Books to Read Poster No 36

 

So this was one I'd never even heard of, Siddartha but Herman Hesse/

Hesse was quite a popular author when I was a student, and I had read Narziss and Goldmund and I'd heard of The Glass Bead Game, but that's about as far as it went. I didn't particularly enjoy Narziss and Goldmucnd when I read it, Hesse has a very particular style which is difficult to describe, but it's a strange mixture of transparency and the opaque. I suspect quite a lot of the effect gets lost in translation and certainly Siddartha probably suffers from that as it was described in German as a 'prose-poem, and that's not really how it reads in English. 

It's the story of a man's search for enlightenment and purpose, and takes place in a long ago and slightly mythical India with a background of mashed up Hiduism and Buddhism. The central character (Siddartha)  leaves his Brahmin family to seek the meaning of life and his search takes him to varying places and people;a band of begging ascetics, the entourage of the Buddha, a town where he becomes the lover of a skilled courtesan, makes a fortune as a merchant then beomes addicted to gambling, travels to a river to throw himself into it, changes his mind and finally finds peace living for many years as a ferryman 'listening to the river'.

What can I tell you? It's a slightly extended Bildungsroman and personally I found it neither original nor enlightening. There again, while I respect the serch for enlightenment and the meaning of life in everyone, I'm not the sort of person who can be convinced that either can be found in moments of unity with the great Om. I don't have the mindset that finds that acceptable. 

I'd sum it up as an early 20th century curiosity. Next up is an autobiography which will make a change, but it's rather long so I'm not expecting to be reporting on it any time soon.

And the blog will now go dark for a few days as, weather permitting we re off to Glasgow tomorrow until the weekend. 

Made It!

 

(Image: Scottish Opera) 

Yup, the ferry ran, we drove to Wick without incident, got a quick check in at the hotel and had time to walk through a very cold and slippy evening to the Opera Highlights Performance. I am pleased to say it was very enjoyable with some excellent singing and acting and all in all I'm glad we took the risk. Even though it meant going without any tea. 

This  is the second Highlights performance in a row to feature music from Korngold's Die Tote Stadt and I was reminded when listening toit that last time I thought it was beautiful and I really must get hold of a recording. I remember looking up info about Korngold but didn't get a CD, so I wonder if there isn't one available. I must remember to  have another  look, 

Breakfast at the hotel was lovely, not that I had much as I don't eat a lot in the mornings, but the OH had the full Scottish breakfast and pronounced it excellent. I have now had breakfast, dinner and afternoon tea on three separate occasions at Mackays Hotel in Wick and would recommend it unreservedy to anyone. The staff are friendly and efficient, the apartment we had was warm and comfortable, in fact I had the best night's sleep I've had in literally years and I rather regret that I don't have any need to go and stay there more often. 

And now here we are at home for a couple of days before, we hope, setting off for Glasgow on Wednesday. Fingers crossed for the ferry not being cancelled on Wednesday then. And for the A9 not being under four feet of snow. 

Books to Read Poster No 35

 

Apologies for the horribly blurred image. It is a picture of a marlin, so obviously the book is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

It is thankfully short, although to my mind, not quite short enough.

An old man takes an unconscionably long time to catch a  big fish and by the time he gets back to harbour the sharks have eaten it all. 

As a side note I hadn't previously read any Hemingway and my only knowledge of his style came from the parodies the late great and much missed Alan Coren used to pen in Punch. I was therefore dreading having to wade through 95 pages of very short repetitive sentences. Perhaps because I was forewarned I didn't find the style as tedious as I expected - or indeed half as bad as the Coren parodies would have you believe. The story certainly palled about 75% of the way through but that was because it was stretched out far beyond the idea behind it warranted, and not because of any infelicities of style. 

I suppose it says a lot about endurance, about finding meaning in the attempt to do something rather than in its success or failure, even raises question of the definition of success and failure themselves.

 I'm glad I've read it, and I found it quite compellingly written, until I got bored. Frankly at one point I'd have been glad to see the old man get eaten by the sharks if it would bring the story to a close. A major  downside was the very graphic description of the violence perpetrated by the old man on variou other creatures of the sea, narrated with  a relsh that I found a bit stomach churning; and it's those passages that put me off reading anything else by Hemingway which otherwise I might ave been tempted to try. Sweeping generalisation coming up - I think he's a writer who wrote for male readers and is more likely to b enjoyed by them than female ones.

And yes, I should be far too busy to be blogging this morning given that we were supposed to be heading south at midday, but the midday ferry is canceled. We are rebooked on the five o' clock and are crossing our fingers very tightly that we make it to Wick, and the Scottish Opera Highlights performance, in time. Because if we don't I shall be Very Cross. 

Good Grief We Got Out

Given that it's February, and given that the weather has been almost fixedly foul since 1st Jan, life just now really is all about the books the knitting and the TV. Which is fine by me but makes for a very dull blog I feel. 

However we have two trips away in prospect, one this weekend, and one at the end of next week, which is lightening to the spirits, except when the OH insists on looking at weather forecasts and muttering gloomily about high winds and muses about ferry disruption. Reports on both in due course. (Assuming we get to go!) 

Meanwhile we did manage to get out on Sunday for a short walk and we went over to east mainland for a look at the Gloup. Too early in the year for either nesting birds or blossoming wildflowers, but it was a clear day and there was no rain while we were out,.

It was blooming cold though. Glad we did it, especially as the weather turned nasty again almost straight away, and both before and since I have displayed a depressing tendency to sit in front of the stove and munch biscuits. 

#tighteningwaistbandsRus

So that thing about socks again ....

 

These don't really count as knitted this year because one of them was knitted a while back in 2021, and then I got distracted by other things, mainly Christmas socks, so these languished. 2022 is, amongst other things, the year of finishing off incomplete things,, of which this was one. I'd like to think I could do them all by the end of the year but who knows. Anyway I'm not going to beat myself up about it, because hobbies after all are supposed to be enjoyable, not a series of discouragingly unmet deadlines. I enjoyed finishing these and I'll enjoy wearing them, so that's all good, as the guy used to say in W1A.

Pattern 'Amy's Socks by Amanda Hatton, yarn Kanga and Roo from the Winnie the Pooh Collection at Giddy yarns. 

Books to Read Poster No 34

 

This was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

It's a funny thing, but if you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago if I had read this I would have answered 'Yes, but  a long time ago' with great confidence. However as I read it I kept thinking 'I don't remember this bit', and I thought that so often that in the end I was forced to conclude that actually I hadn't read it at all. And I have no idea where the conviction that I had read it before came from. 

Enjoyed is perhaps not the first  word I would use for the experience of reading this because of course it deals with bad sad things,but actually on reflection I have to say that I did enjoy it. It's generally well written, the perspective from the point of view of a nine year old girl is well done and Lee manages not to drop it, which is a feat other writers working form a child's perspective often don't manage. Despite Scout's limited experience of the world the reader is able to see clearly exactly what is going on in the small town of Maycomb, which is full of eccentric but often quite endearing characters; Unendearing characters, and hard lives, are unflinchingly set down too. And there's a vein of humour running through it which lightened the whole dark tale. 

My only problems with it were that the exposure of the town's blind spots and hypocrisy were rather too laboured, and  the morally ambiguous ending, which I felt undermined the whole moral thrust of the book tot hat point; I found that disturbing. 

But overall I would have to declare this a Hit; I'm glad I've (finally, actually) read it. 

It's funny the things you find

 when you're looking for something else.

Which is what I was doing the other day when I found this

Waaaaaay back in 2012 the OH and I took a Baltic cruise. Barring the norovirus, and the Viking Ship Museum being closed the two days we were in Oslo due to filming being done there by the appalling* Neil Oliver it was a great experience. 

We took the opportunity of being in Norway to meet up with my long standing Norwegian penfriend Elisabet and she took us to a lovely coastal village where there was a famous cafe and several Christmas shops. It was in one of those that I bought Sven, a julenisse, or Christmas sprite. In fact Nisse are for life not just for Christmas and are therefore always about, but you have to be particularly nice to them at Christmas time. They're sort of the equivalent of a UK brownie, the ones that used to live on farms and would sometimes help out with household or farming chores if you were kind to them. 

Anyway it's a tradition to have a few about as decorations at Christmas time and there were some lovely ones in the shop,so after some thought, and trying out my pidgin Norwegian on the woman at the till I bought this one and looked forward to getting him out and placing him with some of our other Scandinavian decorations at Christmas. Except when the time came I couldn't find him. Subsequent searches in likely places over the years failed to turn him up and in the end I decided I had probably just looked at them and decided they were too expensive to buy. 

Not so in fact, as I discovered on Monday when I was looking for something else and he turned up in a carrier bag in a totally unexpected place. As I don't want to lose him again he now has a shelf space  to sit on in my office and we'll move him at Christmas to supervise  the Swedish Tomte and keep him out the rest of the year. Because I'm not 100% convinced that he wasn't hiding. 

* Incredibly to me, other opinions of Oliver  are, apparently available.

Errr - remember the thing about not knitting socks this year?

 

came off the needles yesterday. 

What can I say? I needed something basic to cast on one evening last week and this was to hand. The wool is from the Christmas Eve Cast On box from The Little Grey Girl I wrote about it here . The photo doesn't do justice to the colours which are highly saturated and semi solid. Sadly they're a bit reminiscent of the Christmas Day socks I made for all the family as some of the colours are the same. but I can't help that. And they are beautiful.

The weather here is atrocious and has been since New Year , but it is particularly cold and foul today so I'm planning to curl up in front of the stove this afternoon with a mixture of property porn and sport and competitive pottery on the tv and do some birthday knitting. Which might have been socks - but actually isn't. 

I Lost Yesterday

Basically by being poorly. Reduced to taking paracetamol by evening, which for people who know me is a clue to how totally awful I felt. I will admit I would have done better to take them in the morning and then I would have had a much better day. 

Still not 100% so planning to spend the day in front of the TV watching sport. Something that will surprise those who know me!

Today was New Nail Day

 

Ice and Fire. I love 'em! 

Shame I wasn't this adventurous in my youth.

Ooo-er, that was nasty.

 I was drying my hair this morning when the dryer emitted a trail of pinky purple sparks accompanied by several sharp bangs and that nasty smell you get from burning electrics. 

Definitely deceased. 

And the rest of us, including the visiting cat, well and truly shocked. Although not electrically, obvs.