parents did all their last minute stuff and OH got in some sleep and  at 3 o'clock they all got into the car and set off for the ferry. I'll draw a veil. It was hard.

 

The plan was that OH would drive through the night all the way to Cheltenham, a drive of about 12 hours with minimal breaks, so that the kidlets could pick up the key to the new flat early on Saturday morning. Motorway all the way from Glasgow. I think you could safely say I was worried. I got progress reports until I went to bed. When I got up I checked with my sister who was expecting them all for breakfast. They had been and gone - all was well and going according to plan.

 

Which was all very well for them but, at the risk of sounding totally self centred, that didn't help me much. Yes, I did at least know that they weren't all lying dead or dying in a mangled heap of metal on the motorway, but I was miserable and alone with four cats and a recalcitrant fire to look after. It was, I decided, time for A Good Wallow.

My wallows these days generally take the form of time on You Tube. I might sample every recording known to man of Tosti's Ideale, or I might watch a young Mandy Patinkin singing Younger than Springtime, or it might be the Productio Diary videos from the forthcoming film of The Hobbit. Like Lord Peter of that ilk, it's a case of Where My Whimsy Takes Me. Saturday it took me to Iain Glen.

 

(Just in case there's anyone out there who doesn't know Mr Glen is a talented Scottish actor of considerable charm who also posseses a very pleasant voice.)

 

So I spent some time Wallowing in the company of Mr Glen until I felt better and then I made a plan. I would have lunch. I would take a walk along to the house of my friend J, whose cat we were feeding while she was away. I would come home and make some lemon loaves, one of which would be nice for us when OH got back, and the other I would take along to my friend G the following day, as she was just back from Aberdeen hospital where surgeons had been fiddling with her knee.Upside for her - no more pain and the prospect of beng able to walk properly without sticks in the not too disant future. Downside - currently more or less immobile. 

 

It was a lovely day on Saturday and the walk to J's is not long, about 15 minutes, although half of it up a steep enough brae. The first bit though is flat and I was enjoying my walk. The sun was warm, the sea was calm and blue and sparkly, my day was planned for the next couple of hours, and there I was in a little world of my own, reliving the video clip of Iain Glen in Small Engine Repair singing If I Could Only Fly , and singing along with it. All was right with the world.

 

And then my right foot turned outwards and I staggered a long way along the road trying not to fall flat on my face. When I managed to get myself upright it was two or three minutes before I could bear to put my foot on the ground, and the phrase 'if I could only fly' had taken on a whole new meaning.

 

And this is where it gets silly, because instead of crawling along the road to the nearest house and begging for help, especially foolish in light of the fact that said house belongs to my friend R, I carried on round the corner and up the brae  to J's, where I fed her fish and her cat and left her a note about the necessity of worming, and then I locked the place up again and started home.

 

Fortunately my stiff upper lip was not stiff enough to get me past R's house twice, and to cut a long story short I spent most of the rest of the afternon in the local hospital, being x-rayed and plastered and shown how to inject myself with something that thins my blood, because my ankle is broken and the general feeling is that I won't be mobile again for approximately 7 weeks.

 

Looking back I have no idea what caused my foot to suddenly slip like that. I may have just caught an uneven piece of road, it may have slipped on a wet patch of leaves, or it might just have been my shoe being too loose. Whatever the immediate cause , I blame the whole thing on Iain Glen. Because if I hadn't had him on a distracting loop in my mind I would have been  paying a bit more attention to what I was doing. And then this would never have happened. I reckon the  guy owes me  a Get Well card.

Warmth on the Wall?

I have now finished Richard Montanari's Broken Angels. The blurb on the back flap informs me that Mr Montanari has had books published in over 20 countries and is a Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author. In so far as  this means he is not in desperate need of a new fan, this is good news, because  I am not destined to become one.

Mr Montanari has a simple style. Short sentences, short paragraphs, short chapters. This makes the book a quick-ish, if unchallenging read. He is also a great exponent of the 'tell not show' method of storytelling, which is OK if you're writing screenplays, not so great in a novel. For example, if I am supposed to believe a female character is feisty (and that's not a word I enjoy particularly) I expect a writer to find a more subtle way of letting me know this than making her an amateur boxer. This book is all like that; all surface, no depth.

Other grumbles.

The psychology of the perpetrator is unconvincing. A more skilful writer could have made this plausible,:Mr Montanari, not so much.

The near cheating of the denouement. The unwritten pact between writer and reader in this sort of book is that the person whodunnit shoud be deducible by an alert reader, and shouldn't be pulled by the writer like a rabbit from a hat in the last 10 pages of the book. And although we had met the perpetrator in this book there was no way the most alert reader on God's earth could have solved this one. Actually given the detail which finally leads to the feisty female identifying him,  if she'd been a bit more alert in the beginning he could have been caught very early on and saved us almost 400 pages of anodyne prose.

And finally one of the detectives has the occasioanl supernatural experience which supposedly helps, but as far as I could see did nothing but fill up the odd page, to no real purpose. At one point he smells pine needles and woodsmoke and has a feeling of evil approaching. I don't like the supernatural inserted into the police procedural , but if you're going to do it at least have some consistency. There is no follow up to this 'vision'; the scents of woodsmoke and pine needles do not re-appear, separately or in tandem, nor does it have any meaning within the plot.  The approach of evil I will allow, but given that the book is about a serial killer,  evil is a bit of a given.

Some of this I could have overlooked, but in fact a small detail on page 148 convinced me that I was never going to pick up another of this man's books. Let me quote the exact phrase that determined this decision: 'the wallpaper was a cheerful beige gingham'

Now this is obviously a definition of beige with which I have been previously  unaquainted. Honestly if you wanted a description of dull and uminaginative decor, could you do any better than beige, whether it were gingham-ed or not? Who, who in the world, apart from Mr M of course, would ever describe beige gingham wallpaper as cheerful?

On the plus side, since I would like to be seen as balanced, it is quite tense towrds the end, say the last 30 pages or so) and if I am ever in a quiz that requires the names of both Philadelphia rivers I am now equipped to get the point. So the hours I spent reading weren't all loss, then.

The Sunday List

Five things I wish I were

Thin

A world class soprano

Competent to sail a small dinghy

More patient

Less judgemental

Wash Out

Saturday was a total wash out, literally and figuratively. It poured with rain and blew a gale. Sadly the direction of the gale meant I had a crippling migraine and although I had decided it was time to clean 'upstairs' I only managed the bathroom before collapsing back into bed.

The upstairs is in inverted commas because we live in a one storey house, but it's useful shorthand.

For the curious, the picture is of the fair city of Inverness. I thought I owed it to you all to show how appearances can be deceptive. I mean, it looks like a nice place in the photograph doesn't it? And indeed, bits of it are very decorative.

Done and Done

Friday was the day I was summoned for my Research Skills Analysis and it went fine. We established that I'm quite bright, and that I can read and write. We also established that I have no need of assertiveness training, which I thought a shame. Previously when I have said I thought it would be useful to have this, people have looked at me and laughed like drains. Which just goes to prove you can never tell when someone is shaking like a leaf and feeling sick inside.

The word methodology was not mentioned, although I thought I saw it lurking on a piece of paper.

We did broach the dread topic of Gaelic. Since the subject of my research wrote a good proportion of his work in Gaelic I feel I need to learn a bit. Translations are available, and some of them he even did himself but, you know, translation is not the same.

I've always been told that I am good at languages and I've certainly learned a few in my time, so some months ago I threw Teach Yourself Gaelic into the tape player and prepared to absorb a bit of the old ancestral language (I had Scots grandparents). It was a total and utter failure. But now I am going to get some proper teaching in due course, and maybe if I have a real life teacher, rather than a machine, I might make some progress.

Incidentally it amazes me that knowledge of Gaelic is always expressed by the verb 'to have' and often with the definite article. People say 'Can you speak French?' or 'Do you know Norwegian?', but with Gaelic it's always 'Do you have (the) Gaelic?' A mischievous part of me often wants to say No I don't and if I did I wouldn't give him back to you, but flippancy isn't always well received.

There are other things I need to be taught, but so far it's still all exciting and only the Gaelic is at all frightening in prospect.

That was a good start to the day and I followed it up by finishing off these -

Roman Rib Socks 



Snug as a Bug in a Rug

I've been busy for the last couple of days and fighting off a threatened cold, but today I didn't have anything special to do, which probably explains why the cold marched in and made itself right at home. I made an executive decision to go with the flow and curled up on the sofa under my Auskerry blanket with a small pile of half read books and dedicated my day to getting some of them finished.

First up was Camilla Lackerg's The Drowning and many apologies to her in her absence for incorrectly calling it The Mermaid yesterday. The denouement of the main story was more satisfying than I had dared to expect, but the last few pages after the reveal were incredibly melodramatic; obviously designed to have you gagging for the next book. Personally I'm not. I still find her domestic scenes incredibly arch and cloying and have decided that it can't all be down to the translator.

Next on the list was Diana Wynne-Jones' The Merlin Conspiracy. This was another re-read and very satisfying; she was an excellent writer of fantasy, and although she was marketed as a children's writer, many of her books would be labelled as 'Young Adult' these days. My favourite is Fire and Hemlock, loosely based on the Ballad of Tam Lin. Her Tough Guide to Fantasyland is very very funny and should be required reading for those who overdose on the 3 volume fantasy tome. It should also be required reading for George R R Martin, as he would then realise that however much he declares his writing avoids fantasy cliches, it really doesn't.

I took a couple of breaks in my reading marathon and watched Pointless and Location Location Location. I enjoy Pointless, but worry when I watch it that I might be turning into my parents who had an unbreakable date every weekday with Countdown. I was comforted today by the realisation that I didn't actually watch Pointless yesterday. As for Location Location Location, I do wonder whether there is any point in taking on, as 'clients' for the program, people who declare at the outset that there are only 18 streets in which they are willing to buy a house. Tonight's edition seemed to establish that the answer to that question is No.

And now I'm off to bed with the part read Broken Angels by Richard Montanari; a writer new to me. Alert readers of this blog will have noticed that there has been no mention of  Linklater's Magnus Merriman, last seen being thrown with a flounce into my small suitcase. It has now taken up a reproachful position on the bedside table, roughly where I place my glasses last thing. So far, I am managing to ignore it quite well.

In which Inverness takes revenge and I needlessly purchase a book

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.