Autre Pays, Autre Moeurs

While I was away the OH had a visit from the local police. This was not because, in my absence, he had unsuccessfully taken to a life of crime, but because they had been told he might be a witness to a motoring incident. He had to be reminded of what the incident was before he remembered that, yes, he had been there,  and seen it, and then he gave his account to the cops, and they left. 

So this is what had happened. There were some traffic cones along a stretch of road on the way into town and the driver in front was giving them such a wide berth that he was driving on the wrong side of the road. The line of cones ended but the car in front continued along on the wrong side of the road despite the imminence of a blind bend. A car came round the blind bend, and seeing the one on the wrong side of the road took evasive action, by swerving over to the left hand side and presumably at the same time seeing large portions of his life flash before his eyes. The wrong side driver (the car  was a white merc apparently although that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the way he was driving ) continued on his merry way, possibly oblivious, the OH carried on into town and the driver who had swerved obviously took himself off to the cop shop to report the merc driver to the police, having managed to get A's number, but not that of the offending vehicle sadly. 

Now here's the thing. I told this story the next day to my taxi driver who couldn't; quite get his head round one particular aspect of it. 

'Nobody was hurt, right?'

'No, nobody was hurt.'

'And neither of the vehicles was damaged, right?'

'Seems not'. 

'So nobody was hurt and the cars weren't damaged?'

'That's right'

'Then how come the police were even investigating it? Cos they must have better things to do with their time, yeah?' 

'Well actually, probably not ....'

Orkney. A different country. 

Baking Subscription April

So, this was an apricot and sultana tea loaf.

This was the month I discovered the danger of having everything pre-weighed and packaged up, because I got distracted talking to the OH part way through making the cake and ended up blithely tipping  bag  5 into the mixture instead of bag 4. 

Bag 4 was flour. Bag 5 was icing sugar to make icing for the top.

Oops! 

I realised what I had done not  quite soon enough to rectify the error, which is to say I had mixed in the icing sugar, looked at the mixture and thought that's far too wet for a loaf cake ... 

However it didn't seem to have any particularly deleterious effect. The top sagged slightly, but that might have happened anyway;  other than that it all looked and tasted normal. and delicious. I didn't bother icing it, because I make a lot of cakes like this and I never ice them as I don't think they need it. 

Must get someone round for coffee to help eat it. 

100 Books to Read Poster - Number 1

Here is the picture revealed when I finished the book and scraped off the silver covering

Sadly it's not very clear, due to the way the light falls and the reflection of the flash. I can see this being an ongoing problem, but anyway the picture is of a raven and the book, as previously mentioned, was American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

I'd never read anything by Neil Gaiman before and I have to say that based on the experience of reading this I'm not in a rush to read anything more. 

I gather this was a huge seller and very well received when first published; so well received that there was a 10th Anniversary edition brought out, into which Gaiman inserted quite  a lot of material that his editors had persuaded him to cut first time around. I suspect that his editors had the right of it.  The version I listened to was this anniversary edition, complete and unabridged, with multiple voices and a very self regarding preface written and read by the author in which he told me rather more about the process of writing and revising the book than I wanted to know, and much of which would have been better placed at the end rather than the beginning. 

The multiple voices were a good idea; the selection less so, in that Gaiman read a lot of it himself, the  main character, Shadow was voiced by someone else, and both he and NG have extremely soporific voices. Several times wile listening to them I fell asleep. 

The basic idea of the book is a good one; a war between the Old Gods in America who were brought by all the people who have ended up living there over time, and the new ones who are a product of contemporary American society. The problem isn't with the premise, but with the  execution. To begin with there is far far too much superfluous detail in the book, and a neat twist towards the end is somewhat spoiled by a weak and indeterminate epilogue.

Since the action is seen via Shadow, and he is inextricably linked with Mr Wednesday (the Norse God, Wotan) then the reader is more intimately acquainted with the old gods or at least those who Gaiman puts in the book. treatment of the new gods is perfunctory. There don't seem to be very many of them, there's technology in various forms, and conformity, but if there was any sign of money or sex  or even religion I didn't spot them. So however much the  reader is told that the old gods are doomed by the new ones, it's very difficult to understand why. (Obviously this is partly to do with the fact that on one side you have all the possible gods from hundreds of thousands of years of human history, and on the other basically one or two dreamed up personifications of things that are  important to the people in one country in the late C20, which makes for something of an imbalance. And the basic conflict is not made exciting for the reader because the side for which the book designs them to have sympathy never really seems to be in jeopardy at all, despite two prominent members of it being killed off during the action. 

So to sum up, too long, too detailed, too much showing off by the author and really too big an idea to be successfully confined to a novel. Or to this one anyway. I'm glad I persevered with it to the end, because after all that's the whole point of 'reading the poster', but overall it was a huge disappointment. 

I'm not going to give star ratings to these  books, since reading is such an individual thing, but they will all get a personal Hit or  Miss.

Verdict for American Gods - A Miss.

Help! I've been subsumed by an alien

I don't know what it is but I don't recognise myself at the moment. I came back from my trip to Yorkshire fairly knackered and convinced that I would need a week at home seeing no-one and saying as little as possible to recover, and that at the end of two weeks I might feel just about up to contacting a few friends and arranging to have coffee with them, one at a time. 

In the event I bounced back far more quickly than  normal. I always know when I have turned the corner and am starting to regain some sort of coping balance when the list of things for the day changes from 'things I have managed to do' to 'things I am going to do'. There has to be a list every day, it's my Linus blanket, but the first one reassures me that I am achieving things while the second one goads me on with tasks to be undertaken. I might say that I very very rarely get to the end of a Type 2 list, but the good thing about living in Orkney is that anything not achieved one day can just be the starting point for the next one. 

Anyway, as a result of all this feeling like I can take on the world (well a small corner of it) we have been out three days in a row. This is almost unheard of in normal times let alone when I've just come back from time away. 

Thursday evening we went to a lecture in the Town Hall  about medieval trade between Northern Germany, Shetland, The Faroes and Iceland. Seems the Hanse didn't bother much with Orkney for reasons so far unexplained. The room was warm and the lecturer was not the most lively of presenters, but I heard most of it. Of course I was on a hiding to nothing as far as seeing her slides was concerned, but it seems to me that there are very few talks/lectures that actually need slides and this one didn't. There were a few shots of an official website which the OH said was appallingly badly designed, which I'm quite prepared to believe, but luckily I didn't have to look at it.

Friday was a lighter event altogether, as we went to an exhibition opening at the local Gallery in St Margaret's Hope. We try to get to all the exhibitions that they have, can't always quite make it. They're usually good, there's the occasional one that we don't like, but no-one can like everything and anyway, that wasn't the case this time. In fact I would quite happily have brought home several of the canvases, were it not for the attached prices. They were acrylics, semi abstract, the colours were beautiful and generally they were a joy to look at. And then we had a bit of a chat with a few people we know, half a glass of white wine and a few crisps then home again. 

Today we went out for lunch which is a it of an event. We had quite a few things to do in town, including picking up the wallpaper for the latest room rejig, so I suggested that we have lunch out for a change.  I almost changed my mind when  we got to our chosen venue, as it was busy and noisy, but the OH insisted gently that we stay and I'm glad we did as I enjoyed the food and not long after we had sat down most of the people who had been making all the noise melted away,which made for a quieter calmer atmosphere. And we got everything done that we wanted to, despite being rather late getting started, so that was a big tick for today.

Tomorrow were dong a bit of furniture clearing and shifting, which doesn't sound like much fun but falls into the category of 'must be done' and as a reward for that we're planning  to go out again to Geri's ice cream parlour. For some reason I didn't blog about our trip a couple of weeks ago when she opened, but anyway planning to go back tomorrow. I also couldn't quite believe it when I heard the following sentence fall from my mouth 'If its a nice day, after we've been to Geri's we could go for a bit of a walk'

All this activity and sociability and volunteering for exercise is so uncharacteristic for me, and should proof still be wanting that I have been taken over by some sort of alien version of myself I have recently picked up three part completed knitting projects and stayed with them, monogamously, until they were complete. I don't know that that isn't the most worrying part of all. 

New Things 2018 Number 2 - Worshipping in York MInster

On my recent trip south I spent Sunday in York. I'd planned to go to York's Chocolate Story in the morning but when I got there I wasn't feeling 100% and thought that a tour which included the smell and taste of cooking cocoa and sugar wasn't the best thing for me. As I walked past the Minster I noticed that it was only 20 minutes to Matins and it occurred to me that all the years we lived in Yorkshire, and all the times we had visited the Minster, I had never once attended a service there. It was Choral Matins with a visiting choir so I thought I would go and I did. 

I quite enjoyed it. A lot of the music was what I call 'spiky', although there was a very beautiful anthem by Charles Stanford, and I had also forgotten how many things you are expected to stand up for in a Church of England service. Far too much frantic bobbing up and down. But it was an experience. 

I was slightly self indulgent during the rest of my time in York. I stocked up on John Bull liquorice fudge, as York ad Whitby are the only two places you can buy it, I treated myself to lunch at Betty's, although even this early in the tourist season it was crammed, I bought a new bag in the Cath Kidston shop (in the sale) because I had travelled with a small bag and then bought stuff (sigh), and I finished off with a very enjoyable meet up with a friend over tea and cake. Well, not very nice tiffin as it turned out, but the cake didn't really matter, as the meeting was the thing. 

The daffodils were out on the city walls 

although I almost had a heart attack when I turned round from taking the picture and found myself face to face with this - 

I had forgotten that geese have taken to colonising the centre of York! but he/she was friendly without being pushy so no harm done. 

Train Travelling Tip

Just a thought.

Should you ever get on a train where you have a booked seat, and encounter someone who is sitting in what you think is your booked seat, it's a good idea to say 'Excuse me...' or 'I think you might be...' or even 'is it me, because I thought...'

'Cos here's a thing. If you stand in the aisle and say straight out and loudly to that person 'you're sitting in my seat', you will put their back up.  And although they move over from what is demonstrably their seat, in which they have been sitting for several hours already, into what should be your seat, believe me, this does not guarantee you a comfortable onward journey. 

I am not generally a fan of passive aggressive behaviour, but when someone annoys me that much, believe me, I can play passive aggressive with the best of them. 

Also, on a train reservation coupon, A being for aisle seat, is not some obvious but incorrect inference that I have understandably drawn. It really is A for aisle. 

And I'm back!

I'm also knackered, determined never ever to use the Aberdeen ferry route again (just too long) and supposedly not doing anything useful, or even vaguely energetic, for the rest of the week. Or at least today. Or definitely until after lunch. You can see how that's panning out - not. 

More tomorrow. After I've dealt with all the admin that has piled up in my absence. And when I say piled ....

And I'm off....

for a flying visit to Yorkshire. I rather regret committing to it actually but it's been in the diary for months and I'm booked on tonight's overnight ferry to Aberdeen and thence to Yorkshire.

Initially it was going to be a longer trip with time after Yorkshire in Glasgow, joined by the OH and doing several interesting and exciting things  in the Central Belt. 

Circumstances to do with a sick neighbour and a sick cat mean that the OH will not be gong anywhere and I am on my own and coming back directly from Leeds in about a week's time. 

I know I will enjoy it once I'm actually doing it, since everything I have arranged to do is fun and enjoyable and I really need to get more of a grip and get used to doing stuff on my own again - I mean, how hard can it be?, I used to do lots of things on my own, as this blog attests, but oh, it's hard to contemplate just at the moment. 

However I will be back here next Tuesday night and hopefully back in blogging mode a couple of days after that. 

Out and About (1)

Obviously my comment that if we were here on holiday we would getting out of the house and doing things rather than mouldering away inside struck some sort of a chord with the  OH because a few days after our trip to Leila's tapestry studio he suggested we go along to her sister's new coffee place. Leila's sister is Sheila Fleet the jeweller and for the past couple of years she has been transforming the old church building next to her workshop and gallery into a new gallery and coffee shop. It opened last week and so off we went to try it.

I suspect the OH's main reason for going was that the new building incorporates some of the Caithness flags that came off our roof when we had the house re-roofed. The flags lay in TWWCTG for about 18 months on the advice of our builder who told us that one day someone would want to buy them and he wasn't wrong, as one day SF's son rocked up, asked if he could have a look with a view to buy and I was very happy to say yes. (Builder seemed to think later that the lad had got a bargain, but he was the first  person to come along and want them and I really didn't want them hanging about any longer than needful)

The conversion work has been done very sympathetically and the building, as you would expect really from a family of artists, is beautiful.

and the inside is lovely too

After that it got a bit 'meh'. The service was slow, the cake selection was narrow, the OH's cake, due to their habit of writing on both sides of the cake labels (a strange economy when obviously they have spent shedloads of money on everything else), when it came  was on its side and broken into three pieces - and wasn't very nice into the bargain, and everything was, in Orkney terms at least, expensive. Also, although my scone was lovely, and it's not often you get me saying that about a scone I haven't baked myself, I was a bit non-plussed when paying the bill to be asked if I was the person who had had 'the odd scone'. Now admittedly it was apple and cinnamon and you don't come across those every day, but I hadn't selected it from a dozen others.  It was the only scone that they were offering. So I don't really see how they come to be calling my taste into question when they are the ones with this 'odd scone' and only this one, on offer. 

It ill behoves me to criticise the wider menu because I am always moaning about seeing the same stuff on menus for lunch wherever you go on Orkney and they have tried very hard to offer something different. And that's a good thing. Some of the items on it struck me as a bit distasteful - e.g. 

Pulled goose roll - featuring locally shot goose 

Not sure that the reference to the massacre of the goose is quite the come-on which the appending of the term 'local' seems to be trying to establish, since local is such  a foodie buzz word these days, especially when  followed by the warning that some pieces of shot might still be embedded. 

I do wish them well, but overall it was an underwhelming experience. 

The Poster Problem

Ages ago I mentioned that I had bought a poster from the Literary Gift Company as part of the Great Reading Project which listed a hundred recommended books to read, with each book having a little silver square to rub off once you had read it. Like this.

And as I'm a soul with an orderly mind this put me in something of a quandary. How to read them? Obviously being neither Arabic nor Chinese I would start in the top left had corner. But what to do after that? Vertical lines? Horizontal lines. If vertical, I could go top to bottom on the first lie but then should I go bottom to top on the next one? Similarly with horizontal ones; left to right to start with, but then should I go back to the left and go right again, or should I treat it like a knitting chart and read alternate lines in opposite directions? Then there was the slightly weird thought that I could start off with a diagonal line, but my brain couldn't cope with trying to work out what I would do after that. 

Taking another tack I thought that I could start by reading all the books which I actually own, but the idea of the higgledy piggledy mess that would be left on the poster as a result of that care-for-nothing approach couldn't be coped with either. 

Eventually I realised that thinking about how to read the books wasn't actually getting me much further forward in getting them read, and as the first one was always going to be the top left, irrespective of where I went with it afterwards, it was probably a good idea just to get going with that.

(It was Neil Gaiman's American Gods. After several unsuccessful attempts to find the copy  on the library shelves which the library catalogue assured me categorically was there, but which lived experience taught me was not, I used up an Audible credit on it. As will be evident in a later post this may have been a mistake on my part, but you live and learn. And sleep, as it turns out.)

So the first book is read, or at least listened to,  the little silver box has ben rubbed off to reveal the  picture underneath and I have started on Book 2. I decided in the end to read one book from each line which won't be totally tidy but allows me a little leeway to go back to an old favourite or tackle something new or hitherto stubbornly resisted, as the mood takes me.

And although I have read quite a lot of them already, there is to be no cheating They are all to be read again now, if I want to rub off that little silver square.  

Third Time's a Charm

I've been trying to get my hair done 'properly', by which I mean, cut, coloured, washed and dried for literally months now. 

Back in December I had an appointment just after one of our trips to Glasgow, but there was snow and although we managed to crawl into town we weren't too convinced we would be able to crawl back again safely, so instead of the full works I just had a very quick dry cut. 

Back at the beginning of March I again had an appointment but when the day came the barriers were closed because of high winds and high tides and so I couldn't go. 

It was therefore with some trepidation that I made another appointment, for yesterday, but in fact I got there and back and feel quite glam from the neck up. From the neck down is as always a whole other story, but for now I'l take the nice hair. We went out on a wallpaper hunt today and the woman in the Orkney Soap shop (where we went after the unsuccessful attempt to choose wallpaper for what is going to become my craft room - gosh, get me! - ) was very complimentary. As indeed was the friend who came for coffee this morning. 

I'm glad I got it fitted in as I am off on a flying visit to Yorkshire in the middle of next week  It'll be crazy busy but at least my hair will look good! 

That was Easter

It was an odd Easter because it was just the two of us. Normally Son No 2 comes home for it but he couldn't this year due to 'theatrical commitments', to wit rehearsals for Scottish Opera's upcoming community Pagliacci and appearances as a comic extra  at the beginning of their current production of Ariadne auf Naxos. This was the thing we had recently  to buy the black suit for because, despite our belief that we had bought him a black suit for the brother-in-law's funeral three years back, it turned out t be indigo, and we had to get some new shirts as well because his collar size has increased since then as well - who knew? certainly not him!) . It was also the third of the three things we went to Glasgow for the other week,  and we didn't get to see it. We were all set to go to his first night and then there was a huge fire in Glasgow city centre and although the flames  didn't (thank goodness) reach the Theatre Royal the smoke certainly did, necessitating the cancelling of that evening's performance.* Sadly we weren't able to stay down any longer to make an alternative one, so he did his stint and took his curtain call without us being there to see it, which was really sad. The Glasgow performances are now over but there are two in Edinburgh coming up, and after they're over and done with he'll be coming home for about a week, before going back to Glasgow to pick up the Pagliacci rehearsals. Its all go, and although he was disappointed not to make it up at Easter, the fact that he couldn't come does indicate that he is carving out some sort of life for himself in Glasgow, in which he has responsibilities and calls on his time, and I think that's a good thing. 

* And no, you didn't blink and miss this on the BBC news. They didn't cover it on the national bulletins and it got only a passing mention on BBC Scotland. I can't help feeling that had a fire taken from 8.15 a.m  until late at  night to put out in any city south of the border it would have got  reported on the national news, and I assume that the short coverage on BBC Scotland was due to the fact that even they couldn't insinuate that a fire in Glasgow was all down to the SNP government. But I digress. 

The OH shocked me to the core by suggesting that we went out for lunch on Easter Day, and we went to the local hotel/restaurant where I had lamb and he had turkey and it was OK. They cook the stuff nicely down there but its nothing you couldn't do yourself, and the Hot Cross Bread and Butter pudding wasn't as nice as I thought it would be. however it made a change and we didn't even have to put the plates in the dishwasher. 

I made the mistake today of suggesting that we go out. It was an OK day weather wise, well it was bloomin' cold, but it was bright and sunny and as I pointed out if we were here on holiday we would be finding something to do rather than staying inside. I wasn't  getting any 'I'm really keen to do this and have several suggestions about where to go' vibes, and it was in any case silly to think about going for a walk since everywhere underfoot would be plashy in the extreme, so I said,  Why don't we drive down to the Hoxa tapestry gallery and I can buy some cards. So we did. It's a nice scenic  drive, and it only takes twenty minutes or so. What I didn't know, when I made the suggestion, was that they are now selling hand dyed yarn at the Gallery, so that was another yarn diet fail. Sigh. That said, we bought two skeins and one of them has already been wound and cast on, so it sort of doesn't count as stash enhancement. So I'm told. If you follow the link there are some photos of the yarn in te section entitled Jo's Blog, and you may, or may not, understand why some of that wool had to be liberated in my direction. 

Tomorrow life gets back to almost normal, which means basically bills to pay and an appointment with the ironing board. Ah well, it can't be a holiday every day.