love those cupcakes

Lately

We've been spending time (not to mention mucho dinero) on replacing a raft of boring but essential items which had seemingly conspired to simultaneously give up the ghost.  Things like a bed, a fridge freezer, an oven, a washing machine, a steam iron and a garden pond pump (two of the biggest fish were sad casualties of this particular malfunction, though they were given a decent burial under the whitebeam at the bottom of the garden which I must remember before embarking on the usual slap-happy spade work).

Then, as we worked through the ever increasing catalogue of ailing appliances, the dog stopped eating. Initially someone joked he was just helping ease the financial situation by reducing his (specialist dried stuff for sensitive doggy tums) food intake. He became so bony, we all stopped patting him in case he broke.  There followed a number of blood tests and investigations under general anaesthetic and then a vet's bill so large I wished I'd been anaesthetised before being presented with it. The result? Nothing untoward was detected. Nothing at all. Yet the refusal to eat continued despite the wafting of normally bite your hand off treats under his nose, such as cubes of vintage cheddar, scrambled eggs, marinated tofu, and sometimes all three together.   As a last-ditch attempt to tickle the taste buds, the switch was made to those pouches of gravy soaked chunks.  The result?  He scoffed every single scrap, with an air of, 'Thank goodness and about time, too', and has done at every meal since.   Even the cat licks out the dog's dinner bowl.  I've now started another Things To Be Replaced list as my car needs new tyres, the power washer hasn't recovered from my attempts at cleaning the paving slabs in the back garden and I'm wearing crooked specs (thought I'd developed a neurological problem but thankfully it was just down to all the wonk). 

London called one Saturday so off I went, in the company of my cousin.  We met up with her boy, who lives and works in the capital, for coffee and a good old chinwag and then wandered the streets of the city, eventually heading across London Bridge towards the resistance-is-futile stalls of Borough Market before finally ending the day with another delicious afternoon tea here and my first vegan macaron.

Last weekend we supported a charity fundraising open gardens event in the North Yorkshire market town up the road.  You really can't beat a good nose round someone else's plot, however small, for inspiration, ideas and cheap plants (and, in the case of the mister, regular top ups of tea and slices of homemade cake), even when you've visited some of the gardens several times over the years.   One thing's for sure, the garden here would never meet the standard for public inspection.  Well, unless the dead leaves (damned enormous, constantly shedding eucalyptus), twigs (despised white buddleias that were supposed to be blue not white and much less snappy) and trampled plants (too many big furry feet plodding around and I don't mean the mister's) theme becomes de rigueur.

Just before the oven died, I managed to nab a little time in the kitchen (someone else here is still obsessed with all things patisserie and is now making up his own recipes - lemon meringue eclairs anyone?) for a spot of gentle pottering with the piping bag.  Yes, the Boy might be Star Baker but I'm still the Buttercream Queen.

 

Reading highlights

Mr. Mercedes (Stephen King).   It's donkey's years since I last read a Stephen King novel and picked up this one in a charity shop. One of a series of three books featuring retired detective Bill Hodges, this is a proper race against time thriller.  Nothing about the supernatural or the paranormal here.  There's a crime resulting in multiple victims, a still open case Hodges was working on before retiring.  We readers know early on exactly who the killer is so this novel is not a whodunnit.  What develops is a classic cat and mouse chase as Hodges tries to prevent an even more devastating tragedy (and one which will strike a very sad chord with British readers given recent events) .  

End of Watch (Stephen King).   The third in the series, this  book picks up the Mr. Mercedes story six years down the line. There are reappearances from many of the characters, with Hodges now running his own private investigation business,  Finders Keepers, and his nemesis safely in hospital in a vegetative state.  Or is he?  This is Stephen King, after all, so anything can happen. 

The Bird Tribunal (Agnes Ravatn).    Allis Hargatn leaves her job as a television presenter and her home to take up a post as a live-in housekeeper and gardener in a remote house where her employer, who turns out to be much younger than the old man she was expecting, lives alone whilst his wife is away travelling.  This is a story about two strangers and their secrets in which the tension slowly builds leading to goodness knows what or where.  The writing is exquisite, chilling, spellbinding.  This is a short book and I loved it.  

Eileen (Ottessa Moshfegh).  Eileen, the narrator of her own story, is obsessive, she shoplifts, is addicted to laxatives, full of self loathing and most definitely not someone you'd choose to be your best mate.  The novel is focused on one week in the lead up to Christmas in 1964, when, living in squalor in a Massachusetts town with her alcoholic ex-policeman father, Eileen dreams of leaving her miserably narrow life for the bright lights of New York.  At the boys' detention centre where she works and indulges in fantasies about one of the security guards, she meets the mysterious and glamorous Rebecca.  The pair become unlikely friends and then Eileen's story takes a sharp, unexpected turn.

Snowblind ( Ragnar Jonasson).  This is the first novel in the author's Dark Iceland series.  Ari Thor Arason is a trainee police officer with a first posting in a small town in the far north of Iceland where 'nothing ever happens'.  A snowstorm and subsequent avalanche cuts the town off, with no-one able to leave or enter.  A resident is found close to death in the snow. Another has what at first appears to be a fatal accident.  And so the twist on the classic Christie-esque 'body in the locked library' mystery unfolds. 

The Ice Beneath Her (Camilla Grebe).  This is what we've come to expect from the Scandinavian crime fiction genre, a well-paced police procedural with a grisly murder or two and a detective with commitment issues (though happily without an alcohol addiction). Each chapter is written from the perspective of one of the three  main characters which works rather well. Emma Bohman is employed as a sales assistant in a branch of a clothing chain in Stockholm.  Jesper Orre is the company's CEO.  A chance meeting leads to an affair which he insists must be kept secret.  Fast forward two months and the police become involved when the body of a woman is discovered in Orre's home, a crime reminiscent of one that occurred ten years previously, a crime that was never solved.  This is an easy read and sufficiently twisty to keep you on your toes.

The Crow Girl (Erik Axl Sund).  The author is actually two people, Jerker Ericsson and Hakan Axlander Sundquist, which could make for a disjointed read but in this case doesn't.  Originally a series of three books, this is a hefty novel of almost 800 pages and, given the subject matter at the heart of the story, one most definitely not for everyone.  A couple of chapters in, I wasn't sure I could continue.  And that's from someone with a working life steeped in child protection and safeguarding.  You see, this book covers the whole distressingly debased lot:  child trafficking, child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, incest, cannibalism, murder. Scandinavian crime fiction is generally gory, dark, violent in the extreme. But Nordic Noir seems far too tame a tag for this book.  It's highly descriptive (probably excessively so in parts for many readers), very character driven (the good, the complex, the bad and the downright monstrous) and absolutely relentless.  You think it can't possibly get any more noir and then it does, though at no point did the violence and abuse feel gratuitous or included for ever more shock value. What the novel does is delve the depths of human depravity.  The subject matter might be abhorrent and hard to stomach but it's what happens in real life.  If you stick with it, the crime fiction bar is well and truly raised with this novel.  In the words of one reviewer,  it’s a book for the committed Scandophile. Or those that should be committed.

The current book at bedtime is The Monogram Murders,  an Hercule Poirot murder mystery, and so, when the opportunity arose to spend an evening in the company of its author, Sophie Hannah (and her mother, author Adele Geras), I jumped at the chance. Our library service runs these meet-the-author events at fairly regular intervals and I usually tag along, always fascinated to hear a writer talk about their work and their particular approach to writing (Sophie really likes a detailed plan).  Of course, her latest novel was purchased (it would have been rude not to, no?), duly signed and added to yet another tbr pile which at the moment is looking like this:

The highlight of Sunday evenings here is watching the latest episode of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.  Whilst I've yet to read the book (must admit I prefer to do it the other way round), this is seriously good television.  It's a horror story, it's a thriller, it's a warning.  Blessed be the fruit.