BLOGFORDSHIRE NOIR

Can it really be a week already since that last working day of the year...?

Where, as they say, did that go...?

And I'd been so looking forward to a "proper" break for so long and yet I seem to have squandered yet another one and am once again looking forward to another year starting in a state of utter exhaustion with nowhere else to go but even further down the slide...

Sigh...

Boxing day came and went again. The winds were howling, the wickets were falling, and the mood was grim.

Well... Mine was...

I had a bath mid-afternoon (Too much information...? Or just a mental image you'd rather not have to have...?) and, as I sat there contemplating life, the universe and everything, my mood just plummetted which, given that I've never been the jolliest of elves during this particular season of the year, took quite some doing.

Perhaps it was the result of the previous night's insomnia...? Or the sense of yet another defeat coming up from down under...? Or maybe the after effects of the TV on Christmas Day being more than a little disappointing...? Or the losses of the year catching up with me...? Or just that sense of another year slipping away without me quite managing to grasp the true meaning of happiness...?

Heck, it might just have been indigestion...

"There's more of the gravy than the grave about you..."

My mood had become so grim, in fact, that precisely what was needed was a great big slab of Nordic Noir to set the mood.

Three series of "Borgen" still sit unwatched on the rinky-dinky recording device, despite "everyone" who we mention it to telling us how great it is, and various shows like the new set of "Inspector Montalbano" and "Arne Dahl" are still sitting there taunting us, too...

Sometimes, it's just far too difficult to catch up with shows when it's TV that you have to read...

That borrowed second series of "Varg Veum" on shiny disc still lurks gathering dust on the shelf next to the TV, too, and those lovely "Wallander" bargains are still wrapped in their cellophane, as well.

That's Krister Henriksson "Wallander" by the way, not Fatwallander or Britwallander, just in case you were wondering... (because, for those in the know, and who care about such things, such details are rather important...)

But the option of choice very quickly became the final series of "The Killing" ("Forbrydelsen III") with the sublimely understated Sofie Gråbøl as the much put-upon Detective Sarah Lund in those last ten slow-burning episodes broadcast just before Christmas last year if the trailers running between the episodes are anything to go by.

I'm nothing if not at least a year behind the times...

Anyway, Boxing Day 2013 disappeared with an impressive count of eight entire episodes being devoured (with an early evening pause to set out a huge platter of cheese and crack open a bottle of Pinot...), and with the prospect of the final two this morning, it looks as if the 27th might turn out suitably melancholic, too...

Which is, of course, precisely as it should be... just so long as nobody spoils the ending in the next ninety minutes or so...