A Brief Hiatus

Tomorrow we are getting up at what will feel like the crack of dawn to catch the ferry over to Scotland, followed by the long drive south to Leeds. After my last venture it became clear that I can no longer undertake travel on my own so the OH is having to come too. On Saturday I will spend time with my Dorothy Dunnett reading friends, and the OH is having lunch with a work colleague. In the evening we'll drive back as far as Glasgow, sped the night with son no 2 and then Sunday will be the drive north back to Gill's Bay and the ferry back to Orkney. 

I know it's madness and I will be shattered when we get back, but I've lost one of these friends already and that's why I make every effort to connect with them when I possibly can. 

On the way back we may visit either the Highland Chocolatier or Karelia House; I suppose it's just a question of which wagon I want to fall off, yarn or chocolate.

Anyway back Sunday, although no promises about blogging on Monday just in case. 

My First Lego Set

The OH bought me a Lego set when he was in town las week. I don't know why, it seems a bit random, but as he said 'It's got a husky in it. You've always wanted a husky'.

Well I can't deny that I have always, or for a long time, wanted a husky, but  know myself well enough to realise that me having a husky would have to take place in an alternate universe; the one where I am outdoorsy, keen on long walks whatever the weather, and find it easy to scoop up dog poop without wanting to vomit. In other words its a bit of a fantasy, but they are beautiful dogs. 

I really haven't ever had a Lego set before. Wen I was young my friend and I used to play with her brother's Lego but that was in the days when it was basically just piles of red and  white bricks and the most sophisticated we got was the occasional clear brick to represent a window. You don't bring up two sons and then have two grandsons and not realise that the world of Lego has moved on big time. 

Anyway , there it was in its box and t wasn't going to make itself so I had a go. The first task  was getting the pieces out of the box. So many! and so small! and my eyes so bad!

But I set to, and two, or possibly three, rectified mistakes later - voila! A motorised ice sledge and driver, photographer, scientist with saw for taking samples out of  the ice and a handy iceberg from where the sample had been taken Not to mention the husky.

Ad there should always be a few bits left over, right? 

I was quite proud of myself although it's a mortifying reflection that grandson number 1 could probably have done it in a tenth of the time. 

Bedside Books - Pile 2 No.1

This was Kristina Ohlsson's The Disappeared. It's one of a series of police procedurals set in Stockholm and written by a political scientist who held various positions in the Swedish Civil Service concerned with foreign affairs. 

I realised very quickly once I had started this that I had in fact read it before but as I couldn't remember much about it I carried on and read it again. 

It was OK. The plot was plausible and held together reasonably well. The police unit is sparsely populated which doesn't ring quite true and the female protagonist seems out of place as she's not a police officer but possibly some sort of profiler. It's not clear. She also has the dullest lover in detective fiction. 

The prose is very flat and the author carries off the incredibly difficult task of making both Stockholm and Uppsala seem dull and lifeless. I would generally put such shortcomings down to the translation, but this was translated by Marlaine Delargy, who I know from translations of other authors, is excellent so the monotone narrative and overall lack of atmosphere must be down to Ohlsson. 

This is now destined for the recycling bin; I never really throw books away but this one is a bit scrumpled (which is how I received it) and that, together with its overall dullness means the bin, rather than the charity shop, is calling. 

Such Excitement - Solo - A Star Wars Story.

I gave up going to see Star Wars  movies a long long time ago, although that was in  this galaxy and not one that was far far away. I enjoyed the first three, which then, confusingly became 4,5 and 6. When the prequels started coming along many years later our children were the right age to want to see them and so we went, although I have to say that the franchise lost me, along with many others, at Jar Jar Binks. An inability to distinguish the female characters and the actresses who played them, and  an entrenched belief that Hayden Christensen could not act his way out of a paper bag should his life depend upon it, sped my determination never to pay good money to see a Star Wars film  ever again.

I've manged to stick to that, helped by the  fact that previous new SW films have been released in December, meaning they hit Orkney around about the time that Son No 2, an avid fan, came home for Christmas. This meant I got an evening to myself at home while Son no 2 and the OH went off to enjoy their annual Star Wars fix. 

Until this year, when Solo hit the screens in the early summer; to whit, it is showing in Kirkwall now and the earliest we can expect to see Son No 2, involved as he is in rehearsals for Scottish Opera's community Pagliacci, is early August. The OH really really wanted to see the film. I suggested he go on is own. (Why not? I'd be quite happy to go and see a film on my own if it was something he didn't want to see. It seems that going to the cinema, like going swimming, is in some people's minds something you don't do on your own'. Extraordinary.

Anyway the inevitable happened and I was guilt tripped into saying I would go. This was a huge concession on my part as I did not anticipate any enjoyment whatsoever from the experience, but I was willing to sacrifice about eight quid and two and a half ours of my time to make him happy. 

I knew it was a mistake.

The film, like so many these days, was too long and too noisy and with far too many places where the sound quality was so abysmal you needed subtitles to know what the actors were saying. In addition to that, it was very violent, the battle scenes were confused, the plot was infantile, and  so predictable, and Emilia Clarke, despite many years of experience in the profession, can still not act. All the old Star Wars cliché's were there; the miraculous escapes, the special effects set pieces that go on for too long, the 'car' cases, the bar/cantina scenes with reptilian/humanoid cross aliens, the alien languages that are nothing more than a series of grunts, the lovable androids, the - well need I go on?

There may have been an interesting bit, I cannot swear there was not because I did actually fall asleep for about 10 minutes I was so bored, and possibly therefore missed the best ten minutes of the film. But somehow I doubt it.

And just to make my  joy complete, the OH didn't enjoy it either. All for noting then! or possibly a lesson learned.

On the Drive

This has been on our drive for several days, presumably dropped by a seagull. We're amazed that neither we, nor  the post van, have driven over it and smashed it to smithereens. The OH kept  saying he must go and move it, but then forgot, so this morning I went out with my camera, snapped it a couple of times and them moved it carefully into the long grass. I don't know why I took such care over something so fragile and already broken, except that eggs are such amazing things and this one really is too pretty to be carless with. 

100 Books to Read Poster No. 5

I don't think it's particularly obvious from  the picture, but number 5 was The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

This was chosen because it was kicking about in the OH's bookshelves and I was too ill at the time to contemplate going to the library to get something else from line five of the poster. The fact that we have it in the house argues for me having read it before, and I probably have,, but long enough since to have forgotten large swathes of it, as well as to realise that some of the things I remember from  the  original radio series didn't make it to the book. 

What struck me very much, as it didn't at the time, was how totally original and inventive DA was. I think back then  I  took it all for granted but there are so many interesting and wildly funny concepts here;  the guide itself, a literary pre-cursor to the Internet, Marvin the paranoid android, lab mice actually being the ones who run the experiments etc etc And so many everyday phrases born from this; brain the size of a planet, so long and thanks for all the fish, 42, and of course Don't Panic.

It is occasionally just a bit too insistently clever and self consciously funny which can be a bit wearing if read in large chunks, but that doesn't detract from the overall experience.

Verdict on The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - A hit. 

Plants and Pots

Yes, we're taking a brief break from the book reviews!

So our local nursery had an event at the weekend. If you went and bought plants and took your own pots they would pot the plants up for you while you waited and you could have free tea and coffee and cake, and there was a donation box for the RNLI. 

We went on Saturday with four pots, had some coffee and lemon cake and bought some plants but not as many as we had intended because they don't  have a card machine and I don't carry my cheque book round with  me any more. The only time it leaves the house is when I go to the hairdressers. 

We got some more cash and went back on Sunday and bought lots more plants, for the 10 other pots we hadn't had the face to take and ask them to do. Because anyway the OH likes doing the pots. We also had some more coffee and lemon cake and the OH had some Viennese whirls which he said were delicious but which I didn't sample because I'm not keen on them. 

So here are a couple of pics of the pots they did for us 

pansies and cosmos

We also bought one of these on our first trip, in case they were all gone when we came back. It's a very very very dark purple, but it certainly looks black from a distance. Black and velvety. Gorgeous. 

This was our haul from yesterday which the  is planting out even as I type. More pansies, some gazania, some dianthus and those daisy looking things whose name I don't know. Its long and starts with Ag.Normally we would get geraniums, but nowhere here seems to have any geranium plants that are anything more than a stub in a pot. 

And finally, remember the alpine strawberry plants we won in that raffle two years ago .... Ta-da! Still going strong, and the flowers are so pretty!

Bedside Books

This was number eight of nine and was Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of the Sun. At bottom it's the story of Alfred the Great set in Kay's own particular take on Dark Age Europe,  and the action takes place mainly in Wessex, with bits in Wales and Denmark too, and with characters from all three places getting tangled up in each other's lives. It's basically the same material that Bernard Cornwall used for his The Lost Kingdom et al, although Kay gets over the ground much more lightly and quickly. (As a quick digression I have never managed to finish a Cornwell novel, although I have tried several, including the free Kindle version of The Lost Kingdom. I have the greatest admiration for his work ethic as a writer, such a refreshing contrast to some other writers I could mention ... , I just find the finished product to be not to my taste.) This wasn't my favourite Kay book, as I didn't engage with many of the characters, very unusual for me with this author, which is not to say that I didn't feel a prickle a the back of my eyes at the death of one of them, and there was a bit too much self conscious portending of doom - something to which he seems to be becoming more prone. That said it was an enjoyable read. 

And as that was number eight of nine I daresay you're probably thinking that I now only have one bedside book left, but if that is what you're  thinking , you're sadly mistaken.  Because somehow, while I was working my way through that pile, a second pile grew up. The other three library pot luck books. A Christmas book from the OH, a Mother's Day book from Son No 1. A book passed on by a friend. So I have tossed the ninth of the original nine into the second pile which now comprises seven books and I shall soon be making a start on them. I just have this awful feeling that by  the time I get to the bottom of that one, there will be another one that has 'growed like Topsy' on the top of the drawers!

Library Pot Luck Part 1

I have several  book reviews to write up, including the latest from the 100 Books to Read Poster and the Bedside Books project but I'm starting off with three of the six books I got in my crime  pot luck library bag.

I naturally started with the one descried by a critic (from The Guardian, no less) as a 'zestful mix of criminous and domestic comedy' because that's the way I roll; and I have to wonder what the critic was on to find this either zestful or comedic. Possibly the fact that the protagonist, a female journalist on a local newspaper, went about doing a lot of stupid things and screaming and shouting at people confused him/her. So that you can avoid it I will tell you that it was called Bad Monday, and was written by someone called Annette Roome. According to the blurb she took up writing as a reaction to a mid-life crisis, and judging by her photograph this possibly had something to do with being a perfect 1950s female in a late 1990s world. That is a harsh criticism of someone I don't know, but I didn't enjoy her book at all so I'm not going to feel guilty. I don't like books with stupid narrators, whether they're male or female, it wasn't funny in the slightest,  the 'characterisation' was laughable, although not, obviously, in a funny way, and the ending was totally non-credible. I shall not be looking out any of her other books. 

Next up was Death Underfoot by Dennis Casley.I couldn't believe this was written as late as 1993 because it was so old-fashioned in its way of story telling, social attitudes etc etc. It was a standard murder mystery with a small group of suspects, an unlikeable victim and painstaking narration of detective work; Agatha Christi in Kenya in fact. I know people complain about Christie's prose, although I have no particular quarrel with it myself. It's not literary, but it does the job of telling a story in a clear way with no pretensions. I think possibly Mr Casley has pretensions somewhat beyond his actual ability, but that said this was a much better book than Bad Monday. The plot hung together, the motive and identity of the eventual killer were a surprise but totally plausible (always a plus) and   the background of post colonial Kenya  was interesting, especially with regard to the internal, and largely tribal,  politics which were quite shocking at times. 

Finally, my favourite of the three was the one I thought I would enjoy the least (ain't that so often the way?) It was The Good Friday Murder by Syrell Leahy. This had lots going against it before I even opened the cover.  It was American. It was about a cold case. It involved autistic twins. It's lead investigator and narrator was a just-left-the-convent former nun. I would normally run away screaming from any one of these. But in fact it was very enjoyable; the plot trotted along, the heroine didn't do stupid things or shout at people all the time, the autistic twin thing, wasn't overdone and it had a satisfactory, if rather sad, ending. Much better than anticipated. 

The other three are sitting somewhere waiting to be read - but more of that anon. 

Meanwhile anyone looking for funny but realistic crime novels could do worse than check out the work of the late Robert Barnard.He spent many years of his life in Leeds and I met him a few times at library talks,  and at Opera North, of which he was a great supporter. It is ironic that I learned of his death last year at the Scottish Literature Congress in Vancouver  It's a long time since I gave away my paperbacks of his books, and I rather regret doing that now as I doubt they have a stock of them in Orkney Library. As a taster, here's a misprint he concocted for  a concert program in his book Death on the High Cs

Slut, demeure, chaste et pure

It's a bit late, but RIP Robert. 

Knitted Up!

Back in April I recorded our trip to the Hoxa Tapestry Gallery and said I'd bought some of Jo Thomson's hand dyed Shetland wool. I didn't ever put up pictures of the two skeins we bought, so here you go - 

This was the OH's choice ....

.... and this was mine

Mine became a wrap with all the colours of an Orkney sunset in it

because of the generally short colour changes I opted for a textured stitch rather than a lacy or cabled one. This pattern was perfect, for any Ravelry readers it's Casapinka's Woven. 

with the OH's skein, which was called something like Rocks and Lichen I made him a hat and fingerless mitts for when he's outside in the autumn nights faffing about with the telescope.

I've never knitted with Shetland wool before and now I know why people describe it as sticky! as it has a tendency to cling to itself, but it resulted in a lovely thick, warm bouncy fabric that is very pleasing to the touch.

This wool wasn't cheap, but I think, given that it is Shetland, and for the yardage and the truly amazing colours, it was definitely worth the price  I paid. If I didn't have a shedload of wool in the house already I'd be up for buying some more.