Sometimes I feel so old

Sunday 11th December

Only a couple of generations ago, of course, and no-one would have disputed that I was old indeed.  I am sixty-five after all, and it is only recently that someone of that age, and especially a woman, would have been considered to be, if not in their dotage, then definitely old.  One of the unwritten rules of our present polite society is that just as one refrains from calling someone fat, the word ‘old’ is reserved for the truly decrepit and those visibly in poor health.  Sixty is the new fifty, and even seventy is now considered quite young. And we are inveigled with stories of sprightly seventy year olds walking to the North Pole, or opening a new business, or perhaps just something as mundane as a parachute or a bungee jump.  And no, you may have no fears for me in that direction; I have never sought to make a fool of myself and hope that I don’t let my standards slip as I glide into old age.  I am quite fit really I suppose, though I have never been into a Gym since school, when once a week the small Hall was converted into an amateur Gynasium, with ropes and wall bars, and a battered old horse and springboard wheeled out, along with a few rubber floor mats.  I was always a reluctant participant, simply going through the motions as I did too when we were marched to the playing fields of a neighbouring boys school for Hockey.  I walk, it is as simple as that, I try to walk almost everywhere; not having a car can really be a boon sometimes.

But what is it about the human body that it is unforgiving and so quick to remind you that you are actually getting old; the aching bones as you haul yourself out of the sofa, when once you jumped up without even a hand on the arm to help you.  And the winter colds which previously you just shrugged off, now hang around for weeks, despite all the comforts and remedies you apply; that hacking cough is so persistent and the nose that had stopped dripping is now running like a leaky tap.  I almost wish I had actually had the wretched flu-jab after all.

But this feeling of ‘oldness’ is not so much that one’s aches and pains are noticeably increasing, it is more one of attitude.  How many times have I caught myself about to say “Young people of today” just like Grandma used to be so fond of declaring, usually with a warning glance in my direction I might add. Why do I feel so excluded from the mainstream, alienated almost by the younger people I seem to see all around me.  I look in the mirror, and surely I don’t actually look that old, or do I? Or is that these features, so familiar to me, look so different to the under-thirties, with their nonchalant air of eternal youth; their turn will come, so I don’t blame them for just getting on with it and having a good time.

Sometimes I think I am just wallowing in my memories, and that maybe I should just bite the bullet and look around me for a partner before I get really old.  I have considered it but I suppose it is because I feel that I may have more to lose than I would gain.  If only it could be contained to just a weekly meal out in a good restaurant, the occasional concert and afternoon walks around a gallery.  That would suit me fine, it’s the moving in with someone that I dread, the putting up with their moods, their mess, their neediness that I dread, and so I remain single, and decline those half-ventured invites I still get occasionally at friends parties, and prefer to grow old gracefully, or for all anyone cares, quite disgracefully.

A Leopard-skin Trilby and a Red Bow-tie

Saturday 10th December

He was wearing a leopard-skin trilby and a red bow-tie.  A short dapper little man, with swarthy olive skin, a neat black moustache and Chinese eyes, he might have been Mongolian, he had that Oriental look about him.  I was sitting quietly minding my own business over an early morning coffee and toast.  Restless, I had been out walking in the Park again, and heading for home had dallied and dithered and returning by the most circuitous route I could think of I had stopped for  an early breakfast.  My mind was elsewhere and I hadn’t really noticed him at first; in fact I think he had wandered in and out at least twice before I really clocked him.  It was the trilby, of course, that did it, that triggered the conscious mind into acknowledging that I had seen him all along, I mean who could miss him in that get-up.  Not that he looked ridiculous, no he was too serious for that, and he was immaculately if somewhat eccentrically dressed despite his choice of headwear.  He was, as I said, quite short, and in that ferret-like way that short people often have he was quick and tidy in his movements, his patent leather shoes pointing outwards most elegantly as he skipped his way in and out of the café. But what on earth was he doing, why was he repeatedly (because he continued exiting and re-entering for the next few minutes) coming in and then looking about him and as if just remembering a forgotten appointment, turning sharply on his heel  and leaving, only to return again a minute or two later.  And the staff behind the counter seemed to just accept this behaviour as perfectly normal, and maybe it was, perhaps he was a habitué of this establishment, while admittedly I was a stranger, and this was his usual style of coming and going.  I was, despite my previous train of thought, (now abandoned altogether) intrigued and entranced and I stayed long after my coffee was finished, and my crusts of toast lying cold on the plate had been cleared away by the very ancient Italian waitress, who looked as if she was the proprietors mother or maybe even nonna (grandmother, as I discovered in our Italian sojourns).  And then I suddenly realised he wasn’t coming back anymore.  I was quite devastated, for fifteen minutes I had watched him come and go, and wondered who he was and where he came from and if he visited this particular café every day and what he did for a living and what nationality he actually was, and then he was gone.

I got up and paid the bill, and in passing asked the young man behind the counter who he was.  “Pardon, but who do you mean Madame?”   “Why the little man who kept coming in and going out.  Just a few minutes ago, you must have seen him.  You know, Leopard skin trilby and red bow-tie?”  “No, I am sorry, I just-a do my job, you see.  I work here every day, I no notice customers no more. Sorry.”

And that was that, I couldn’t stop myself from looking both ways up and down the street, but there was no sign of him at all.  I am sure I would have known him anywhere, the little bundled up walk, the dapper little steps he took, and besides, just how many people do you see dressed so distinctively.

But no, no hat, no bow-tie.  Just a passing moment in my day, and if I hadn’t had my notebook with me I too might well have forgotten him too, just like the assistant behind the counter.  But now I have written this down it will always be there to remind me of the day I saw the little Chinese looking man in his leopard skin trilby and red bow-tie.

The Day I Realised I was On My Own

Friday 9th December

This wasn’t when we left Cyprus; I had known for days at least but had just been too scared to ask, not for information but rather for confirmation, about my biggest fear; that we would be leaving my father behind.  Or even after a few months when he never came back for me; the trouble was I kept seeing him, or rather glimpses of him, reflected in shop windows, or just hopping on a bus that was too far ahead to run after, or the shadow against the front door window, and then realizing it was just the tree outside blowing in the wind.  It wasn’t even when Grandma told me he had written to me for a few years, I had always suspected as much, and had even gone to the effort of telling my school-friends what he had written, recreating long imaginary letters he had sent me, full of news about his exciting life in Cyprus, and how he was going to have me go out and stay with him in the summer.  So it was no real surprise when Grandma informed me that he had actually written, only, sensible to a fault, she had destroyed them long ago.  I could see her point, it was really much better for me to forget him, than to hanker after a man like that, a man who was capable of the most unspeakable of crimes, which of course in true Grandma fashion, were never actually spoken about, just alluded to.  No, actually colluded not alluded, it was just assumed that I knew all along what he was nominally guilty of, and it was never actually talked about.  I just knew that he had made my mother very unhappy, though that wouldn’t have take that much in my opinion, and that he had been the cause of Mummy and he getting a divorce – another dirty word.

It wasn’t even after Grandma died and I made that fateful discovery – I won’t tell you because it would spoil the book ‘Catherines Story’ for you.  Or the day we buried her.  No I didn’t realize I was my own even then.

Or after any other event you might choose to mention.

I realized I was on my own every single day of my life.  I have always been on my own really.  I had Grandma, who tyrannized as much she purported to love me, and my shadow of a mother who always seemed to be hovering just outside of my grasp, and the memory of my father, or rather the memory of the memory of my father; but these were all unable to help me through my aloneness.  Even in my scant few relationships I have been alone, alone and yet close to someone, who may or may not have loved me, but could never make me feel any less alone than I already was. I always felt I was forgotten about somehow; perhaps every one else had attended some vitally important lesson at school where they taught you how to live your life, how to mix with other people, how not to be alone.  “And on the way out, don’t forget to pick up your manual – you are going to need it, so don’t lose it.”

Well nobody ever gave me the manual, so I didn’t even get the chance to look at it, let alone lose it.

So, every day I realize that I am on my own, and always have been, and always will be too. I sometimes wonder if it is only me though, or if we all feel the same.  Are we all alone, but maybe that day of realization hasn’t come for all us yet.  But it will.

Seven Deadly Sins – Greed

Thursday 8th December

Okay, so maybe the one you have been waiting for; Anna and her sister Anna have arrived in Tennesse (did Bertolt Brecht simply stick a pin into a map of America, or was there some secret logic at work) and discover Greed, which is different from pure Gluttony and from Lust too.  Greed is the disease that is most prevalent in our own money-driven society, where the answer to all of life’s ills is to get rich.  And once rich, rich is simply not good enough, we could always do with a bit more and then some. I am sure that most of us have no problem with a bit of wealth, and the desire to have a bit more than one has got.  Nothing nicer than to be able to afford that little cocktail dress, or those shoes or that handbag, even though you would once have been horrified at the prices.  The trouble with Greed is that once it gets its’ twisty little fingers entwined into your soul there is no stopping it.  How many houses do you really need, how many cars in the garage, how many CDs on the shelf, how many pairs of shoes in your wardrobe?  It is all relative.  I read the results of a survey on the perception of wealth, and almost everyone thought that they would be happy earning between two and three times their current income; that is about as far as we can really imagine, those things that are always elusively out of our reach.  When buying your house you realize just how much more another hundred thousand would get you, and then when you finally get that dream house, you see your neighbours with an extra bedroom or three and a conservatory and that old devil called Greed starts worming its’ way into your consciousness.  And the trouble is that our whole society is based on Greed, from the investment bankers down to the people in the council flats, we are all taught that what you can grab and hold onto is good for you.  Little surprise then that the rioters were mostly after the looting.

But surely enough is enough, does one really need four holidays a year – and holidays from what, those who can best afford them rarely need them as much as those who cannot.  I have more clothes at this point in my life, more than I can possibly wear, and yet when I am walking down Oxford or Bond Street I am often tempted, and for what, some sort of instant gratification, or is something deeper going on her, this desire to keep acquiring more and more stuff.  Every advertisement is based on human greed, promising happiness if only we buy that face cream or wear this perfume or use this furniture polish, when actually we are perfectly happy without any of them.  Sometimes I think I was never happier than those years between Adrian and Edward, on my own, not  a lot of money, still having to save for things, and yet I still read all the books I wanted to whereas now I buy more than I can read and end up taking them unread to my local Oxfam.   My cleaning lady regular gets foisted on her clothes I let go to make room in my wardrobe for new stuff, and they are perfectly good really, sometimes barely worn at all, so what is driving me – is it boredom or greed, to just have one more outfit, one more book, one more CD.

At least I can afford it, so maybe little harm is done.  The ones we should feel sorry for are those whose Greed will not let them stop even though they cannot afford it and slip deeper into debt.  Or those Greedy businessmen and wheeler-dealers who just have to win another contract or make another deal, buy a few more shares, and without a thought as to the consequences as long as they accumulate more and more wealth.  And Greed will be the death of us, the death of our Planet too if we aren’t careful.  So definitely the deadliest sin of them all I would say.

Masterchef – the Professionals

Wednesday 7th December

I have always disliked these so-called reality television programmes that are everywhere now on television, none more so than Masterchef.  The competition element is always contrived; after all – why can there not be two or even three master-chefs, if they are equally capable.  There is always the silliness of having an imposed time limit, as if in reality ones guests would walk out if you hadn’t quite got the dish correct in the allotted forty-five minutes. And the silly music and the almost gestation length pause before they announce (in no particular order) the survivors or the losers, and the inane comments from the competitors, stating in almost identical but I am sure well-rehearsed lines how much staying in the competition means to them, I mean who cares how much it matters to them; whether they can cook is really all that matters. The thing I hated most though were the commentators John Torode and Greg Wallace, with their shouted “Only five minutes left” and equally stupid statements – not even sentences half the time, “Boy, can this boy really cook” and “Now, the real competition starts” and the way they kept barking at each other just like rutting stags in the mating season.  Still, I kept watching because the thing with all these shows is once you start watching you are hooked; I think I was watching for the enjoyment of seeing the flaws as much as for who won, because again, it really doesn’t matter who wins, it is the doing of the thing that is why you watch – to see the achievements and the disasters, and to nod quietly to oneself, ‘Yes, I could make that, that wasn’t so hard’.

But suddenly the programme has excelled itself – the pattern is actually usually the other way round, after an exciting start each series becomes weaker and they start introducing sillier and sillier aspects, so that you end up with motorbikes on ice, tossing pancakes to a Samba – well, you get the picture.  But tra-la-la on the trumpet and enter Michel Roux Junior with his Gallic good looks, tiny graying beard, piercing eyes and superb skill and knowledge and the even more formidable Monica Galetti, who is knowledgeable, intelligent and so good in front of the camera that if the food weren’t so delicious you could almost eat her instead. John Torode has wandered off to grill his kippers elsewhere leaving a gentler, funnier, and set against the other two, a kinder Greg as judge.  Michel is always reasonable too, he never neglects to say something good about the food, and he is precise in telling them exactly what is lacking or not quite perfect.  The contestants are already chefs in training so the standards are that much higher, no longer your talented amateurs, but people who already can cook.  And the result is not only culinary excellence but a great and entertaining show, there is still the irritating voice-over and the contestants telling you how much it means to them, and the sad shots of the losers hanging up their aprons and walking out head hung low, but suddenly it is about real cooking and taste and technique and presentation. I love it, and even though I rarely cook properly these days I feel I am learning something new each week.  I just wish Michel Roux Junior could come round to my house for a little candle-lit soirree where I could try out my French and maybe buy a new frock, though I am sure my soufflé might not be quite up to his standards we could have fun trying it out.  Hahaha

I used to hate Winter

Tuesday 6th December

Having effectively lived the first seven years of my life in Cyprus, I had never really experienced winter.  I cannot remember even being really cold, and the sun always seemed to be shining, at least in my memories.  Imagine the shock then, to arrive in rainy London and experience my first dreary wet and windy winter.  I just never seemed to be able to get really warm in Putney, there was no heating at all in my bedroom, and it was one of those typical late Victorian houses with the small bedroom at the back open to the elements on three sides, and with a long draughty sash window that used to rattle in the wind and keep me awake, as I clutched the still warm hot water bottle, wrapping my whole little body around it in the hope it would save me from the cold.  I felt that somehow I was being punished, not only had we been rather unceremoniously bundled out of what, for a child at least, had seemed Paradise and into noisy, rainy, drab and dreary nineteen-fifties London, but I had lost my father into the bargain.  Maybe I mixed up the two things and thought I was being punished for losing my father, as if it had all been my fault, and my particular penance was to suffer these awful winter months of driving rain and snow and frost and biting wind.

As time passed I am sure I got used to it, and began to appreciate the beauty of Winter; the gentle white duvet of freshly fallen snow in the park, the sparkling frost on each blade of grass, the icicles hanging from the gutter neatly in rows and the bare black tree branches against a clear blue sky.  I still detested the cold at night though, and have ever since insisted on eiderdowns and counterpanes on my bed, where netted down by the warmth and weight of many layers I at last feel secure and warm.

It is only in my later years that I have even begun to look forward to Winter; I always used to dread it, the end of summer, the passing of Autumn, and the long bleak cold months before the first signs of Spring.  But now I no longer fear the winter, but actually look forward to it, that cold wind which takes your breath away, also reminds you that you are alive and so so insignificant against the elements.  And what can be better than a walk in the frost and snow, each footstep crushing the new fallen fluffy snow into hard little impressions of your boots, and that first snowfall of the year, when for a few hours you can almost smell it in the air, and then the first floating flurries and the feeling of renewal as they land blotching your face, and reminding you again that at last Winter has arrived.

And besides what good would hating the Winter do, it is, like so much else in life just something we have to go through – maybe just to really appreciate the return of Spring.  Edward and I had some friends who literally wintered abroad every year, in the Canaries or the Caribbean, chasing the sun all year round.  How awful to never experience the bite of winter, to never be able to return from a really cold walk in the snow and pour yourself a nice hot drink and sit by the window and look out on all this splendour.  So no, I no longer hate the Winter at all, even if I still miss Cyprus a bit.

The Wonderful Game of Snooker

Monday 5th December

I was never a fan of televised sport, having always considered it a man’s thing, and as we had no men at Putney it was just never an issue.  Grandma, I remember did like to see the county cricket scores, and would watch with some intensity as if the runs of Colin Cowdrey had some real significance for her, and what she did with this information I have no idea.

It was living with Edward that I got my first real taste of TV sport, he simply loved it, and would happily spend the whole of Saturday afternoon watching Grandstand, this at least allowed me to get on with some cooking (or reading).   Rugby was his favourite, he had played ‘Rugger’, as he always called it, at school and occasionally had turned out for a friendly game in Richmond Park, but that was years before I met him.  I have never understood the game; I can just about watch a game of football if I have to, but the arcane rules of Rugby, and why there should sometimes be a line-out, and sometimes a scrum leave me baffled. There is also the added complication of whether they are playing ‘Union’ or ‘League’, and the awful sense of betrayal when a leading player switches regimes, but I really don’t see why not, the games are so similar that the same skills, or I suspect, muscles, must be employed.

Sometimes I would come into our sitting room to find Edward fast asleep and the TV a sea of green baize, as the snooker would be on; and then when I switched the set off he would wake and exclaim, “But I was watching that.”  One time I simply sat down, and rather than switch off and wake him, I watched.  And you know what, I was hooked.  Oh, not instantly, but slowly the strange beauty of the game started to weave its’ magic on me, or was it just the restful colours and the slow glide of the mostly red balls across the green table.  Also the camera angle hardly changed, and the soft, almost murmur of the commentators’ voices (whispering Ted Lowe), the hushed audience, and the immaculately dressed players seemed miles away from the push and shove and mud and sweat of Rugby or Football.

This was a new world to me, a sport where men could behave like gentlemen, almost a hang-back to an Edwardian age of elegance; and they were gentlemen, happy to shake hands if they lost or applaud a good shot, or even to argue that they had indeed fouled when the referee thought they hadn’t.  What a wonderful change from the ‘Winning is everything, Losing is nothing’ philosophy of so many sportsmen. I’ll never forget some American athlete at the Atlanta Olympics declaring that not only had he won the race and run it perfectly, (a bit of humility wouldn’t go amiss) but that he had annihilated the other runners, “I slaughtered them, I just murdered the field man, I left them for dead.” Really?  I thought this was sport young man, not war.  And this attitude is creeping into everything, coming second, or even getting to the finals is seen as failure, winning is all that matters.  But I was always brought up to believe that taking part was everything, doing your best, playing the game, not winning at all costs, and celebrating the goal when you know the ball hasn’t really crossed the line, or trying to put off your opponent when they are serving at tennis, and cheering a double fault. I suppose that they are motivated by the money and the prestige, but I wonder if they ever question themselves.

No, give me snooker any day, with the handshake and the wry smile of the loser, and Willie Thorne and John Virgo in the commentary box as the mercurial Ronnie takes us on another emotional roller coaster ride.  Come on Ronnie.

My how things have changed – Christmas decorations

Sunday 4th December

Where to start?  Well let’s go back to Putney and Grandma exhuming like an Egyptian Mummy her Christmas decorations from our storage boxes – and they were ancient, truly ancient.  Not that I had any idea of that, I was not in the habit of visiting other girls houses so had nothing to compare with.  The first thing to say is that they were all made of paper; I don’t remember any foil decorations in any of the shops we frequented.  Intricately cut and folded paper garlands that concertina-ed into almost nothing, but were frilly and ornate when pulled apart and hung up from corner to corner of the room.  Every year these were re-used and patched with sellotape when they broke, their colours faded so that the red became brown and the green was a dark muddy wishy-washy apology for green.  I added paper chains as we were taught how to make these at school, and the gummed paper could be bought in packs at Woolworths.  We also added to Grandma’s pre-war swags with crepe paper twists, in white and red and red and green and yellow and green.  My mother and I meticulously cut and twisted these carefully across the room, tying the ends together and adding a few balloons in bunches around the light shade.

One day when I was about eighteen I read an article on using natural materials for decorations, and painted a whole branch and twigs with white and gold enamel paints, you know, those little Humbrol tins they used to sell in model shops, and bought some long pointed purple and blue tear drop baubles to hang on it.  It looked so modern and stylish, even in our old-fashioned sitting room.  We always had holly too, and a real tree, which we would wedge in a galvanized bucket which was then hidden by crepe paper, but we never had lights, I think Grandma must have vetoed them either on grounds of cost or safety.

In the early nineties Edward and I bought our first artificial tree, but although having no dropping needles was a bonus, it took an age to assemble and pack away again each year, and each year too it looked sadder and sadder.  We had lights and glitter garlands and themed baubles, but something in me always hankered after the simpler old paper swags we used to have in Putney.  And one day in Liberty, in the days when they had an oriental Bazaar downstairs I picked up some Chinese paper lanterns and garlands, and even though Edward pulled a bit of a long face, we had an old-fashioned Christmas again.

Now, the shops are filled with shiny and garish plastic and foil, and lights of every description.  One even sees people decorating the complete outside of their houses with Father Christmas and his sleigh and Reindeer all lit up, like the Blackpool Illuminations – one wonders how they afford the electric bills. I prefer to just have a couple of discreet swags over the fireplace these days, and a wreath on the front door, and a small pre-lit artificial tree which stands on my table in front of the window.

It really is a chore getting them out, but somehow it doesn’t even feel like Christmas without some decorations.  I have asked my mother, but she thinks they were thrown out years ago, but I really wish I still had Grandma’s old sellotape-repaired and faded and jaded garlands to hang up again, I would really feel Christamassy then.  

 

The Heart of the Matter

Saturday 3rd December

We generally try to fill our lives with stuff to stop us thinking about anything that really matters.  Possibly this makes sense as some sort of defence mechanism, but in reality we are just refusing to face up to life.  And who can blame us, when we are nightly confronted with the looming financial crisis, and then maybe a new war in the offing against either Syria or more likely Iran, and every now and then we are reminded of the ever desperate condition of the famines in Africa, which no matter how many trade and aid deals are signed appear to be as prevalent as ever.  Is it any wonder we would rather watch I’m a Celebrity or Strictly, with their light-hearted air of a never changing world of pure fun and happiness.  And it is amazing how many people do not even watch the news on TV anymore.  It was always the most important thing we watched at Putney, Grandma demanding silence (and getting it) while Mr. Woods read the news in a solemn voice.  ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ was one of those mantras that would appear ridiculous to today’s modern families with their cack-handed attempts at democracy; actually asking small children where we should all go on holiday this year or what we should buy in the Supermarket.  In our day you were never asked for your opinion or even a suggestion that having one you might be asked to express it. ‘The very thought’ as I can almost hear Grandma hooting with derision.   But still, times have changed and probably for the better in the long run.

But why is it that we all prefer to run away from the truth rather than face up to it.   Is it that we all feel so impotent in the face of cold reality?  Is it that we feel unable to change the way the world is anyway, without realizing that we are the world, and the way we are does affect everything else.  I used the word democracy in the previous paragraph, and of course our form of democracy is far from perfect; how many decisions has this Government already taken on questions that were never mentioned in either their manifesto’s or during the election campaign at all.  We seem to have resigned ourselves to a once every five years combination of end of term report and beauty contest, where we pick the most likely looking and sounding candidate and just say ‘Get on with it and we’ll see how you have done in five years time.’

A couple of my friends have commented that the internet will change everything, and yes in theory there is no reason why in the near future almost everyone could be consulted about, well, almost everything.  And though I am sure this sounds wonderful, it would in all probability soon be overtaken by the big parties to mobilize peoples opinion, and like the National Lottery it would soon stop being a novelty but a chore, and more and more people would drop out, and the prizes diminish too.  Even now, if you look at the comments posted on the BBC news items, they are either ludicrously from cranks at either end of the political spectrum, or so ill-informed as to beggar belief.

So how do you engage people, how do you make them think about, let alone act on, what is important, what really matters?  I am afraid that like everyone else I do not have the answer. And maybe this is the true heart of the matter.  People are actually so ostrich headed, or lazy, or apathetic, or in complete denial, or worst possibility of all – so stupid, that they would rather just sit on their sofa and moan about the cost of living or the state of the world than actually want to get up and change anything.

Anyway, I must dash, I have to catch the repeat of X-factor.  Only kidding.  Hahaha

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

Friday 2nd December

What is it about these Scandinavian writers? Where does this fascination with death and pain, and the whole macabre side of crime come from, and more to the point, where does the incredible talent for writing this stuff come from?  Is it the darker longer colder winters that bring out this side of human nature, or just a fascination with the darker colder side of people? Just look at the plays of Ibsen, not a lot of laughs there, very little in the way of happy endings, at least the ones I have seen.

I thought I had had my fill of Scandinavian crime after reading in pretty quick succession ‘The Girl Who’ books by Stieg Larrson, with his quite unlikeable but incredibly resourceful heroine Lisbeth Salander, and the very unlikely but well written storylines – but I was attracted to this book by both the reviews, which were unanimously good, and the title ‘The Snowman.’  A few years earlier I had read the brilliant ‘Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow’ by Peter Hoeg, which was set in Greenland of all places, so the recurrence of the word Snow was a good omen I felt.  I had also watched ‘Wallander’ on BBC2, and those bleak wintry landscapes had worked their way into my psyche, I was just itching to read the book, and on an impulse I bought it and rather than waiting a few weeks, building up the anticipation of a new book, savouring it, as is my usual modus operandi, I dived straight in on the bus home from Waterstones.

I find both a fascination and a frustration in all the street and place names in these Nordic thrillers, with all those slashed ‘O’ s (my keyboard may be capable of printing Scandinavian characters but I am not competent enough to find out how) and a positive contagion of consonants. In this book, set in Norway by the way, there were also quite confusing character names, including a male Gert, which I kept thinking of as woman’s name. (I had an obscure relative called Auntie Gertie, after Gertrude).  The saving grace was that the hero detective was called Harry Hole, god knows if that was it in Norwegian too – they are weird enough to accept that as normal.

Well, it was quite pacey and a good page turner, but I found the plot confusing with a lot of blind alleys and the story seemed to jump about a lot between time and place so I kept losing my way.  Not that I find I read nowadays for the story anyway, I mean who really cares who the killer was, or what clues we all, except Harry, missed on the way to finding him out.  One reads these books to try to discover what it is that drives people in extreme circumstances, both the killer and the detectives hunting them, and the seedier, sadder, more lonely and obsessed and generally ‘fucked up’ they are, the more we seem to like them. Gone are the days of the immaculate Hercule Poirot or the very proper and very English Miss Marple, now we like our detectives flawed and near to breaking down and slipping into criminality themselves.

I finished the book in two days, which was quick for me, as I am generally a slow reader, going back and re-reading whole pages at a time if for any reason my mind has wandered, or I found a particular passage beautifully written or just saying something that strikes a chord in my soul.  Not this time though, I could have omitted pages at a time and would have missed little I suspect.  A good read, but I don’t think I will be rushing out to seek out other stuff by Mr.  Nesbo.  Maybe I have gotten that Nordic existential gloom out of my system for a while.  Next up ‘The Bertrams’ by my old standby Anthony Trollope, no more gruesome murders, no more alcoholic detectives for a while, just an England that maybe once existed but like a beetle in amber is now beautifully frozen in time.