end of November

Last week's offerings:

Limited sunshine, one gorgeous sunrise and the entire remaining quota of grey clouds left for November. (Temperatures are climbing now amid rumours and actual meteorological forecasts of an unusually mild "summer" December. We shall see.) While around me people declare to be seriously suffering from seasonal affective disorder, my version is more of an allergic reaction when facing the various xmas offerings in the shops complete with seasonal music.

Otherwise I am working on reestablishing my gut health after ten days of antibiotics. This is what the gods invented Greek yoghurt for.  

The grandchild continues to read to us, we are working our way through the Dog Man opus, which I cannot praise high enough for style, narrative structure, language and plot climax. I am serious. In today's chapter, Dog Man told us that it's usually darkest before dawn and also that sometimes stuff happens totally random. 

We also went for a long walk and when my hands and feet were more or less frozen solid checked into a nice hotel by the river where ducks and herons and swans woke us the next morning at sunrise.

Reading, listening and watching.

• Reading:  

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich. As always, this writer does not disappoint and I stayed up late into several early mornings reading it. And as always, when I have read the last page of any Erdrich novel, I need to sit quietly for a while, sorting through my head and heart and the first thought that always comes to mind is, thank you.  

The Writers' Castle by Uwe Neumahr. All about the famous writers and journalists who came to Germany to observe and report on the Nuremberg Trial against the captured leaders of nazi Germany. I read this for three reasons, no 1, it was 80 years ago when the Nuremberg Trial started and there are heaps of documentaries and reports in all of the media currently, no 2, I spent a large part of my childhood and teenage years in Nuremberg and no 3, the castle in question, where the press camp was set up, sits across the road from the home where my grandmother lived for the last ten years of her long life and where she went for her daily walk in the castle park until one morning, aged 103, she decided she had had enough of it all, stayed in bed and died. 

• Listening:

As I have grown a bit tired of the Blindboy Podcast (but still think the episode "A Psychosexual history of Digestive biscuits and their use as instruments of Physical Force Republicanism", episode 342, season 1, is one of the best episodes ever in the whole podcast world) and cannot really stomach any more true-crime-that-never-really-gets-solved podcasts, I happily switched to Ill advised, the wonderful podcast of the wonderful British actor Bill Nighy. As a longtime fan of Bill Nighy (and long before Love Actually) I am obviously biased but really, there is nothing to complain here, true to his words, it's "for people who don't get out much and can't handle it when they do" and it comes complete with his well curated weekly playlist and book recommendation at the end of each episode. 

• Watching:

We worked our way through two series based in Northern Ireland, both excellent in our opinion, one for content, historical accuracy and acting and so on, Trespasses, which is based on the excellent novel of the same name by Louise Kennedy. The other, Blue Lights, in more than one way completely unrealistic and incorrect, but great stories and acting and entertaining (but not funny).

As was to be expected, we now have completely unintentionally started to take on the Ulster accent.

 

 

And finally, in his soft Limerick accent, the outgoing and all over the island much admired and loved Irish president Michael D. Higgins said yesterday: 

I see that President Trump refers to the ‘Third World.’ I think he had better realise that the people he’s talking about are the future world and they will believe in universalism in a way that he strongly opposes, and they will make new international institutions that he has destroyed with a respect for international law that he does not have.
The sooner the majority of the world is represented in the decisions that affect all future generations, the safer our planet will be.