Sunday 30 November 2014

A Short Break...


Blimey! The Old Man have got so bored waiting for me to pontificate that he have fallen asleep. We do truly enjoy a life full of sparkling wit here.

Saturday 22 November 2014

Grey Doll's Retro Criminal Read : The Darkest Room

It's getting to that dark time of the year for us here in the northern world... Halloween has been and gone and we are heading into midwinter ... the time for shivers and ghost stories as we close the curtains against the dark outside.

Coincidentally, I have just finished reading Johan Theorin's second "Öland" book - The Darkest Room - beautifully translated by Marlaine Delargy. Remember I did post that I was intending to catch up with earlier books written by this Swedish crime writer? I can assure you that this is just the chilling read for a stormy winter night.

The book starts with a local reference to a tradition that the dead meet to worship at a local church on Christmas Eve.... We are back on the Swedish Baltic island of Öland, midway between the Swedish mainland and the larger island of Gotland. A young family has moved into a run-down manor house with its two lighthouses at Eel Point, on the island's north-east coast. As Öland begins to face the Baltic storms and blizzards of winter, one of the family is found drowned close to the lighthouses. Add a burglary spree by a gang that likes to scout out their crimes with a ouija board.... and what follows is a moving story of grief, secrets, violence and tragic threads from the past reaching into the present.

I don't usually search out supernatural books but I can take a bit of shiver - and I have to say that Johan Theorin writes a wonderful mixture of modern crime and psychological chill. This is perhaps the most ghostly of his that I have read so far but he weaves the strands together so well that, as the suspense builds, it seems that both worlds are colliding in one tense crisis.


Thursday 20 November 2014

Getting The Goat... Or Two

It's been a very rural week. The other day I'm sitting at me desk and do hear a bellow. Looking out the window ... I see a gent walking along our narrow lane in front of quite several bullocks who be following slowly, looking very puzzled and bellowing occasionally. Altogether there are four people providing the bullock escort but I be amazed. Not seen this sight before... though it is perfectly possible as we have plenty of fields around. I just watched and hoped that none of the animals do attempt the downhill slide of our drive!

Then a day or so later I'm looking out of the same window to see two goats stepping along in a wide-eyed, curious manner. I do shoot out the front door (thinking of the narrow road they be approaching... with its fast four-be-fours...) closely followed by The Old Man who announces they have gone down the row adjoining. Fortunately they have stopped to investigate a neighbour's front drive. So I do whip past them and double back in a nonchalant "How d'ye do... fancy seeing you here." kind of way.
Have you ever tried guiding goats? Me, neither. But with The Old Man calling in an encouraging way and me trailing on behind... we do get them round the corner and heading home. (Yes. I do know where they come from.) And anyway I spot a young man with a feeding bowl heading towards our strange procession. Clearly he knows when he have lost a goat... or two.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Look Mama - New Hands

Well it's true that after my last film one of my hands do drop off. Between you and me.... mechanics and manufacture is not one of Mrs D's strong points. But she has remade my hands and .... Alors! They're big ain't they. Mrs D do assure me that they will be "all the better to gesture with.." Though Mrs D do (worryingly) add that, of course, these may drop off as well and then there will be no option but to re-make the whole arm/hand thing... twice.

Never mind, I do get used to this idea now. By way of recompense Mrs D has  done a new make-up job. I must admit that the old "physog" was getting a bit grey with age.

While Mrs D is making the hands and screaming a lot as she does, The Old Man makes a helpful suggestion... (No... really... this time it is helpful, honest.) He suggests that when she comes to make the solid bits that strengthen the "finger" wires (using Polymorph - a meltable, reusable, plastic), she should break the "palm" into two... which makes for a natural bend point and should cause less stress on the wrist and hand when moving it about.

Give that man a pasty - he do seem to have the right idea.


Thursday 13 November 2014

Grey Doll & Criminal Reading: A Retro "Johan Theorin" Read

You know that I like to travel when I read (as opposed to reading whilst I travel, because travel I don't.) Where was I? Aah. Reading in a foreign manner....

A while ago I listened to "The Quarry" by Swedish writer Johan Theorin. I liked it so much that... discovering that it was actually the third in a series of novels set on the Swedish Baltic island of Öland... I ordered up the previous two novels.
I've got the break needed to get back to them and have just finished the first in the series "Echoes From The Dead" which confirms my respect for this writer. Well-crafted, filled with convincing characters, psychology and suspense, this too has that trademark of Theorin which may not be to everybody's taste... the lightest touch of the supernatural. I don't mean Stephen King scales of horror. I mean a light Nordic touch that accepts trolls, spirits, ghosts, whatever, as inhabiting the same space as you and I and that they may or may not take part in the narrative. (Think Indridason, Kallentoft...)

"Echoes From the Dead"- translated into English by Marlaine Delargy (Theorin, Asa Larsson, and John Ajvide Lindqvist) - tells the story of a child's death on the island of Öland in the 1970s. His mother, scarred by her loss, has returned to visit her father who lives in a residential home on the island. It is some twenty years later but someone has sent a package to the old man. It contains a child's sandal. This is a moving, gripping story but what I like about this series as much as anything else is the island itself - a place scarred by the lost industries of its past and now inhabited mainly by summer visitors who have renovated the old houses and come to enjoy the sea and beaches of the Baltic.
Er.. sounds a bit like Cornwall really.
Anyway, I'm off to start the second in the series: "The Darkest Room".

Sunday 9 November 2014

Grey Doll & Criminal Listening: BBC Radio Four, Cuba And More Foreign Bodies

A newsletter from Bitter Lemon Press... specialist publishers of translated crime fiction ....  tells us that those of us in the UK listening to BBC Radio 4 are due for a Cuban crime treat on Saturday afternoons ( 2.30 - 3.30 pm starting 15th November ) with a series of dramatisations of Leonardo Padura's "Havana Quartet".
What's more there is a tie in with a new series of Mark Lawson's excellent "Foreign Bodies". This time he looks at how crime fiction reflects different political systems.... starting with Cuba and Communism. These programmes will air on BBC Radio 4, from Monday 17th November, 1.45 - 2.00 pm. and will run daily in same slot until Friday 21st November. In addition to Cuba the episodes will cover political perspectives from USA, Poland, Australia and Nigeria.

Ooh! I gotta pin my ears back and enjoy this lot.

Saturday 8 November 2014

Wedding Day

Mmmn.... This is for the wedding of an old friend this weekend.

She didn't want no fuss... hee-hee. So I'm only making it a little fussy....
Go Girl.


Thursday 6 November 2014

Animated Discussions: Carine Khalife Paints For Young Galaxy

By way of something different from Mrs D's learner efforts.... take a look at French artist Carine Khalife 's dream-like "paint-on-glass" animation for  Young Galaxy's "Blown Minded" music video.



Over on the Stop Motion Pro site (cos that's the animation software she used to create it) here .... Carine Khalife describes how the video came about and the technique she uses to create her painted-glass animations.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Animated Goings On: The Price We Pay...

 Mrs D do finally realise that we do have our working limits.
A minutes's worth of animated film-making do make for havoc in our aging limbs.
The Old Man's legs is dropping off again and my hand be somewhat broken.

Clearly she have neither perfected her character-making... nor grown to accept that in the cinematic life.... actors have a price to pay.
We are duly waiting to be sorted out.... yet again.
I hope she do get a move on 'cos I was looking forward to some kind of Christmas spec-"tat"ular starring "me".