Blame it on the jet-lag

I returned last Saturday from a wonderful week in New York, full of no-holds-barred book shopping at Barnes & Noble, the Strand and then Barnes & Noble again. (There is also a book shop in Greenwich Village dedicated entirely to crime fiction, Partners & Crime, which is highly recommended if you can find it and if you remember that it opens at noon.) So now, what I really should be doing is of course to blog about books. But I don't feel quite up to it, and anyway I haven't read that much of what I've bought yet - buying it is a start. These last days I've postponed everything mildly strenuous by referring to my jet-lag. In fact, having slept all of ten hours and more between Saturday and Sunday, I don't feel much more tired than I usually do at the beginning of a working week, but never mind. Because of my jet-lag, I'm not going to be over-ambitious with my blogging at the moment. I'll blog about something easy, like "Downton Abbey" - again.

In Sweden, we have reached the middle of the second series - episode four has just been aired. The plot is as satisfyingly eventful as ever, and the script has picked up after a somewhat lacklustre start (if you plan to propose to a girl you don't love, could you please not use the phrase "we'd make a great team" - it has been done). As yet, Matthew's new fiancée and Mary's new suitor aren't exactly the most vivid characters - they are quite obviously hurdles for the star-crossed lovers to overcome - but that could well change. I was somewhat disgruntled that the uppity maid Ethel was punished by fate in the guise of Julian Fellowes for her uppitiness. Not that she was very nice, but her downfall seemed all to predictable. Still, quarrelling with the plot-lines in "Downton Abbey" is half the fun (seriously, Bates letting himself be blackmailed by his wife with the old Turkish diplomat affair? What's it to him, and how could he think for a moment that anyone would be interested in Anna's part in it?).

But what can have happened to the icy bitch Mary? She's mellowed to an extent where she's hardly recognisable, and she is completely smitten with Matthew all of a sudden. To top it all, she twice holds back in trying to win him out of consideration for his drippy fiancée. Lady Mary being noble? Is this really her, or has she been replaced by an android?

Not that I'm complaining - I like the new Lady Mary a lot better than the old one. What with Edith softening as well and doing good works for convalescing officers, suddenly all the mean tricks will have to be provided by the baddies downstairs (or, in one case, formerly downstairs), Thomas and Miss O'Brien.

It wouldn't be entirely true to say that Miss O'Brien is my favourite character - I think my favourite is Mrs Hughes, who I very much hope will discover somewhere at the end of series three that she and Carson are made for each other - but she does add a welcome dose of villainy and does it better than Thomas as she is more intelligent. One of the most intriguing things about the series for me is the friendship between its two baddies. O'Brien advances Thomas's cause whenever she can, and he is duly grateful. Theirs is not a partnership founded on attraction, Thomas being on the other bus, and yet they stick together through thick and thin. Believe me, you don't see this kind of loyalty between villainous characters every day - mostly, at some point, they will be double-crossing each other.

Miss O'Brien showing a compassionate interest in the unsuitable-because-shell-shocked-out-of-his-senses valet Lang is another point in her favour. It would have been hard to warm to the always blundering Lang - really, shell shock doesn't excuse everything - if he hadn't been very good-looking in a brainy, tormented way. I wouldn't mind seeing him return to the series, once he's cured of his shell shock and general clumsiness.