Nixon in China

Once upon a time I went to an opera I didn't know. At the end of Act 1 I was very tempted to leave without staying for the rest.  But being a parsimonious and hard-up student, I thought since I'd paid for my ticket I would stay for the whole thing. When the curtain fell at the end of Act 3 I wanted nothing so much as to sit and watch the whole thing all over again straight away. That opera was Jenufa,  it's  one of my favourites, and that's a timely lesson in sticking with stuff, because you never know how things will turn out. 

I had cause to reflect upon this at the recent performance of Nixon in China, because there was nothing I felt like after Act 1 so much as just going home but,  remembering the Jenufa experience, I didn't even suggest it to the OH. In any case the tickets cost exponentially more than the Jenufa ones did back in 1975! Part way through Act 2 I thought perhaps I was having a rerun of the Jenufa thing, but Act 3 confirmed me in my opinion that alas! Nixon in China is not for me. 

It's not difficult to pin down why, although let me say immediately it has nothing to do with the Scottish Opera production. Staging, singing, acting, choreography, orchestra were all good to very good, but it just seemed in the end to add up to less than the sum of its parts. 

I think at the end of the day that it's really just not a particularly good subject for an opera. Act 1 is largely political fractiousness,  Act 2 is fun and Act 3 is reminiscence but there's no heft to any of it: possibly because at the end of the day the only important thing about Nixon going to China was that he went, even though nothing very concrete was achieved. And given that he arrives in the first ten minutes of the opera, that's another three plus hours of nothing very much to sit through. Possibly there is operatic potential in this meeting of two world views as represented by two world weary men brought face to face, but if there is, this opera didn't find it. 

Anyone would think there had been a special day recently ...

We don't 'do' Valentine's Day. Except the OH has shown signs of 'doing it' in recent years. This year he surpassed himself.

The flowers are still going strong which is amazing. Here's a close up of the pendant, which was a Valentine special from our local jewellers Fluke, but which may be going into their year round range as it was so popular

There are hearts on there which the OH is going to gold plate for me, as he has the technology to do that, and they will then show up better.

And the now traditional Valentine Lego Brickhead which is a very cute bear this year. 

Maybe next year I could get him something! 

We've Been Away

One of our Glasgow/Leeds trips, and although w have generally stopped fretting about making travel arrangements in Jan/Feb this might have been the time that makes us cautious again.

It amazes me how well my trips to Leeds and Scottish Opera performances tend to gel and this one was no exception. We left Orkney on Wednesday, had a gentle free day in Glasgow on Thursday with a performance of Nixon in China in the evening. On Friday we enjoyed a fairly trouble free drive down to Leeds, including our now regular stop at the Tebay Services. I managed to buy nothing in any of their shops which was a wonder. And a record, come to think. Saturday I spent with my Dorothy Dunnett reading friends, discussing The Spring of the Ram, the second novel in her Niccolo series, and trying to make sense of the tarot connections someone had reported there being, without getting very far. Since none of us actually knows very much about the tarot, this was not surprising, although I did learn that tarot cads were used to play card games in the way our more usual deck of cards is today. The OH went off to have lunch with a former working colleague who lives in the area. So we both had a lovely day.

While we were away there were raging winds over most of Scotland, while large parts of England and Wales seemed to be fast disappearing under water. The OH kept a constant eye on what the local ferry companies were doing practically from the moment we left Orkney in the first place, and sadly what they were mostly doing was cancelling ferry crossings due to high winds. Not surprising, gusts of up to 137 mph were recorded on Orkney while we were away.  I refused to stress about this until Sunday, our actual day of return; an attitude which was rewarded by having the wind drop and all the ferries run as normal. 

We set off earlier than usual for our drive from Glasgow to the North Coast since snow was forecast for most of the way. We did in fact see one band of snow, in the Cairngorms and this was the sight that met our eyes when we stopped at Ralia for an early lunch.

As can be seen - quite deep, and slippy when we got out of the car. But we made it to the café and back with no disasters and by the time we got to Inverness (Ralia is about  45 minutes south) there was no more snow to be seen, except on distant mountain tops. 

On A Positive Note

After the last post which possibly made it sound as though I never met a crime novel that I liked I thought I would write about a series that I am enjoying very much - the Sam Wyndham books by Amir Mukherjee. 

I first found the series when one of them was shortlisted for Historia magazine's Historical Novel of the Year in 2019. I was going to try and read the whole short list but that never happened, however I did blog about the ones I managed to get hold of and read here. The nominated Wyndham book was the third, rather than the first in the series, but rather than jump in part way through I got a Kindle or Audible version of the first book and played catch up. 

The novels are set in India, post WW1 and Mukherjee's main protagonist is Captain Sam Wyndham. Having fought through the war Wyndham at first returned to his pre war life as a detective at Scotland Yard, but is sent out to India to join the Indian Police Service after losing his wife in the Spanish Flu pandemic. He suffers from shell shock and has also, as a result of the painkillers used in his treatment for wounds received in battle, developed an addiction to Opium. (I was just getting rather sick of this affliction when Mukherjee sensibly sent Wyndham off to the hills to look for a cure in the latest book, which seems to have been successful. Hurrah!). 

There is a very fine line to be walked in these books. Many of the attitudes of the Indian Raj are rightly regarded with horror today and yet to be true to the times they have to be part of the novels, otherwise Mukherjee might just as well write fantasy. And Wyndham, as an Englishman, and a detective has to be part of the Raj establishment and reflect, and in some measure hold, those attitudes, while as the central character, retain the modern reader's sympathy. It's a tough balance but Mukherjee manages it well, with Wyndham only occasionally starting to doubt whether  beliefs he has never previously questioned are actually true. His doubts are underlined by two recurring characters; Annie, a half English half Indian woman with whom he enjoys an on/off romantic relationship and who, since she belongs neither wholly to the Raj nor wholly to the Indians is roundly despised by both sides; and his Indian subordinate 'Surrender Not' Bannerjee whose family, as the series moves on, is becoming more and more involved in India's struggle for Independence. 

Such tricky historical resonances  mean that it takes a brave writer to tackle what is a rich background against which to set murder mysteries and I venture to think that a white writer possibly couldn't get away with it. Mukherjee is a Scot of Asian heritage and to date he has walked the line with great skill. 

If you fancy giving them a go, Number One is A Rising Man and there are, so far, four altogether with the promise of more to come. If historical murder stories are your thing, and I realise they aren't everyone's cup of tea, then you might well enjoy these. 

Saturday Slaughters ...

... is the name of the crime reading book group at the library which alert readers may recall I sort of joined when my doctorate was finished and I was looking to get my life back and do the stuff that normal people do. I was in  two minds about going, but I thought it might be fun and extend my knowledge of crime fiction so  along I went. I have to say it has not been a great success and I'm not sure that I will keep going. 

To start with the first person I met on the first occasion I went was someone who is notorious as one of the rudest people in Orkney. She doesn't come often, which cuts down her opportunities to tell me that I am fat. She did this once years ago when I tried out a group that did circle dancing. I never went back. It's not that it wasn't true. But who says that straight to someone's face when they have never seen them before in their lives? And lest you get the wrong impression and start to think Orcadian are rude, this person is an in-comer. In fact it was so long since she had inveigled herself onto the pages of the local rag that I had thought that she had left. Obviously I was wrong. 

Then again the discussion tends to go off track. I appreciate this is probably something all book groups suffer from. A random group of people vaguely interested in a wide raging genre of fiction (or even non-fiction I suppose) won't necessarily have much in common, even as regards how they read and react to books. But I don't go to talk about TV adaptations, many of which are awful (imo), or real life cases or indeed, remembering with a shudder the last time I attended, the new street lights in Kirkwall. The new street lights in Kirkwall came in for a lot of attention the last time I was present, more indeed than the book (supposedly) under  discussion.

No the real off-putter is, sadly enough, the books themselves. There was a Rebus (not generally a fan) and a Val MacDermid (not generally a fan). There was quite a good one set in Australia that I enjoyed, and an absolutely dire one set in Russia that I didn't. There was a Martin Beck that I didn't finish because I really didn't care who had committed either of the crimes under investigation, and a book by a local author which I didn't even try to read because I wasn't going to be at the meeting. 

I thought I wasn't going to be at this month's either as we are off south shortly, but it is this Saturday, not next which means I can go and so I dutifully tried this months book. . It was Past Tense by Lee Child and had 'A Jack Reacher Novel' emblazoned all over the front cover. Now I have heard of Lee Child and I have even heard of Jack Reacher, and my sister is a big fan but I have never previously read one because I am not a fan of the thriller. My preference is for police procedurals, and British ones at that. Narrow I know, which is partly why I went off to the group in the first place of course. Anyway, the JR books are very successful and can sales of 100 million be achieved by books that are no good? 

Well I tried. I tried very hard. Then I gave up at about chapter 5. Because really there was one very uninteresting storyline, and one very stupid storyline and a lot of not very nice people and I thought Life is Too Short and sent the book back. Out of curiosity I went and looked at the Amazon reviews for this book and they are a long long tale of disappointment and annoyance. I gather that even by hard core Reacher fans this book was not well received. So I felt vindicated, and even more so when the librarian who leads the group but who will be away this month sent round his feelings about it and they were much the same as mine. I'm a bit sad about it really, because if it had been a better example of Child's writing, I might have discovered a new author that I enjoyed. But rather like being called fat when you take up dancing to try and lose some weight, trying a bad example of a generally good thing first, is off putting. 

EuroDisney

Well we went and it was fun. I particularly enjoyed the man in the Lego shop who assumed from our greeting that we were French and was happily embarked on a conversation with us in French until we got to a bit where he was too fast and we had to switch to English. 

I particularly did not enjoy a ride which I assumed was some sort of tyre ride/log flume thing. It turned out to be a particularly vicious rollercoaster. It was dark, wet, constantly rotating as well as switching direction, had at least two corkscrews in it, and was absolutely terrifying, even with my eyes shut. I held on and prayed for it to be over. I was still shaking over an hour later. There are videos on YouTube if you are brave enough to check them out. It was called Crush's Coaster and the horrors start at about 1.45 in. They do not quite convey the utter awfulness and scariness of the ride. Be advised that the maniacal laughter you can hear  is not coming from a happy punter but is on the soundtrack of the ride itself. Even the OH , a rollercoaster fan, did not enjoy this. 

But apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how was your evening? Well I have to say that I wouldn't rush back to EuroDisney. It was decades since we had last been and it has obviously got larger, more popular and a lot more commercialised since we were last there. It also doesn't wok particularly well in winter, despite all the Christmas theming. This is partly because somehow the Christmas theming looks quite tacky in France in a way it probably doesn't in the US and partly because a lot of the things we enjoy about Disney are the things you do outside and it was just too bloomin' cold to do them. Quite a lot of the food outlets were also shut, although I noticed that all the shops were still open. I also found myself very distressed by the constant playing of Christmas music and carols giving out a message of peace and goodwill to all men in a theatre of rampant, and I mean rampant, consumerism. 

That said, we went for the rides. For us Disney is just a giant funfair and we did all our old favourites, some of them several times. We also walked miles, which is a plus, and saw one of the parades, which was Christmas themed and fine, if you get  excited by that sort of thing which really, we don't. 

And yes there are photos. 

Our hotel, inside and out 

The Christmas Tree on Main Street

 and a view of Main Street itself

Alice's teacups - one of my favourites. A waltzer by any other name really.The OH manfully came on it with me, despite his well known dislike of waltzers. 

A couple of pictures of the Christmas parade

Italian food, Disney Style. Not sure if you can see it but it came with a packet of pre-grated parmesan. (!!!)

Took his one while the OH was riding Space Mountain. I thought it was a fun shape, but we didn't ride it. 

The carousel - which is my favourite, now that they have ruined the Peter Pan ride by speeding it up so much you might just as well not bother. It need a new soundtrack too, the old one is almost worn out. The carousel however did not disappoint. 

This is Canada from the infamous Small World ride. I was appalled. It seems that if you say Canada to a Disney exec.,  ice hockey, moose, mounties and a random totem pole is all he's got. 

Holiday souvenirs - Christmas themed Lego Brickheadz 

Summing up - glad we went, wouldn't go again! 

More honoured in the breach than the observance ...

I do occasionally look back over the blog to remind myself about things we have done over the years since it was started. What was that Oscar Wilde said about always having something sensational to read on the train? Not sensational in my case, but sometimes I get a laugh, or am reminded of something lovely that I'd forgotten about. Occasionally too I get reminded of painful things that I would rather forget, but hey-ho! all part of life's rich tapestry and all that. 

Last January I said that I was going to post pictures of my completed knitting projects as soon as they were done, and that was a very good dea and I'm only sad that I never really did it. Here however are all the projects since the last proper knitting post i.e. not counting the one about the WYS robin socks that  I did post almost as soon as they were finished. 

I did a lot of using up of leftovers in November and December. This was in part because I had a boxful, which was marked 'charity knitting' and I looked at it one day and thought, well its not going to knit itself up whether its for charity or not, if you don't do it, that wool is going to sit there festering. So I looked into the box rather than looking at it, took out a handful of wool and got started

I did some doll outfits

then I went a bit off piste and did these for the OH, the sock wool I got for him in The Yarn Cake back in the spring

a friend was expecting a baby so I bought some wool in Linlithgow that day and made this. Rather bright, but it was to go with a Herdy all in one thing  see here and the orange matched exactly. 

It was a nice pattern and the recipient loved it so that was good. In line with anew resolution to use up left over wool almost immediately if possible the remnants from this became another doll outfit. 

Another friend unexpectedly became a grandmother - well not unexpectedly for her, but she had kept it rather quiet until it happened, so once I knew I went stash diving, pulled out some Drops baby wool and made this. This is the third time I've made this jacket, I love the pattern (side to side so very little sewing up to do at the end!!) and people like the result, so a win-win. 

Then it was back to the charity box for lots of prem baby hats and a couple of small gowns

and finally, for the Ravelry Archers Group Kal, which was for knitting up some deep stash I did these. Not as old as all that but it is a pair of socks from The Knitting Goddess Sock club back in 2015. Or possibly 2014, I forget. Ages ago anyway, After I had committed to these I discovered one of the reasons that I had put off doing them previously was obviously because they had what is known in the trade as an an 'afterthought heel'. If I were still dong project 60 I would have fallen on this as a 'new thing'. As it was, it was still a new thing and not one I am in a hurry to repeat, But the socks themselves are rather splendid. 

And tomorrow or very soon anyway I must get around to blogging about EuroDisney!