The Snowman

Yes, we've been to the cinema again! that's three times in three weeks and probably more than we've been in the last three years. Although having picked up the program for December it seems that normal service will be resumed very shortly, because apart from the filmcasts from the Royal Ballet and West End Theatre, for which we will be away, there's nothing there that I want to see, although Son No 2 and the OH will doubtless go and see the new Star Wars (yawn) movie sometime over the Christmas break. 

So what can I say about The Snowman? Better than Bladerunner 2049, not nearly  as enjoyable as Thor Ragnarok. Before we went, Son No 1 told us darkly that it was a film he 'had heard nothing but bad things about', but there again he thinks that BR29049 is going to be his pick for best film of 2018, so what does he know? 

It's a workmanlike film, Snowman,  well told, although there's a bit of mumbling and everyone seems to suffer Scandinavian Disease, which is basically an inability to go into a space you believe to be dangerous and be unable to locate and/or use a light switch. Judging from The Killing, The Bridge, Those Who Kill, and a host of other Nordic crime dramas, almost everyone involved in law enforcement in he Nordic countries has an incurable case of this. Additionally in the real world no-one goes out in mid-winter in Oslo without a hat, and wearing a skirt that skims only the mid-thigh, do they? unless they want frostbite or to die of exposure? 

This is carping though, and while I'm busy carping can I just say that I thought Michael Fassbender was miscast as Harry Hole. I've read almost all the HH novels by J Nesbo and he just wasn't Harry. And it's not as though there isn't a  whole host of Nordic actors with excellent English who would have made a better job of it. 

Carping aside though, would I recommend it? well, perhaps not to pay and go and see. But, if you enjoy competent crime drama with beautiful scenery, worth a look when it pops up on the telly. 

Recommended Reading November - We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

I'm starting off, not with a friends recommendation, because I didn't get myself organised in time to get one for November, but one I took from the wireless, specifically Harriet Gilbert's A Good Read program on Radio 4. 

This was one of Gilbert's own choices. I've heard the program where she chose it twice and was sufficiently intrigued to remember the tite, not something that can always be said,  and as I hadn't previously read it I went in search of it on Amazon. 

And then I got even more intrigued when I saw the author's name. Decades ago my school was affiliated to a book selling program; you got a leaflet every ?quarter and you could order books from it. Presumably the school got some sort of commission. Anyway I was allowed to choose a book each time and on one occasion I ordered something called Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson. It was a light hearted account of raising a family in the north east of the US and although much of it went over my head, since five decades ago we knew very little about daily life in America, I enjoyed it and it has stayed in my memory all these years. But it was so different to the impression I had received of the 'Castle' book that I thought it must be a different Shirley Jackson. 

Turns out it wasn't. They are one and the same. Raising Demons grew from a series of articles SJ wrote for various magazines of her day to make money. Her husband was a critic and academic who was better at spending money that earning it, and also apparently better at philandering than fidelity, which casts a retrospective shadow over my memories of the happy if somewhat inchoate family life depicted in Raising Demons. It appears that particular  book was very atypical of her output in general., since mostly she dealt with the macabre, the odd and the disturbed. 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is both bleakly funny and very disturbing, with a strangely sad,  haunting and yet oddly satisfactory end. Although I wouldn't necessarily describe it as Gothic I wouldn't recommend it for those who don't do that particular genre. For others, pass into the peculiar and precarious world of sisters Constance and  MerryCat, and the invalid Uncle Julian, only survivors of a mass family poisoning .... ; 

Thor Ragnarok

Yes, we did. We went to see Thor Ragnarok. I have to say it was a much more successful cinema visit than last week's trip to see Blade Runner 2049. Yes, it was rubbish, it's a crash bang wallop movie full of cartoon violence and non-credible action sequences. 

But here's the thing. It's a knowing crash bang wallop movie with its tongue stuck firmly in its cheek. The makers are perfectly aware that what they're doing is entertaining people. They have no pretensions; they're not there to debate the state of the world, or warn about a dystopian future  or kick off discussions about when a replica human might be so good that it becomes a real human or whether people have souls. Its just sheer unadulterated entertainment. And it worked. 

It helped hugely that, unlike BR2049 it had a more or less coherent plotline that didn't make you stop and ask 'how did he know he needed to go there?' or 'how did he get there' or 'how has he managed to live there undetected for decades, what does he do for food' etc  every five minutes. 

Fun fact: the bad gal, rather than guy, in this movie was played by Cate Blanchett. The OH is her biggest fan. Really. He is. And yet he didn't recognise her in this, even though she was on screen for a good 45% of the film. 

Next week Jo Nesbo's The Snowman, of which Son No 1 rather discouragingly said 'I have heard only bad things'. Oops! 

Just Too Tempting

I am, as we all know, attempting to reduce my wool stash, and in this respect if in no other, suspending my Ph D studies is a good thing. To a certain extent it's working, because I keep knitting and if I'm at home in Orkney there's no real pull to go and buy wool anywhere. Of course when I'm not in Orkney it's a different thing because I can visit lovely wool shops that stock all sorts of nice things I can't  get here or have never previously heard of, and sometimes these things are difficult to resist. Which would account for the skein of WYS Croft Shetland Tweed which has magically added itself to the pile. But come on - it's a gorgeous yarn, it couldn't be left on the shelf,  and anyway how long can it take to knit up one solitary skein of aran weight? 

And then there are the totally unexpected things. Like an e-mail offer on a kit to knit 'the ultimate festive bunting'. I couldn't resist, although to be honest I'm still a bit bemused about that. Why did I buy it? 

It's partly because it was on offer. 

Its partly because it's very Scandinavian in overall effect.

It's partly to prove I can do it.

And it's partly to protect me from buying a cushion or blanket kit from the same designer , which are very tempting indeed but which I know with a deep down rock solid certainty that  I would never finish and which would therefore be a complete waste of money. 

These are all excellent motives for buying it (particularly number four) and obviously outweighed for me, in some moment of temporary madness the excellent reasons for not buying it which are 

I am not a bunting person.

I might never finish it

It might be too complicated for me to knit 

I am not a bunting person, and indeed in the past have been quite scathing on the particular subject of knitted bunting

I probably don't  have time to do it, given that I still have a jumper to complete for grandson number one, in time for it to reach Canada for Christmas ( the one for grandson number 2 has been done for ages and indeed went off to Canada today) 

And I am not a bunting person. I know I mentioned that before, but really I cannot stress it enough. 

Still have a look at it ( in deconstructed form ) 

The only possible responses are 'How could I resist?' and  It's gonna be great!

Bedside Books Number Two

This is a very thin book but it has taken me a while to read because it's poetry and as any fule kno you do not read poetry books straight through at a sitting from the first page to the last. I have been rationing myself to three poems a day so that I could give due consideration to ( most of ) the poems. 

I bought this at the Gaskell Society Conference this year, which I never got around to blogging about because life was very busy in the summer, but I did enjoy it very much and here's a good tip for you; Never order a glass of wine to go with a meal at a Best Western Hotel, unless you want to be charged for two glasses,  and then patronised and ignored when you subsequently ask them to acknowledge and apologise for their mistake. In fact, it might be an idea to avoid Best Western Hotels altogether, I know that's what I'm going to do ...

But I digress. Why, you are wondering, or even how, did I come to buy a book of C20 poetry at a conference about a C19 novelist, and it's a good question. The Society always arranges for a local book dealer to have a stall at the conference and obviously they largely bring along C19 stuff. I tend not to buy any of this because I have all the good lit crit stuff on Elizabeth Gaskell, and indeed some of the bad stuff too. I also have more than enough books about the Brontes, and will buy no more  until someone writes something that asserts that the Bronte novel most worth reading is Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I am not holding my breath in this respect but I have certainly read more than enough about the loathsome Charlotte and the exasperating Emily to last me a lifetime and then some. That said, I always have a browse of the stall and occasionally buy something, and this year it was the Gunn and Hughes poetry book. I think I paid all of a fiver and as I have nothing of Hughes' and Gunn was really just a name it seemed worth a punt. 

I have, as they say, issues with Ted Hughes, to do with his treatment of women, not that that should affect by one iota a judgement of his poetry. Previous acquaintance with his work had been limited to reading 'Thrushes' at school; a poem which is in this collection and rather better than I remembered it. That says much much more about me than the poem. What I found interesting was that even days after reading his poems if I picked the book up and read the title or first line I could remember what the rest of the poem was about. Some of them were funny, some were nasty, the occasional one was lyrical; they were all clever. Will I now invest in Ted Hughes' Collected Poems? No. Will I revisit some of these in time to come. Absolutely yes. 

Gunn is a complex poet, almost metaphysical in his approach to form and metaphor, and therefore some of the poems were difficult to follow or understand. But I bought the book on the strength of the poem that the book fell open at when I first looked at it; Tamer and Hawk    which totally captivated me. I won't be investing in Gunn's Collected Poems either, but I'll be looking out for a biography and some criticism in due course. 

Next bedside book is a lot less highbrow, but also not yet finished ....

Gadabouts

The OH is not very busy at work just now and as we all know I am learning to live a life without the ever present Ph D studies, so we were uncharacteristically busy last week. 

Well not on Monday as we were both catching up with sleep; him because he was tired from all the driving, and me because,  although I don't sleep terribly well at the best of times, I sleep even less well when I'm on my own.

Tuesday we went back to the Training Restaurant at the college. It's a new year of students and they're just starting out so things aren't perfect, but I'm looking forward to watching them grow, and there's nothing really wrong with their food. This week's lasagne was very nice - we both had that and then we had different  desserts so that we could swap half way through. I was confirmed in my opinion  that banoffee has no business being a thing. The almond sponge on the bakewell tart was delicious, but sadly the pastry required the aid of a chisel to cut through it. Never mind, Im not that much of a pastry fan really. The OH, who was recently diagnosed with diabetes, has no business going near desserts at all, but he seems to manage it very well, and the occasional sweet thing doesn't seem to affect his blood sugar levels so I don't nag. 

Wednesday we went to the latest exhibition at the local craft cooperative workshop; we missed the opening due to the OH being away. It was by a very talented textile artist; luckily the only thing of hers we could afford had already been sold but I did succumb and buy myself a pendant she'd done, which I haven't as yet got around to photographing. We followed that up with a visit to a relatively new eating place down in St Margeret's Hope, which I have been to before and he hasn't. They have really really nice cappuccino, and I discovered this week that their scnes aren't bad either. 

On Thursday evening we trailed all the way over to Douby for a Christmas Craft Fair, which was basically a sale of work and many opportunities to pay what a friend calls the 'Orkney Tax', which is buying raffle tickets. I think I have mentioned before that whenever three Orcadians get together they feel obiged to have a raffle. It wasn't at all what we were expecting, since we thought it was more Craft than craft if you get my drift, and it was also heaving with people, many of whom apparently were unaware of the existence of deodorants. The queues for the tea and coffee were horribly long too, so we didn't stay long. Since it's 30 miles away we were a bit cross, butt there gain, no-one held a pistol to our heads to make us go, and we just wont go again. I had hoped to look at some of the jewellery from Alison Moore because I am a big fan of her stacking rings, but, despite the fact that her name was associated with the event all over the advertising she wasn't there. I suspect she was in  her own studio which is somewhere in Dounby but it was too cold and dark to go looking for it so we came home.

Friday we went 'to the pictures'. This is an extremely rare event for us,partly because we tend not to like the same sort of films, the OH having, as I'm sure many will recall, an aversion to 'sad ends'. Goodness the unfair stick I got when I borrowed City of Angels to watch; it's not like I knew she died half way through. Sheesh! Anyway on tis occasion we went to see Blade Runner 2049; the OH being a huge fan of all the various permutations of the original, if anyone can decide quite what constitutes the original of a film the director has re-cut more often that he has had hot dinners. I wasn't expecting much, which was a good thing as not much was what I got. The OH on the other hand did have expectations so was disappointed, poor lamb. I think that on the evidence of the film I can safely say that the future, contrary to a  popular advertisement, is neither bright nor orange.

After a busy week I wanted to settle down and do a lot of knitting yesterday. Alibi duly presented me with 10 hours worth of Miss Marple, and I learned that I am actually not capable of sitting and watching 10 hours of cosy detective drama which is a good thing, but during the time I did watch I had the unexpected  opportunity to swoon over Christopher Villiers, who is a but of a pretty boy, but I like to watch him.

We will draw a veil over visit of Oldest Cat to vet for check up on Saturday as he has to go back for an intestinal scan on Thursday which bodes no good for health of either cat or wallet, but as he seems well 'in himself' we are Not Going to Worry, or at leas not until the scan has been done.

Who's up for a cod cheek omelette?

It is autumn, the clock has gone back and this can mean only one thing - Masterchef the Professionals is back. 

(Actually the clocks going back means several things, not least that I start to feel normal again instead of out of tune with nature and my body clock which is what happens when we put them forward and 'enjoy' BST Bit you know, for effect ....)

Of all the programs in the Masterchef stable this is the one I enjoy most.This is partly because quite often we are relieved of the presence of Greg Wallace, the bullet headed greengrocer, although to my mind not quite often enough. But there' is something good about watching people do things that they are good at in front of you, especially when you couldn't aspire to doing them yourself, and there's also a lot to be said for the pleasure of watching people improve week by week, which is also something that happens here. 

There are a couple of  downsides. One is that I sometimes have to watch people preparing food that normally I would not even raise my eyes to were I to be passing a shop that sold it in the street. This applies to several types of bird, anything that comes  with a head still attached, and all fish. This made one of this weeks skill tests practically unwatchable for me as six chefs were each presented with a huge cod's head and asked to concoct something using the meat from it; most went for the cheeks although one got the feeling Monica would have given extra marks for using the tongue or throat. Some had no idea what they were doing and  I had to watch their antics through interlaced fingers. Honestly, some of them were wrestling with it. One of them was so flummoxed he really did serve up a cods cheek omelette. None of the judges were prepared to taste it, which I thought was rather bad form on their part. They are paid squillions for fronting this thing; the least they could do would be to taste what's put in front of them. (Although to be fair, they generally do, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to try it, but then I'm not a Michelin starred chef hosting a cheffing comp. 

And here comes the other downside. These are professional chefs, right? The sort of person who is holding sway in the kitchen when you go out for a meal. Until a few years ago I sort of assumed that  all these people were competent, Knew what they were doing. Could at least cover the basics. 

Alas, if there is one thing that Masterchef the Professionals teaches you, it is that you should assume no such thing. Many of these people, and remember they have put themselves forward for one of the most prestigious cheffing competitions in the country, cannot perform the simplest and most basic of tasks presented to them by judges Monica Galetti and Marcus Wareing. How can you mess up cooking pasta and prawns for goodness sake? I don't even eat prawns, but after years of being subjected to a variety of cooking programs on TV I could have made  a better fist of it than some of those guys. I do at least know to start by taking out the intestinal tract. As for kitchen hygiene -for many years I have felt slightly ill while watching them taste stuff off spoons and then put the spoon straight back into the cooking pot. Ahem! Eugghh! This year, there are far too many of them trying to prepare vegetables on a board they have just used to prep raw meat or fish on, without wiping it first. All my old Domestic Science teachers are spinning in their graves. 

I also think that the standard this year is generally seriously underwhelming. Marcus is turning back into the humourless cooking Nazi he always used to be as he watches a series of hapless chefs fail to complete the most basic of tasks, and Monica's faces are getting weirder by the day. I suspect that a lot of this general 'not-having-a-clue-ness' is down to a lack of formal training; it seems every pot and bottle washer in a kitchen can work up to  being a sous chef in six months these day, without necessarily ever being told that you don't peel parsnips on a board you just jointed a chicken on. 

I'll still watch till the biter end though. 

Dolls Houses

I love dolls houses. I had a lovely one when I was small made by my grandfather for a Christmas present; he made  not just the house but most of the furniture inside it too. It was wonderful, even after my so called friend Judith Smith put her finger through all the cellophane window panes in a fir of pique because she didn't have anything like it herself. It was a spiteful thing to do, even if we were just seven at the time. I wonder what happened to that house? My mother probably gave it away when we moved to Gloucestershire in 1968, I certainly don't remember seeing it after that. 

For many years I have lusted after those fabulous Victorian dolls houses that you can get these days. For years we didn't; have the money and now that we have I am loth to  let myself have one because I think that once you have the house you spend a fortune on the décor and the furniture and the people, and really there are more constructive and useful things to do with that sort of money, like feed third world schoolchildren, or protect donkeys or help refugees. 

But this year I got a substitute from my sister for my birthday. It was made of some sort of foam cum plastic stuff, and it came in a box in the form of press out sheets that you put together to build and furnish a Victorian home.  I did it over a few days and it was amazingly therapeutic and enjoyable. And despite the fact that I'm a bit cackhanded it did go together well and stood up all on its own. And is still standing. 

I took a few photos along the way  

here's the basic frame

the back going on 

building the front 

and the front goes on - and fits! 

close up of the nursery and attic, complete with rocking horse that really rocks , two small Victorian children and a pet dog. There was a cat as well but I put that in the kitchen.

I seem not to have taken any pictures of the whole thing when I finished it, but I daresay I'll get around to it in due course. It was a fun thing to do, I'm so happy I chose it. 

Bedside Books Number One

So this was standard crime fiction; Peter Robinson's When the Music's Over. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Peter Robinson. He's a competent writer of police procedurals, and his books are all set near where I used to live so I know the geography's right. There's nothing much wrong with his plots, and I never feel, as I do with some other writers, that when I've finished there was a big hole in the storyline which you could drive  a tank through if you only concentrated hard enough. 

I think part of the problem stems from the fact that I've been reading them for a long time and when you read a series of novels like that you tend to get bored with al the details which the author has to put in for new readers even though old readers are aware of them from way back when, It's part of the price you pay for reading a series and I can just about thole it. The lead character is fine (if you're taking him off the page and not from the TV series) and his sometime lover and sidekick is also fine, again with the caveat that you're talking about the book version and not the TV one. (I really dislike the fact though that we are constantly told what music our Inspector hero either has on in the car or chooses to listen to when he gets home at night. This adds nothing to plot and actually after 22 books it adds nothing to the characterisation either. Even if I recognised more than 50% of the quoted tracks, which I don't,  it would add nothing by this stage) 

I couldn't finish the last one which had something to do with stolen farm machinery because there was too much forensic detail about burning and  burnt bodies, and while I can cope with most forensic description, there's something about burnt bodies that I can't take, particularly when graphically described. 

That said for some reason I bought this one, and I can't even remember when or where but I suspect in the Inverness Tescos on yet another trip down or back up the A9. It was OK to pass the time on a road trip I suppose. As I say he's a competent writer; competent plots, competent style. I was a bit uneasy about the story though; well,  it was actually two stories running concurrently. One was about the grooming for sex of vulnerable white girls by Pakistani men and the other was an historical sexual abuse case re-opened  after allegations were made against a celebrity entertainer. 

I can't quite put my finger on why this annoys me so much. No-one wants crime fiction to stay at the Agatha Christie Body in a Library stage. Society has moved on, and crime fiction with it. But this book, although possibly with the worthy motive of bringing such subjects into public debate, with some worthy inter police dialogue to illustrate and underline the problems associated with both types of cases, just read a bit like a rip off. It was Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris and the Rotherham grooming gang in ever so  slightly fictionalised form, and it just read like an easy reach for a writer. I got no feeling that Robinson had researched either subject further than by reading newspaper accounts of the real life prototypes, or given any real thought to the very particular  difficulties in investigating either of these sorts of crimes. And of course both storylines were neatly tied up at the end. Crime fiction is, or can be, a place to discuss all sorts of societal failings, but not the way Robinson does it. It's crime writing by numbers and it's lazy. 

Since I have mentioned en passant the TV series I might add that for me it was doomed to failure the day they cast Stephen Tomkinson as Inspector Banks - nothing wrong with ST per se but he can't do this part; he's just wrong for it. They also made Banks a nasty shouty man, which in the books he isn't, and there seems to be no good reason for that. They changed his sergeant from a feisty independent prickly, but thoughtful, woman who took her job extremely seriously, while tackling demons of her own from a previous life, into a vapid blonde bimbo,  and inserted an extraneous senior female police officer played by Caroline Catz who a) always looks as though she has the weight of the world on her slender shoulders whatever she's in and b) doesn't  convince as a police officer for five minutes. Contrast  this with the senior police officers in Scott and Bailey played by Amelia Bullmore and Pippa Haywood. Totally convincing as police officers because that's what the script makes them; their gender is irrelevant, they are people dong a difficult job and doing it professionally unlike the women in Banks who are women who happen to be police officers. I appreciate that a lot of this is down to scriptwriting and outwith the control of Robinson; I'm not holding him accountable for what TV producers did to his characters. I'm just saying it's a shame. 

And it can be better. Those of us old enough to  remember Tom Wilkinson as Resnick  in the BBC series of the same name know that police series based on good crime writing can be brilliant. It just takes the right actor and  the right scripts based on the right source material; Resnick had all those in spades. It would be good for it to turn up one day on a satellite TV  channel so I could watch it again. 

The Japanese hava a word for it

or so Facebook tells me. It was in a link put up by someone and I didn't read it all, or indeed take in the actual word, but basically it's a collective noun for all those books on your bedside table that pile up unread. I did not realise that this was a general thing, enough of a thing indeed to have a word dedicated to it, even if only in Japanese, but I thought it was interesting that it is. 

Now I don't have a bedside table but I do have a chest of drawers beside the bed and there is indeed a pile of unread or half read books on there. And rather than put them away, or give them away or leave them there to moulder I decided to integrate them into my great reading project. Which I have proceeded to do. 

The Great Reading Project is something I have dreamed up to keep my mind a bit active while I take the enforced break from my studies. Although I cannot read for long periods of time and struggle with text which I cannot basically hold up to the end of my nose, I can still read, which I am grateful for. 

So the GRP was in two parts until I saw the Facebook thing about the Japanese word at which point it  became three.  I am sorry in a way that it cannot just be one huge single thing, but I have always had a habit of complicating my life in all sorts of daft ways and directions, and obviously this is no exception. 

So here's the deal. First off, in order to get myself out of my crime fiction rut I am reading one book a month recommended to me by someone else which is way out of my comfort zone. The only restriction I have placed on this is that it should be a work of fiction, and not crime fiction. Secondly, I'm going to work my way through the pile of books by the bedside, and that is now reduced from nine to eight so that was a good start. And thirdly I have treated myself to the 100 Books Bucket List poster from the  Literary Gift Company ( if you like stuff to do with books, check that out but hide your credit card first!)  OK the list is arbitrary, as all these lists are, but it will be good discipline for me, it will take me out of my comfort zone quite often and - such excitement -  when you have finished reading each book there's a little panel to scrape off - like the silver bits on lottery tickets, and the prospect of that just thrills me. Little things pleasing little minds no doubt.

So we'll see how we go. Adventures in reading. What could be better? (apart form two properly functioning eyes?) 

Abandoned!

But only on a temporary basis.

The OH has gone down to Devon, or at least he will be going to Devon tomorrow, having got as far as Glasgow today. The main purpose of his visit is to sort out his mother's flat and put it on the market; rental or sale, whichever bites first, although rental might be preferable. He will also doubtless have lots of admin-y stuff to do; the sort of thing he never has to bother with at home as his wife does it all for him. Since my mother-in-law, who has been in a care home since mid-summer has now decided that she would like to move to a different one, he may well be visiting that and making arrangements for her transfer there in due curse.  Unless she changes her mind and decides to stay put. 

He is due back next Sunday and is hopeful of being able to return before then, but I suspect he is likely to have to stay longer rather than come back sooner. Time will tell, but I think there will be more sorting out at the flat than he thinks. 

This leaves me with three cats and a fire to look after which is quite stressful, but on the upside I get to listen to radio/watch TV in a uninterrupted fashion, can stretch out diagonally on the bed without disturbing anyone, and happiest of all, I can keep the internal doors closed. This is Not Allowed when the OH is in residence as it discommodes the cats who often seem to be on an endless perambulation through the house. I am quite happy to get up and open a door for a cat, seen through the glass panel, when its there. I'd much rather do that then sit in a through draft (draught?) on a constant basis.

I shall make the most of a few days of my own company and then be happy to see him back whenever it is. Well except for the first hour which is always that difficult transition from total independence of thought and action to having to adjust to having someone else taking up space again. Someone else moreover who is listening to all the lies the cats give them about not being fed for days and  how the fire kept going out and they were frozen. Listening and giving them credence!

But it's late on in the year, the days are getting shorter, the weather is getting worse, it's a long drive, and really, I shall worry deep down until he's safely back. Hopefully with mission accomplished, so that he doesn't have to repeat the process in February. 

On Hold

I have made passing references here in the past to the state of my eyesight, and no doubt there have been a fair few uncaught typos which might have alerted the reader to the fact that All Was Not Well in that department. I need a new lens in my left eye and I need an adjustment making to do with the new lens that went into my right eye a couple of years ago, and really reading and writing, as well as a lot of other things just to do with everyday life, have become increasingly difficult. 

The thing most affected by this was my Ph D. I had hoped to battle on and get it finished in February which was my submission date but it has become clear that that  is no longer possible. My sight plateaus for a while then has  a sudden lurch downwards, and the most recent lurch has left me confronting the fact that it is no longer sensible to try to carry on. It is frustrating, and I could go on for paragraphs about it, but I'm not going to. 

I have applied for a twelve month suspension of my study period and although I thought I'd be heart broken actually I'm just relieved, which I think is a measure of how much this really is the right decision. 

It also gives me a year to try out what life is like without the Ph D to think about. I've always rather dreaded the 'after the Ph D' period because I wasn't sure how I would cope without that framework and without the satisfaction of study, but now I get a year's rehearsal. 

I have a few plans for things that will keep me busy that don't rely on good vision - and thank goodness for kindle, where you can make the font bigger,  and audible,  and large stocks of wool for knitting. I am very frustrated that I am still months away from a consultation with the surgeon despite being referred to him in August, but as there is nothing I can do I shall just wait, pass the time as constructively as I can, and practice patience.