Dizzy Heights

I have a dog show today in Lincoln. Where everyone tells me how lovely and sunny it was yesterday, as the boys and I shelter in the car from the rain. However I’m glad the days weren’t reversed, I’d rather have a wet dog show than a wet duathlon and it does fine up later.

We’re off to a bad start and Doggo gets an ‘E’ first thing. It was more my fault really and it was a tough course. In fact all his four courses are tough, no scrub that, tough doesn’t do it justice, two of the courses from the same judge are positively evil. Somebody must have seriously upset him. Can’t complain, it gives us a chance as it slows down the faster dogs.

On one of them there must be all of three foot between a jump and a tunnel that you have to persuade your dog not to go down. It’s going to be a laugh at least.

Doggo isn’t fazed, does well, avoids the tunnel trap and in fact goes clear on all three of his remaining runs. It’s telling that most handlers make light work of that course. The standard at this level is so high.

On one of them we run at number 8, go clear and go into the lead. Oooh the dizzy heights. We lead... for all of about two minutes. We end up just missing out on a rosette on each of the courses.

MD also did well. Just one error on two of his courses. I won’t mention his third run though, that was horrible. Oh but he snapped a jump wing when he careered straight into it, just as I thought he was going to get his first clear. He’s fine by the way, he’s made of tough stuff.

I head home where L is tapping her foot waiting, seems I may be running a bit late. Tonight is the second of our double bill of fictional characters that L may or may not fancy but needs to see the film to find out for sure. Friday’s Mikael Blomkvist was apparently a bit of a disappointment, so it’s all set up for Inspector Konrad Sejer to take the honours this evening.

The film is called ‘Eva's Eye’, it’s in Norwegian, and is a real rarity. It’s based on a book by Karin Fossum, which is the only book she’s written that hasn’t been translated into English but it was made into a film back in 1999, not in English though naturally and it’s rarely screened.

Eva Magnus and her daughter are walking along the river’s edge when they discover a body floating in the water. Eva is urged by her Daughter to call the police and they rush to nearest phone box. Where Eva rings her father for a chat instead...

When the body is eventually discovered, Inspector Konrad Sejer takes up the case. He quickly links it to another unsolved murder, that of a woman killed in her bed, a woman who was doing a bit of freelancing prostitution and who was also a friend of Eva Magnus...

Things spiral on from there as Eva lies to cover up her story and we get lots of my favourite flashbacks. Sejer himself doesn’t exactly seem to do much, occasionally nonchalantly pointing out an inconsistency in her story but generally most of the clues seem to fall into his lap without him seemingly having to even lift an eyebrow. Nice work if you can get it.

L seems still quite enamoured with our Konrad, so I think he won the duel hands down, but the real star is obviously Kollberg, his dog, off whom he bounces ideas. It’s probably Kollberg who solved it, he was just too modest to mention it.