Read then Write - 19/3/26

Well I only managed to finish one book since my last book post - The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves.

The blurb reads:

"It's been several years since Detective Jimmy Perez left Shetland. He has settled into his new home in Orkney, the group of islands, off the northern coast of Scotland, with his partner Willow Reeve and their growing family. One stormy winter night, his oldest and closest friend, Archie Stout, goes missing. Ever the detective, Perez catches a boat to the island of Westray, where Archie worked as a farmer and lived with his wife and children.

But when he arrives he finds a shocking Archie's body, on an archaeological dig site and an ancient Westray story stone with precise spirals carved into it beside him, the clear murder weapon. The artifact, taken from a nearby museum, seems to suggest a premediated murder.

But Perez is so close to the case that he struggles to maintain an objective distance from the potential suspects. He finds it difficult to question Archie's wife, whom he's known for years. Rumours swirl about the dead man's relationship with a young woman new to the island, an artist. With each new lead, the case becomes more twisted and Perez wonders if he will ever find out what happened in his friend's final days."

I've enjoyed quite a few books by Ann Cleeves and I've watched the "Shetland" series which featured DI Perez on the TV.  This book finds Perez now settled in Orkney with partner Willow, a young son and another baby on the way.  Yet there didn't seem to be any explanation of how we got from Shetland to Orkney.  According to Google we've jumped 7 years but that wasn't accounted for in this book.

Having said that this book could easily be a stand alone and I do love Cleeves' way of describing things in detail and giving depth to her characters.  It was a little bit too neatly wrapped up for me at the end so no 5 stars but it definitely makes you want to visit Orkey for its scenery.

According to Goodreads I'm 2 books ahead of schedule to complete this year's reading challenge but my reading pile is not going down.

I have 3 books out from the library at the moment:

 


The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is the afternoon book club choice.

People Person is for the evening book group and

The Betrayal is for one of the 52 book club prompts:

"Inspired by the top grossing movie, in the year you were born"

The film?  Ben Hur.  My first thoughts were I'd have to find something on ancient Rome.  Definitely not my sort of thing.  Having looked at what the film is about Betrayal seemed a good fit.  My challenge my rules!

I've actually read The Trouble with Goats and Sheep before so that should be an easy one to get through and I'm starting with that one next.  Then I'll do the other book club one so that I'm ready for the next meet ups before moving on to Betrayal.

Wednesday Hodgepodge - 18/3/26

Joyce gives us the questions, we provide our answers and we link up here.

1. St. Patrick's Day lands on March 17th. Do you believe in luck? Are there things you do thinking they'll  bring good luck or  things you avoid because they're considered bad luck? 

I think sometimes things feel like they're luck like winning a raffle, and sometimes the odds seem to fall in your favour but generally no I'm not a great believer in luck and I don't usually do things to avoid bad luck.

2. Forest-lime-sage-mint-olive-emerald...what's your favourite shade of green? Emerald.

3. In Ireland the meal on this day is often a hearty beef or lamb stew served with colcannon (mashed potato mixed with cabbage and leeks). In the US corned beef and cabbage is the more typical St. Patty's Day meal. Will you/did you mark the day with one of these dishes? Baked-fried-roasted-mashed...what's your favourite way to eat a potato?

No traditional St Patrick's meal for us but we did have roast potatoes with our chicken dinner.  I like potatoes however they are cooked but my favourite would be mashed.

4. What colour of the rainbow best represents your personality/mood today? Tell us why. 

I think yellow - it's warm and sunny here today so I'm happy.

5. Which 'lucky' quote resonates with you. Elaborate. 

 'Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.' E.B. White 

'Diligence is the mother of good luck." Benjamin Franklin 

'Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.' Seneca 

'Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I think they're all good quotes.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

My husband has Irish roots on his Mother's side but none for me so St. Patrick's Day is not a big thing for us.  However at my keep fit class there are a few Irish women so yesterday we were doing some movements to Irish music.  It was a bit bizarre to be honest.  We had a good time though.

In the News this Week - 17/3/26

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my Irish friends.  There are a few Irish women at the keep fit class I go to on a Tuesday and one of them had brought in a playlist of Irish songs this morning.  That was interesting!  The class is normally quite laid back as many of the attendees are elderly but today we got even less done.  But it still got me out of the house and enjoying coffee with friends afterwards.

Took my mind off the news for a while.

At home one of the big stories has been the meningitis outbreak in Kent which has sadly taken the lives of 2 students at the university and there are more cases being treated not only from the university but some schools.  Thankfully my grandchildren are young enough to have been vaccinated against meningitis as part of their childhood immunisation programme but this was only started in 2015 so most of the students currently at university won't be protected.  Many students in Kent are being offered antibiotics and vaccines.

International news continues to be dominated by the war in Iran.  Enough said.

The big entertainment story was of course The Oscars.  I'd like to do a detailed account of that but I haven't seen any of the films.  Apparently one of the big stories was that Timothy Chalamet had fallen down the stairs - he's not having a good time, missing out on the Best Actor award plus the controversy over his comments about Ballet and Opera.  I could probably let the dig at Opera slide but not the Ballet!   But it turned out the stairs story was fake.  You really cannot believe all you see on social media.

In Sports, despite a draw this weekend against Liverpool, my football team could face relegation from the Premier League!  Tottenham Hotspur are 1 of only 6 teams that have never been relegated from the Premier League since it was set up in 1992.  I say my team but I don't really follow them or much football at all these days.  I grew up as a Spurs supporter because we had family working at the club and my husband actually worked for them as an accountant for a while despite the fact that he is a West Ham supporter.  I couldn't even name any of their players now but I would still hate to see them go down, although by the sounds of things it wouldn't be undeserved.

And finally in Miscellaneous it is Red Nose Day, organised by Comic Relief on Friday - a big fundraising event on TV but there are also many events leading up to this.  One of these is a BBC Radio 1 DJ, Greg James riding a tandem from Weymouth on the south coast of England to Edinburgh in Scotland a distance of 1000km which he's aiming to complete in 8 days.  Anyway today he was joined for part of his trek by the Prince of Wales.  I love it when our Royals step up for things like this.  You can watch a clip of that here.

A bit of Waffle - 16/3/26

We had Grandson Nathan here on Saturday morning until early afternoon which was nice.  He's started a big jigsaw so he brought that here on a puzzle board and we managed to get the edging done but he lost interest after that.  Especially once he managed to persuade Grandpa to play football outside for a bit.

Yesterday my daughter and DIL brought afternoon tea to us.  We were supposed to go there but they've had a few issues at home with a leak and now their tumble dryer isn't working so they came to us instead.

We had cream cheese and smoked salmon bagels followed by scones with clotted cream and jam plus a couple of other cakes.  I also got a lovely plant which hopefully I won't kill and some nice soap.  It was Mother's Day here in the UK.

Of course we also got a load of washing to dry in our tumble dryer.  Just glad we live near enough to be able to help out like that.

Today I've had a fairly quiet day - I submitted the plastic count we'd done last week.  It would be nice to think that a collective effort might put pressure on our Government to try and reduce the plastic packaging we get.  There is a lot of unnecessary wrapping on food.  I try to buy loose fruit and veg when I can and I have various things that come as refills for starter bottles such as washing up liquid, fabric conditioner and cleaning spray and they come packaged in cardboard that can be recycled.   There is talk that when one of the local fish and chip shops closes soon that it will become a butcher's shop.  That would be good because a lot of the plastic we bin each week is meat wrapping.   Will have to see how expensive it is though.

This was our tally sheet:

This evening I've been at the Foodbank taking in deliveries and it would seem most of the supermarkets overestimated on flowers for Mother's Day as we received lots of flowers tonight, so many we didn't have enough flower buckets to get them all in water so I now have a vase of tulips to brighten my dining room table too.  One of the perks of being a volunteer.