Day 38

 

 

 

 

 

I have just read Robert Galbraith’s (aka J K Rowling) Troubled Blood. It is  very good but it is also very heavy. If you have a kindle, buy the electronic version. I didn’t because I was so incensed that the kindle copy was more expensive than the hard back.

How can they justify that?

Anyway, Troubled Blood is nine hundred and twenty-seven pages of superb detective story. The main characters are, as before, Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott, partners in a detective  agency based in Soho. The  agency is slightly more prosperous than before and they have a secretary and subcontractors to help with the increased work.

However, it is not a happy time. Robin’s husband is making their divorce as gruelling and painful as possible and Strike’s Aunt Joan, who brought him up, is dying slowly and painfully from cancer. On a visit to Joan in Cornwall, Strike is approached by a couple of women, Kim and Anna. Anna is upset and anxious. They want Strike to take up their case. Forty years earlier, Anna’s mother, Dr Margot Bamborough disappeared without trace and Anna wants to make one last effort to find out what happened. A contract is drawn up for one year’s work investigating the case. Troubled Blood is the story of that year.

What makes this book special is that although the Bamborough case is the central theme, we also see everything else that is going on in their lives. There are other cases. There are difficult relationships, personal and professional. There is humour, tragedy and irritation, breakthroughs and dead ends. Nothing is hidden from us.

It took me longer to read than usual, because, since I don’t own a lectern, the most comfortable place to read it was bed. I became completely involved in what was happening – to the extent that, falling asleep while reading, it entered my dreams, which was a bit confusing.

I didn’t guess the ending, but all the clues were  there. I went back and checked.

 

Have you noticed how many heroes/heroines declare, just before they go off and do something asinine, “I just want to know the truth!”

I wonder how often, if ever, that sentence is used in everyday life. I am sure what most people say is, “I want to know what happened.”

Wanting to know the truth elevates what is basic curiosity onto a more philosophical (?pretentious?) plane. Wanting to know what happened could, I suppose, be considered just plain nosy. Troubled Blood falls firmly into the “I want to know what happened” class of book and is all the better for it.

An excellent book to be locked in with.

In complete contrast, as an antidote to the non-event that Christmas became this year, I binge watched Bridgerton on Netflix. It is a Regency Romance written by an American, Julia Quinn, dramatised in eight parts, not usually my thing, but it has been made by Shondaland, who created Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and For the People. This piqued my curiosity as I could not conceive how a production company so emphatically American could produce a Regency Romance chockful of dukes, marquesses and earls.

What can I say?

 

It was impeccably produced with stunning sets and costumes. The cast, who were mostly British or spoke in perfect RP, were cast regardless of their race. This was, at first, interesting and then, refreshing.  There were a lot of familiar faces, including one, the heroine, Daphne, who was semi-familiar in a rather disturbing way. It turns out she is the daughter of Sally Webster from Corrie. The plot was quite well constructed but ultimately ridiculous. It was funny, engaging and very raunchy.

Was it worth watching? I can’t really say. It grabs you and doesn’t let you go until it’s finished. If you get past the first ten minutes, you have very little choice in the matter. It’s like eating chocolates, you know if you go on eating them you will feel sick, but while one remains in the box you can’t help yourself. Nevertheless, if you need something to let you forget viruses and cretinous politicians, it will fill eight hours.

Think Georgette Heyer meets Dynasty.

The other much-hyped series I watched was The Queen’s Gambit. This was also addictive. Again the production values were superb – it was mostly set in the Sixties and the acting was outstanding.

When I had finished watching it, my critical values began to kick in. The plot is very simple:

Orphan displays colossal talent, faces huge obstacles, nearly sinks into oblivion, then rises to win through.

 

This is the classic American film plot, but because the talent is chess, it has gained a significance that most other series of this kind don’t have. It manages to simulate an intellectuality that it doesn’t actually possess. Basically it is no different from all the baseball, football, skating, films that we are all familiar with.

However, much of the action involves us watching hands moving chess pieces and intent faces watching the action and, it is an indication of how well it’s done, that you are enthralled, even though the moves are, for us, completely meaningless.

 

I think I can say that I enjoyed them both. They took me away from the bleakness of this non-Christmas and filled up a lot of time, but in retrospect, I don’t feel quite comfortable. I feel a bit conned - as if my pudding had been made with saccharin, not sugar, a confection designed to entice.

 

I don’t think I will watch them again, but I shall re-read Troubled Blood. 

Food

I have always considered that Christmas, for me, is not a very spiritual affair. It’s family, food, music, warm house and cold weather, in that order. This year, we decided, weeks before Johnson decided that the virus would take five days off over Christmas, that we wouldn’t risk meeting up. I am glad we made the decision early, because it meant we didn’t face the huge disappointment of losing our Christmas, when Johnson finally looked at the science.

This is the first Christmas I have spent on my own, so I decided to compensate with food. I bought a small French-cut rack of lamb and lots of fresh vegetables for dinner. For breakfast I got smoked trout, crackers, cream cheese, lumpfish caviar, a couple of tubs of olives, Pro Secco and orange juice.

I got up once it was well and truly light and arranged my breakfast on a tray, before settling down to my boxed set binge fest. Ten hours later I was still eating breakfast. No matter, I pushed Christmas dinner to Boxing Day. I made bacon butties for Boxing Day brunch, on a freshly cooked baguette with herby tomatoes.

At 4pm I stuck the rack of lamb in the freezer. I couldn’t face a celebratory dinner. I wanted comfort dinner. So this is what I made:

Toad in the hole with special onion gravy 

 

 

 

 

The Batter

1.                Beat 3 eggs with 250 ml of milk (I usually use full fat milk)

2.                Beat in plain flour until batter has the consistency of double cream

3.                Add a pinch of salt and black pepper

4.                Cover and rest in fridge for at least half an hour

5.                Choose an oven proof dish and grease it either with butter, dripping or oil

6.                Heat oven to 200°C

The Sausages

7.                Brown sausages in a pan on the hob (I allow 3 chipolatas or 2 fat sausages per person)

8.                Place sausages and the hot fat into the oven proof dish

9.                Pour batter over the sausages into the hot fat

10.           Decorate with quartered tomatoes

11.           Cook in oven for 40 minutes

The Gravy

12.           Chop an onion into half crescents and fry in butter on a medium heat until caramelised

13.           Dust with a dessertspoonful of flour and leave to cook for a couple of minutes

14.           Stir the mixture and add 250ml of good beef stock

15.           If the sauce becomes too thick, add water

16.           Add a glass of port

17.           Simmer until slightly reduced and glossy

18.           Serve the toad, hole and gravy with vegetables of your choice. True Comfort!!

 

Music

Music is the other essential element of Christmas for me. Way back in the autumn, I discovered that the choral group, Voces8, had put their Live From London concerts online, since they couldn’t perform in front of audiences. They were wonderful and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have been able to go to their concerts. It’s the one upside of the pandemic.

They arranged a Christmas series of concerts added to performances of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio by the Gabrieli Consort and Players. The tickets were reasonably priced and you have access to the concerts for about six weeks. I listen to them every evening before I go to bed – wonderful.

Here is Voces8 singing the Messiah with Apollo5 and the Voces8 Foundation Choir:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFjQ77ol2DI

 

A Winter Painting

The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch  attributed to Henry Raeburn. (1790s)

 

I love this painting because of its contrasts – contrasts in the way the subject is treated and in the techniques used.

The back ground is loosely painted to indicate the mountains around the loch and the winter weather, but all the detail and precision is saved for the figure and the marks he is making on the ice. That is where our attention is drawn.

We have a minister of the Kirk, a serious and upright man, as we can see from his clothes, skating. This is not an activity that one would usually associate with a minister of the Kirk. Despite the great freedom in which his lower half has been painted which emphasises his skill and the speed of his skating, the upper part of his torso is taut with his arms held tightly round his chest.

Does this indicate a tension between his enjoyment and his role as a minister?

It is an easy assumption, but this is Robert Walker, not just the Minister of the Canongate Kirk, but a member of the Edinburgh Skating Club which was the first figure skating club formed anywhere in the world. He had been brought up in the Netherlands where his father was Minister of the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam. This is almost certainly where he learnt to skate.The painting could be indicating how skillful a skater he is, because he is not using his arms to balance. Skating at speed with the arms tight to the body is very difficult.

Skating was not his only sport. He was also an archer, eventually becoming Chaplain to the Royal Company of Archers. So he was not a man restrained by his religion and does not fit the narrow stereotype of the Kirk.

Nevertheless I still see a tension in the figure. Perhaps the discomfort belongs to the painter not the subject? Or it could just be that the Reverend Walker is cold!

The painting is attributed to Henry Raeburn. Raeburn came from very humble beginnings and was self-taught.  His work came to the attention of David Martin, the leading portrait painter in Edinburgh, who took him under his wing.  He was commissioned to paint the portrait of Ann Edgar. They fell in love and were married within the month. Ann was rich and Raeburn was now able to go abroad to study painting.

He believed in painting directly from life (which could explain the precision of the painting of the figure in contrast to the sketchy painting of the background). In some ways he is anticipating future developments in painting from romanticism to Impressionism.