I'm not writing much because we're full-on with ordering and there are other less useful and less pleasant crises happening besides. More snow today too - everyone I meet is groaning!

A friend told me firmly last week that 'Happiness is a choice.' Not that she is a good advertisment (always needing to emote long and loud, always about to slit her wrists, always drinking too much, has taken up smoking recently..) but I think it's a right thought anyway. It's a quotation from Neil Donald Walsh, Author of 'Conversations With God' which I'm told is VG. (I could have a thing or two to say to the old B.**.r if I got the chance - God not Walsh.)

My reading has been mostly Swedish crime writers - Åsa Larsson, 'The Black Path' which I didn't enjoy much after setting out with hope. Too much about crimes within the financial markets (futures etc.) that I couldn't be bothered to follow and too much brutish violence - I prefer a bit of detecting, or at least a bit of suspense. Mari Jungstedt 'Unspoken' is rather better but it took me while to get focused, maybe the fault of goings on here rather than the book. Whilst I'm on the subject of swedish crime, I realy dislike Kenneth Branagh as Wallander and I dislike the way it has been directed. KB has the fleshy, petulant face of an ageing queen. Whilst having similar body proportions and fleshiness the Swedish actor Krister Henriksson is much more masculine, much more in control, doesn't keep rushing into places with no back-up and is visibly part of a team. The directing of the BBC version accentuates W's melancholy to a ridiculous degree, it's all about Wallander, the other characters are ill-defined and seem almost superfluous. I scarcely know who's who.

One of my Christmas presents was "Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir." by Rick Gekoski. I enjoyed that very much. The first chapter took me on a trip down memory lane through the books of my teenage years. For instance I took in 'Catcher in the Rye' when I was 15 so that was about right and though I was mystified by it - my reading had been mainly conventional English stuff (not even any Scots authors that I can remember, so I say that deliberately) and my very English village background (not Midsummer obviously or I wouldn't be here to tell the tale) left me ill-fitted to understand anything American but I could tell it was important - seminal even. I wasn't sure what Holden was moaning about and was startled when he ended up in a psychiatric ward, again very outside my experience, but that's what books are for. Showing us other lives. I remember reading Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson with the same puzzlement, and lack of enjoyment if I'm honest, but with a willingness to be educated.

Somewhere Gekoski quotes Wittgenstein " "If a lion could talk we wouldn't understand him."' However hard we might try to become profficient in Lionish he is a lion and I am not. I have none of his experiences and though I may intuit his appetite when he looks at me I can never experience it or empathise with him. Forms of language are inextricable with forms of experience and meaning is matter of context. (Most of that is quoted from the books but I can't remember exactly what as I had jotted it into a notebook from which I'm now copying.) Anyway, it exonerated me from liking or fully appreciating those American writers I don't feel any kinship with - or indeed any writer, of whatever nationality. As I get older I am more and more reluctant to try anything new which is silly, but what is much more positive is that I don't feel obliged to finish what I don't like.

Gekoski made me laugh with his comments on Yeats: "Amongst his earlier works he edited collections like 'Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry' and steeped himslf in Celtic lore. ...This obsession with the world of druids and mythological Celtic figures can cause a softening of the brain, and has been known to lead to the compulsive singing of songs and even (in extreme cases) to vegetarianism."

Fact is, I really like it that Yeats was so interested in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism, and astrology. Also that he was influenced by the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg and involved in Hinduism and Theosophy, but there you are - each to his own. Yeats is one of my etheric heroes.

Gekoski I also consider a hero because he speaks well of Agatha Christie whose novels saw him through a bad time after his marriage break-up. He admits they are badly written (well, he would have to wouldn't he, in the way that we teachers were meant to frown on Enid Blyton) but Aggie has great plots. Her writing isn't always bad either (that's my opinion not TG's) I've happened across some quite lyrical passges and some wisdom too.

The Natural Balance

We're into the last weeks of gestation for the Natural Balance health store and there is much to be done. The number of empty shelves is daunting but soon it won't look enough. The extra fittings have arrived and standing around looking new and awkward, not yet in their final positions. The wood smells wonderful. Our whole family is combing through wholesalers catalogues night and day making sure the stock includes what WE each consider of huge importance and agonising over what we can't have, restricted as we are by budget and space. It makes secondhand books look a childishly easy, lazy option, but I note that I'm beginning to have enthusiasm for the new project and my energy levels are on the up again.

So change really is good.

Slouching toward Bethlehem

Deep gloom here - no reason, just me going into deep gloom as happens occasionally.

I ordered seasons 1 - 3 of Heroes thinking they would be a light distraction for now and then but because of the Gloom and Lungs I watched the whole lot more or less non-stop for 48 hours. I didn't go to bed although I did sleeep uncomfortably on the couch from time to time. It's not THAT good but there are enough interesting characters and enough of a plot - and obviously what I need is a total break from reality.

I haven't had to travel distances to face testing circumstances, nor have I had to deal with dying boilers (yet!! Could still happen. It's old...) The washing machine died as the new year began but that was replaced quickly, the only sorrow being the hole in my savings. Maybe it's the sheer lack of anything that is getting me down so thoroughly. Ingrate!

Soon I will have to be in the shop again - daughters not mine, and I'm not looking forward to that one bit, but of course I will have to shake this gloom off which will give everyone the impression that all I needed was something to keep my mind occupied.

I might have ways of occupying my own mind that give me some personal satisfaction given the opportunity.

Not sorry to have finished with the shop though. Not at all. This is a transition period, I know that. I would just like it if I were transitioning into something of my own choosing, but that isn't possible at the moment.

Mostly this gloom is personal but the outside world sidles in to drive it all deeper. I've never really looked at this poem 'The Second Coming' by W.B.Yeats closely before but the ending sums up the way I'm feeling at the moment:

..... but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Extreme sports in Cornwall.

They call this snow???!!

Haven't posted for days now - brain has gone into Big Freeze and there's nothing much to write about. New Year traditional activities like cleaning out and throwing away have been looking really exciting against a back-drop of slidey pavements and icey lung-stopping air.

Fantasy land

I’ve watched so much TV over the last week that I should win a Committed Viewer Award, or perhaps an Obsessive Viewer Award (OVA - odd, but probably accurate as my brain cells die until I have as many as a foetus of 2 weeks gestation.) Personally I have no complaints about the quality of programming over Christmas. I’ve enjoyed what I watched or it has created a pleasant backdrop to a nap. Either way it has done me good. Shaun the Sheep comes top of my ‘sheer pleasure’ list; Agatha Christie's Poirot and Marple repeats top the nostalgic entertainment (I never tire of the Art Deco architecture and interiors, nor of the frocks and costumes worn by the glamorous women.)

Dr Who has been very good value too. I even watched the programmes about making the episodes. It seems like only yesterday that I mourned the disappearance of one Dr and thought the next would never match up, until Tom Baker arrived when sadly I lost track altogether in the miasma of Belgium and babes. I would have missed the end of this series too though if g’son had been staying with me. He has found almost all the episodes since 2005 ‘depressing’ and I do wonder how many actual children actually have enjoyed them. I suspect the writer of enjoying the notoriety of working for an iconic British TV series too much and getting a bit carried away with it all so he was writing for the revenants, the ex-child viewers rather than the latest batch of hatchlings. Certainly the last two episodes were rather sophisticated in content and the action quite slow to allow for emotional retrospectives. No matter. They probably did what was hoped of them and David Tennant has been the best ever. He really made the role his own. Sandy enjoys the Sarah Jane Adventures (so do I) and they are much closer to the targeted viewing age of the originals.

One question I will carry with me for ever: The Oods with their revolting facial wriggly bits, which reminded me distressingly of the way meat comes out of a mincer in strands - how on earth did they finally manage to make them almost sympathetic? Now that was magic!

Otherwise I was happily entertained by ‘The Wind in the Willows’ ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Peter Pan’ ( I really liked the film made by P J Hogan in which the growing up theme is emphasised. I still remember the utter horror with which I viewed the prospect of growing up. It isn’t only men who don’t want to do it!)

Possibly it was the wrong choice to see the New Year in but I hate the false Hogmanay shenanigans filmed weeks in advance, so put on the last episode of ‘Wallander’ with Krister Henriksson and Johanna Sällström in which Stefan tops himself, overcome with memories of childhood abuse. It didn’t help to know that three months after the episode was filmed the actress Johanna topped herself for real. So very sad .

Happy New year and tips for what to do with smelly left-overs until they reach the Tip!

Well, it’s quite obvious that Tom and I didn’t sink enough Port around the Winter Solstice to encourage the return of the Light. Or maybe we should have poured it into the earth? (Oh no! Quelle horreur. Surely that would have been too dreadfully primitive for words.)

Whatever we did wrong it is beginning to feel like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ round here and I was seriously suspecting the Gulf Stream of turning in its tracks, but as I’m told it has been up to 9c in Cornwall in the last week I suppose it can’t have - yet!

The day of the Book Moving it hardly stopped snowing for all the daylight hours. Luckily it was melting as well but there was still plenty laying themselves down and smugly staying. At night it freezes and in the morning there are more pretty white flakes fluttering seductively downwards. It must have been bad everywhere because the celebrations (with promised fireworks) in Inverness were cancelled and I don’t think much happened in town here, although no doubt the local paper will have a computer generated image of huge crowds at the Cross bringing in 2010 in the time honoured way (getting-off-yer-face actually.) To further celebrate Hogmanay neither the roads nor the pavements in the High Street have been cleared since early New Year’s Eve and anyway there was no effort at all made to clear the small side streets before that so I haven’t been out for the last 48 hours.

I’ve watched a lot of TV, of which more later, and been dredging around in the deep freeze ( the indoor one) for treats. Amazing what has surfaced. G’son and I will lunch on quorn cottage pie (home-made but for the quorn of course) and for supper there is to be squid in garlicky tomato sauce. I love cooking squid. I’m looking forward to preparing the little sacs once they defrost, then watching the rings shrivel & curl and go opaque when I dry them out in the non-stick frying pan. So much entertainment to be had from cooking! G’son now baulks at the tentacles and I accuse him of going all girlie on me.

There’s a parcel of sprats in the icy depths but I think they’ve been there since August so I may dump them when the garbage collection is due. Which reminds me of a shameful fact. I’ve been playing ‘house’ for 43 years and grumbling about smelly rubbish bins all that time, especially these days when the pickup for household waste has been reduced to fortnightly. Not beng a gardener I don’t have a compost heap (and have really never wanted one) so chicken carcasses and fish bones are a malodorous nuisance which it had not occurred to me to - freeze until the bin-man cometh!! It took my ex and his estimable wife to point this out as a solution. I hang my head in humiliation.