Day 90 – at Hemsedal Golf Club

A day based heavily around sport.

It’s the start of the main competition of the T20 World Cup from Australia, so I sandwiched a two hour walk in between the NZ Australia game and the England Afghanistan game.

All followed by the rugby later in the afternoon.

There’s a huge HD TV screen in the Golf Club which I broadcast the Exeter rugby match through.

Out walking, having crossed the dodgy suspension bridge, I met a woman with a young male labradoodle – golden retriever cross. She said he was well-behaved, but it turned out he wasn’t. At just a bit older than me, she is the owner of the town’s taxi business, with 17 cars. She told me that once the season is on, either winter or summer, there are an extra 10,000 people in town. She says she hates it when it’s like that, and despite having considered selling the business up and moving away, she never has. She has two adopted daughters that she has been parent to since they were 5, a Philippine girl aged 17, and a Chinese girl aged 15. She really didn’t sound very happy about life. Maybe I just caught her on a bad day, and she wanted to sound off to some random passer-by.

Chatting with locals is usually a good way to find out a bit about life in the area, but these days, it is necessary to overcome that first hurdle, their humour at our politics should they realise I am British, which obviously, I try not to divulge.

Reading wise, I finished a Ukrainian crime novel, The Night Reporter: A 1938 Lviv Murder Mystery.

Written in the hardboiled dialogue style of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, it is a fast moving and exhilarating crime story with a strong emphasis on sense of place and period.

Lviv at the time was part of Poland. It was to be invaded by the Nazis the following year, 16 days after the Soviets had invaded. At the time the town’s residents saw the Nazis as some sort to saviours, but that was short-lived. The town’s history, especially in the last hundred years, is enough to fascinate readers, so if Vynnychuk plans follow-ups they would be very welcome.

The plot of the crime part of the novel is nothing special, but the reader is carried along by the brisk pace and the backdrop to which it all pans out. The protagonist, Marko Krylovych, is an investigative journalist who does his research after sunset in the drinking dens of Lviv.

One day in the not too distant future I hope, it will be possible to sit in one of those dens, enjoy a Ukrainian beer, and recall the exploits of Krylovych.