Robin McKinley's Blog, page 106

I am not looking forward to writing this post

 

Okay, the good news.  I'm better.  I'm still a whole lot less than optimum, and I doubt I'll be having a voice lesson this Monday either, but I'm definitively better.

            I started getting better pretty much the moment I put my resignation letter through the door of the tower captain of New Arcadia.

            Yes.  You read that right.   I've just quit my home tower.  My beloved home tower, where my beloved bells live.  My beloved bells that I've been breaking my butt to raise some of the money for the restoration of.  My beloved bells that from where I'm sitting tonight I may never ring again. 

            It's a long story, really dating back seven years, when I joined.  New Arcadia is one of those towers where Things Are Done A Certain Way.  There are a lot of human groups like this.  It's one of the reasons I'm not a big group-joiner;  I'm mostly really bad at doing things A Certain Way Because That Is The Way They Are Done.  What?  Why?  But . . . bells.  I love ringing.  And you need other people to ring with.  Okay, I can do this people thing.  Probably.  And it'll be good for my character.  Probably.* 

            Fast forward to the beginning of this year, when we found out that our bells needed a big expensive whack of restoration work, and considered ways and means to raise the money.  In hindsight I can now remember (also I've discussed my no-win situation with people with better memories than mine) that there were several good ideas that were buried without trial because This Is Not The Way This Was Going to Be Done.

            Those other good ideas, however, mostly needed more than one person to make happen, and I was still free to go off in my own clueless little rogue way and try to raise money to my own (clueless) little rogue system.

            You know how that ended.

            In hindsight, hindsight being wild and wonderful and perfect and beautiful and a big pain in the ass, we—that is, you my readers and I—were a victim of our own success.  I suspect that if I'd raised £15.76 they'd have taken my money with a pat on the head and a kind smile.  But noooooo.  I had to go and raise a lot.**  You know, like, a conspicuous lot.  Somebody CONSPICUOUSLY doing something Not The Way It Has Been Decreed It Will Be Done!!!  Arrgh!  The Empire may fall!***

            Sometimes my body is brighter than I am.†  I find it interesting, now, with the savage lens of that relentless ratbag hindsight, that this lurgy first whapped me up longside the head last October, which is when the first crunch between my potential donation and the—ahem—unwillingness of the bell fund admin to view my nasty rogue money and me with any favour became visible or possibly I mean audible.  CRUNCH.  But in the first place, the sale/auction was already launched, and in the second place I loved the idea of drawing silly doodles to earn money for my bells.  And in the third place, I can be dumb as a post when I want to be.

            Well.  There's more, but I'm veering wildly over the line of discretion as it is.  There's been other stuff that has cast doubt on my future tenure at New Arcadia, but this business of the bell fund is the big one.  And I'm a homeopath and I totally believe that the mind and body are the same critter—and that if the mind is being dumb as a post the body may well try to get its attention.  I've had a swallowing-razors sore throat for a fortnight—something that never happens to me††, just by the way—so I can't talk?  Er—what is my body trying to tell me?

            So I've resigned.  The last paragraph of my letter is as follows:  'I have had a lot of time to think this last fortnight, while I've been ill.  And what I have decided is that I will no longer remain somewhere my loyalty, commitment and hard work are not appreciated.'  And as I said at the beginning of this post, after two paralytic weeks, the lurgy finally started shifting pretty much the moment I put my letter through the tower captain's door.

            So, where does that leave me—and you?  Especially the many of you who are still waiting for your books and doodles?  I have done no doodles since I've been ill these last weeks;  Fiona was due to come next week, but I've put her off because while there's plenty of other stuff she could be doing, what she ought to be doing is hauling the last or at least the second-to-last load of sale/auction stuff to the post office, and that's not going to happen.  I doubt I'm going to achieve any major inroads on the doodle backlog till I get SHADOWS in some shape to be read by my editor.  It has really not been a good year.  The overlapping story to this one is about PEG II crashing and burning last summer—remember 'dumb as a post'?  I didn't want to notice why PEG II wasn't cooperating, even when not noticing was driving me to that final edge of despair that I might not be a story-teller any more—and then frantically starting SHADOWS because I need to get paid.  Because of PEG II and SHADOWS I††† was late getting the sale/auction stuff organised for Blogmom to put up;  by the time the orders were in I was hip-deep in SHADOWS and by the time I realised the bell fund was doing the Icy British Ignoring Thing . . . I couldn't deal with that too, so I didn't.‡  Subconsciously . . . this is a lot of the reason I've been so slow getting on with the orders.  I've blamed SHADOWS, and yes, SHADOWS is eating my life.  But it's less SHADOWS than creeping demoralisation.  Doodling is fun.  But I'm supposed to be doing this for my bells, and . . .

            Okay.  The money is still the money, and it's still going to go to bell restoration.  There are lots of bells out there that need work, some of them even local.  When I've calmed down a little, when I've got used to the idea that I'm no longer a New Arcadia ringer‡‡, when I've got SHADOWS and the rest of the doodles done . . . I'll investigate other options.  New Arcadia has a few—ahem—unique problems.  Generally speaking I'm not expecting most bell admins to feel that money a writer raised by selling doodles, books and other oddments to her readers is unsuitable.  I'm hoping that I might find a local-enough tower that I might even ring there occasionally.  

            And me?  I'll keep ringing.  I can ring for Colin on Mondays.  I'm going to make another attempt to start ringing somewhat regularly at Forza:  according to Gemma, Forza needs ringers, even dubiously mediocre ringers like me.   My old home tower also meets on a Friday;  it's too far away from New Arcadia to go every week, but I might try to go occasionally.  I can't, at the moment, imagine joining another tower and getting involved in the day to day and week to week running of it, or even getting put on the 'regulars' list for ringing weddings.  But I'm pretty burnt out.

            Burnt out hell.  I'm angry and baffled and miserable.  What I said about lying in bed last Sunday morning listening to my bells and weeping?  Yes.  Big time.  I knew, last Sunday, that I was going to be writing a letter to put through the tower captain's door this week. 

            Handbells tonight with the usual crowd was somewhat soothing to the broken heart.

            But my bells.  My bells. . . .  

* * *

* It hasn't been good for my character.  But that's another story.

** The grisly truth is that I still don't have the final sums—partly because I'm so behind in getting stuff out and therefore can't have the final postage figures.  But I promised the bell fund £2000, which I think is pretty near accurate. 

*** You know, the Empire fell a while ago.              

† Not that this always takes a lot.  I haven't tested it in maths however.  Yo, you, leg, what's the hydrolateral of the isosceles particle of the square root of parsley?  Okay, maybe that's botany. 

†† It did once.  After it went away I eventually discovered I had ME.  This is not a story to cheer me up right now. 

††† That's SHADOWS, I, Robin, not SHADOWS VOLUME ONE.  AAAAAAAAUGH. 

‡ I'm so American.  

‡‡ Waaaaaaaaaah

Patricia Briggs, guest post by Susan in Melbourne*

 

My reading horizons were considerably broadened a few years ago when I picked up a new (to me) Robin McKinley book in the library. Dropped it in horror when I realised it was about vampires! But it's by Robin McKinley, so picked it up again. But …. vampires! Put it down again. I stood there picking it up and putting it down several times before the McKinley aspect won out over the vampire aspect, and I took it home to read. The rest is history – 'Sunshine' has become a favourite book, and one I have loaned or given to several friends.

It opened my eyes to the fact that vampire stories are just another form of fantasy, a genre I have always loved. They're just more modern than the semi-feudal setting that is often the framework background of many fantasies. While I've never felt the urge to join the 'Twilight' army of followers, I have enjoyed books such as 'Daylight' by Elizabeth Knox (http://www.elizabethknox.com/daylight/) and have recently discovered the urban fantasies of Patricia Briggs.

Briggs was an established writer of fantasy of the traditional style (the Raven duology, the series of Masques, etc.) and was encouraged by her publisher to develop a new series of urban fantasy that featured vampires and a heroine who has a tricky love life.

She has taken the bit between her teeth, and developed the very engaging Mercedes (Mercy) Thompson who lives in the Colombia basin in Washington State. She's a kick-ass kinda gal – runs her own garage specialising in VW and other European motors, studies martial arts, and, oh yes, she's a Walker, a shape-shifter able to slip into coyote form at will. As you do.

In the first book in the series, 'Moon Called', we are introduced to Mercy's story of being raised among werewolves in the Montana mountains, and now living nearby the Alpha of the local werewolf pack in the Tri-Cities. Mercy rescues a young, inexperienced werewolf from evil machinations and threat from within his own pack, tangles with the local vampire seethe, and in her role as Walker, identifies the magic used by Fae who were interfering on the wrong side.

It is lively, fast-paced writing, with robust characters and a strong sense of place in both Washington and Montana. Like all good fantasy, the world with an alternative reality is carefully constructed, but treated in such a matter-of-fact way that the reader willingly suspends disbelief and goes along for the headlong ride. This is a world where the Fae outed themselves to the human world some years ago with inevitable adjustments on both sides. The Fae, of course, have become 'othered' by modern America, and many now live in reservations. Over the subsequent books in the series, Briggs explores some of the issues associated with incorporating the 'other' into society, particularly as the werewolves also decide to out themselves.

Mercy is a determined young woman, fighting for her identity on several levels; firstly as a female mechanic in an environment usually seen as male; secondly as a coyote shape-changer associated with werewolves, as wolves generally hate coyotes and kill them on sight. She has powerful protection, but needs to use humour, negotiating skills, and when they fail, speed, to survive. The werewolf pack is inherently patriarchal and hierarchical which chafes Mercy's free and independent spirit, and over the series, Mercy has to negotiate relationships with two dominant wolves. The vampires pose a particular challenge to Mercy throughout the series, because as a Walker, which is Native American magic, she is immune to much of the European-origin vampires' power. Over the years, the vampires had killed off most of the Walkers, and this seethe sees Mercy as a real threat to them in the modern world. Briggs explores European and Native American magical traditions and in the series the Fae are based on well-established magical traditional tales.

I liked all the characters very much. I wanted them to succeed, to form relationships, to be happy, to solve the mysteries and challenges in each book. I liked seeing the development of fitting the Fae, the werewolves, the vampires into the modern world, and the challenges that posed. Yes, there is violence, and sometimes it's a bit squicky, but it's not gratuitous and the overall tone of the books has a lightness, rather than the darkness/heaviness associated with some violent books.

Briggs has written an off-shoot series, 'Alpha and Omega', which has a more romantic focus in the story of two werewolves. Characters and events overlap between the two series, but the Mercy Thompson series is more action-based across the various non-human types, while the Alpha and Omega series is more character and relationship-driven within the werewolf community.

I enjoyed both series so much, I am now working my way through Brigg's backlist of more traditional fantasy books. I do love discovering a new author with a list to enjoy. http://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/

* * *

* Yaaaay!  ANOTHER GUEST POST!  YAAAAAAAY!  And yes, since you ask, I have spent all evening working on SHADOWS, and I'm so tired the hellhounds may have to drive home.  One of them can hold the steering wheel and the other one can push the pedals.  No, no, that'll work!  It's not far!  I'll do the gear shift!

DAYS LIKE THIS SHOULDN'T HAPPEN TO A DOG.*

 

So let's have an Ask Robin to distract me. 

I've been wondering what was the first ever memorable story you wrote/wrestled with? I don't mean the first one you had published, but the first one you can recall pouring your heart and soul into and deciding that you wanted to be an author/writer from that point on.

Never.  It is a revelation to me every day that I'm a professional writer.  I've become enough used to it that I no longer wake up every morning [sic] expecting to find out that I sell shoes** at Wal-Mart*** but I do still wake up every morning amazed . . . which is not a bad thing really.  It's not only a rush, it keeps you at it.  How did I get this lucky, you know?  Stop mooning around and keep working.  Yes ma'am.

            I've always told stories.  Before I knew that's what I was doing, I did it.†  I told stories before I had words, and certainly before I could read and write:  and yes, I can remember a few of these, but I'm not sure I can describe them.  Once you have words it's hard to go back.  But story-telling for me is just part of my experience of living in the world.  Everything is part of a story.  It's only a question of whichever way the fragment you're contemplating chooses to run, and whether you have the time and inclination to follow.   How many of you wander around humming random hums?  Hands up, please.  I bet there are a lot.  You don't do it to do it, you just do it.  You're built that way.  You just find yourself doing it.  Some of your hums may be fragments of other people's real composed music, but some of them are just playing with sound.††  And you may go on to nail down a hum on a piece of paper and create (or try to create) a proper piece of music around it, but that's later, and that's something else, and it doesn't discount or disparage the hums if you never turn them into best selling power ballads.  Story-telling is like that for me.†††  I tell stories anyway.  That I can write some of them down and make people pay me for them is a bonus. 

* * *

* Or a hellhound.  I had a am-I-coughing-in-my-sleep^-or-is-that-a-hellhound-yowling-to-go-out-NOW? morning.  Plus delightful clean-up duty.  Plus the guy with the very long squeegee who does my first^^ floor windows showed up^^^ and I didn't dare let him into the back garden, which was reserved for urgent hellhound activity.

            And then there was the continuing to stream, the continuing to cough, and the continuing to not get enough sleep.  Whimper.  I just don't get the coughing.  How can bodies be so perverse? 

            And then there was going to the vet.  And this time our client was Chaos, who has a Vet Phobia, and turns into the heroine of The Yellow Wallpaper every time he is dragged across that fell threshold, so that was even lovelier.  He has a Vet Phobia, as I'm sure I've told you, because some arrogant little chickie of a wet new post grad vet and who didn't have a clue what was wrong with him gave him one of those full-spectrum antibiotic jabs that are known to hurt, how dare you be stochastic and PAINFUL with my dog??, and then got all shirty when he screamed, and said that whippets were 'wimpets'.  She's lucky she got out alive, but I didn't find out till later that she'd chosen her treatment because she had no idea.  Oh, and this is after she had told me that I ought to get them neutered.  That that's what responsible owners do.

            She's gone on to make some other veterinary surgery a joy for everyone, but I am left with a hellhound with a vet phobia.^^^^

            Chaos is also one of these dogs that after you have broken up his pills into tiny crumbs and mixed them in carefully with the nice drooly chicken scraps, carefully eats all around them because of course they are a non-food-stuff and are in his bowl in error.  So then you get to wodge up all the crumbs into a mushy glob and shove it/them down his throat.  DOGS.  YAAAAAAAAAAAH. 

            Handbells, this evening, for some mysterious reason, were relatively successful.  Niall even started making calls.  I don't DO calls in bob major.  It was another situation, as it so often is, that the other three have rung MILLIONS of touches of bob major in the tower, and they tell me eagerly, oh, it's just like bob minor EXCEPT WITH TWO MORE BELLS!  Yes, and driving a car is just like riding a bicycle except with TWO MORE WHEELS!  Oh, and an engine.  Spare me.  I can, in fact, get through a course of plain bob major in the tower (probably), because I ring it on handbells.  It's EASIER in the tower. 

^ which would not be the first time.  I'll take any sleep I can get. 

^^ American second 

^^^ His schedule is known only to himself, although I believe it has something to do with prophetic dreams, tea leaves and the curious incident of how many times the dog in the night-time barked.+ 

+ Maybe it had the streamings, and needed to go out.  The original silent hound evidently had excellent digestion.    

^^^^ Today's vet was another recent vintage grad but . . . golly.  Not only was she sweet to my hopelessly neurotic hellhound . . . well, if I were thirty years younger and single, I'd ask for her phone number.  I think I could work out the gay thing as I went along.  

** I think I could get into selling All Stars. 

*** But not at Wal-Mart. 

† I personally believe that the human critter is hard-wired to tell stories like we're hard-wired to learn language.  But story-telling may get squeezed or belittled or misunderstood out of the functional part of you, like other bits of our potentials got squeezed out of those of us who are convinced we cannot possibly do maths or hard science or whatever else.  

†† And as jumping-off places other people's work is the greatest.  I've said many times that I learnt a lot writing appalling Tolkien pastiche.^  I am one of the humourless frumps who say no to 'fan fiction' but as a private learning experience that never sees the light of any computer screen but your own, trash my stories with my blessing, and may you go on to write your own books that will make me laugh and cry.^^ 

^ Infinitely direr than the bad Kipling pastiche for some reason.  Probably because Kipling is not forsoothly.  On the other hand, I learnt not to be forsoothly from Tolkien.  

^^ Or distract me from coughing and no sleep.  Any book that can do that is better than the Pulitzer Prize. 

††† I also wander around the house humming.^  But it took formal voice lessons to get that started again.  I used to hum random hums when I was a kid, but it was disruptive or impolite or whatever, and I was taught to stop.  Of course kids have to learn to behave appropriately, but I wish we as a species or at least as a culture could learn better methods to teach kids, for example, that singing off-pitch is also the precursor to singing on-pitch,^^ or that if you want to tell a story about a flying dragon you don't have to worry about the frelling physics of frelling flight right away, or even about how Marigold got back from Madagascar/the grocery store so quickly.  It'll come.  Go with what you've got.  

^ Or I did till about a fortnight ago SIIIIIIIIIGH. 

^^ I know.  We've had this conversation in the forum.

Team Bell (Ringing)

 

I WENT BELL RINGING TONIGHT.*  YES.  I DID.**  At Colin's home tower, East Persnickety.  And there were even eight roughly speaking ringer ringers there*** for the eight ropes, which meant we could ring triples.  Although the 'roughly speaking' meant it took us two tries to get launched on the touch of Grandsire Triples which was eventually derailed anyway by overenthusiastic calling on the part of the conductor†.  But I was on the four, not the three, the three being my usual bell for Grandsire Triples, and I Did. It. ††  The roughly-speaking also meant that it took us three tries to get through a plain course of Stedman Triples, but we did that too—barely—and I was again on a strange bell, and therefore starting in the wrong place, in the wrong direction, and over the wrong bells.  This is very challenging when the lurgy has eaten your brain.†††

            But it was good for morale.  Hells, even ringing rounds for the beginner was good for morale.  Ringing is a fatal disease, I've told you that, right?  And it takes the rest of your life to kill you.‡ 

Mrs Redboots

I know you feel you are committed to writing a blog every night, but honestly, sometimes a sentence . . . will be enough to reassure us that you are alive and functional, if only just barely. Sleep – and SHADOWS – is more important than the blog (and you can always give us More Mongo, which can only be a Good Thing!).

katinseattle

Me, too. I second this. As much as I enjoy your blog, don't wear yourself out over it.  

Thank you.  It's a tricky balance, and one that after four and a half years I still haven't found.  I've told you that I write here every night because that's how I make sure it gets done—if I dropped down to every other night I would soon be doing it every three nights, and then every four, and so on.  There's something about the initial getting going obstacle that only diminishes to relative insignificance if it's a daily charge.  It's not wholly unlike hurtling hellhounds.  If I ever stopped to think, You mean I have to stomp through the elements twice a day for two hours EVERY DAY for the rest of their LIVES?, I would probably freak out and starting researching very large hamster wheels on line.‡‡   As it is, it's just something I do.  Every day.  Cough.  More or less.  But mostly more.    

            There's also a certain quality of YAAAAAAH SCHOOL'S OUT to plunging into the blog after a long day of book-in-progress, like a hod-carrier coming home, ripping his steel-toed boots and hard hat off, putting on his trainers and going for a run.  It's still all sweaty and muscular, but it's a significantly different kind of sweaty and muscular.   I imagine many happy short-order chefs come home and make bread, and one of our local farmers has the most affectionate hand-reared orphan lambs I've ever met. ‡‡‡

            At the same time . . . I admit the stress level at the moment is a little extreme.  I may yet have to take you up on your kind offer to let me skive off the odd night or two.  At the moment, sleep would be a fine thing if it were a little more available  . . . and unfortunately most of Mongo involves spoilers.  The scene he's busy *&^%$£"!!!!! taking over at the moment, for example, is all about grmmphflgrrrglklmmph!  

* * *

* Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough . . .  Colin says that his experience of the lurgy is that he has a good day and then a bad day and then a good day and then a bad day . . . I'd be very grateful for even fifty percent good days.  Cough.  

** Cough.  

*** Plus one wide-eyed beginner still grappling with the terror of call changes.  

† Hey, it's practise night.  This is what practise night is like:  the Peter Principle in action.  Any working bell band—barring the really annoying fabulous ones—on any given practise night will rise to the level where the majority present can no longer quite cope, and stick there, flailing wildly.  CRASH.  CLANK. 

†† Although a veil of kindness will be drawn over the quality of my striking.  Penelope, who is not usually a Monday ringer, was there tonight, and, tying up her rope after our first effort, said to me, that was like getting a bucking bronco through a dressage test.  Yes.  And it's occasionally reassuring to hear from someone who isn't used to them that those bells are baleful toads and it's not just that I have the grace, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness of a bottle-opener.  I suppose it may depend on the bottle-opener.           

††† I always enjoy the furrowed brows of ringers as they say this or that method is, of course, unusually volatile, or difficult to learn, or whatever.  Colin doesn't go in for this kind of deconstruction:  he throws a method at you and you ring it.  Or not.  But I was thinking about this tonight, because both Grandsire and Stedman are on the usual-suspects list for ringer-flustering methods.  There are two things about Grandsire, first, that it's not a member of a family of methods, it's just out there, stark, on its own;  there are no clues or hooks or familiar landmarks.  It's just you and Grandsire and the wild itch on the end of your nose that begins the moment you pull off.  The second thing is that most of the methods you learn at least early on in your career (I don't yet know about the later ones) have calls that come slightly before you have to do anything.  So you have about a blow to remember what you're doing.  In Grandsire for most calls you stop dead in your tracks and double dodge.  This is fine in one way:  while you're double dodging you have your chance to remember what you do next.  But if your over-enthusiastic plain bob doubles practise-night conductor calls two blows too soon you have time to think, no, wait a minute, this is too soon, and you'll probably get it right.  If you're ringing Grandsire, chances are you'll have automatically started double dodging before your brain has a chance to say, no, wait a minute . . . which means you're now in a big mess.   Well, Penelope and I were in a big mess, because we'd dutifully stopped where we were and double dodged with each other.

            Stedman's threat to humanity is different.  The reason there are people in padded rooms murmuring brokenly, No, no!  Not Stedman!, is because there is no anchoring treble line.  Most of the standard methods, the treble has a simpler line through the method, and it remains unaffected by calls.  This means that your first and in many cases most reliable means of finding out where the hell you are if you've just come adrift is to see where you are in relation to the treble,^ because the treble's line does not change however many calls there have been.  Not so in Stedman.  The treble is following the same infernally screwed-up line that all the other bells are following.  If you come adrift in Stedman, unless you have a scarily overachieving conductor, you're just frelled.  We got through just our plain course tonight (finally) because Colin is a scarily overachieving conductor.  Although I'm sure that much shouting is not good for a man still half under the spell of this unusually vile and degenerate lurgy.  And I still wasn't quite where I thought I was when he called 'that's all.' 

^ Supposing you haven't come so far adrift that you've forgotten what method you're ringing, which also happens.  Not only to me. 

‡ Niall's usual Tuesday handbell group is short-handed tomorrow, so he asked if I'd fill in.  Yes!  Yes!  I said.  I'm not drooling!  That's the lurgy! 

‡‡ Degus are cute.  http://www.petsathome.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Info_10601_caring-for-your-degu_-1_10551 

‡‡‡ All right, I don't mean to be disingenuous here.  But you could say that writing about writing is my equivalent of coming home and finding out that I'm supposed to go on carrying hods at home too.  No, no!  I want to ring bells!

            I want to sing, some day.  Sigh.  Cough.

Lurgy Update*

 

It was such a gorgeous day today that hellhounds and I had a proper hurtle, despite my feeling about as lively as that mess in the bottom of your gutters, thanks to another of those ten-hours-in-bed, two-hours-of-broken-sleep nights.**  I'm catching up on back issues of magazines.  I've thrown a few more books against the wall.***  I finally downloaded BEJEWELED from the iTunes store because I'm keep hearing that it's the original and still the best of those line-up-the-same-shape/colour-things-they-go-bang-and-you-get-points games.  It's okay, although I could do without the Fu Manchu voiceover.  It's not as good as MONTEZUMA. 

            But when I finally crawled permanently out of bed† it was a beautiful blue sunny day and the frelling birds were frelling singing and the hellhounds were all over me†† and I, drowning in guilt as I am because all things considered they've been very good about my less than impeccable maintaining of standards the last week and some†††, decided, okay, countryside is in order, and we went out to seek same.  And it really was pretty fabulous.  We didn't even meet any unusually savage off-lead dogs.‡ 

katinseattle

I want more Mongo. I want a whole book of Mongo.

No pressure. 

Certainly not.  I'm very relieved, since I've been working to this plan since the last time we had this conversation.  Mongo did, in fact, break training in a big way today . . .  noooooooo you moron you were told to [mmrgllrrrmph].  This is not how this scene went last time.  Yelp!  Arrrgh!  Yaaaah!  —It's going to go a lot differently with Mongo in it.   I so need sleep.  

blondviolinist

You know how there's Team Gale and Team Peeta for the HUNGER GAMES trilogy? And Jodi Meadows wants Team Sylph and Team Dragon for her INCARNATE trilogy?‡ 

I'm on team Mongo. 

::Beams:: 

* * *

* Does anyone else keep having their eye caught by the '12' of our new year and have brief dazzled moments of thinking that means it's still last month?  Or is that just someone with a lurgy and a deadline the end of the month that unfortunately it is? 

** Colin and I have been emailing lethargically back and forth today, ostensibly about tower ringing tomorrow night, but a certain amount of reciprocal whining has crept into the conversation.  I admit I'm a bit relieved that not everybody else that has this lurgy is all shiny and new after three days.  Uuuuuuungh.  And unless I've developed bubonic plague by tomorrow I probably will go ringing.  I may not be able to do much but ring rounds for beginners, but Colin has beginners who need rounds rung for them, and it would at least mean pulling on a bell rope.  Maybe Colin and I can cough in harmony. 

*** I'm an even nastier reader when I'm ill and short of sleep. 

† Having wept through the sound of my bells ringing. 

†† I was talking to a friend today who'd been ill in the night too.  She has cats.  And while she was sitting in the bathroom at a totally untoward hour having a small private self-absorbed moan, as one does under these circumstances, the cats were of course all over her.  Hey!  You're up!  Great!  Aren't you glad to see us?  Aren't you going to feed us?   Barring the 'feed us' part, hellhounds have a similar reaction.  Hey!  You're up!  Hey!  All these critters that sleep about twenty hours a day and don't care which four they're awake for are very disorienting . . . when you're pretty disoriented anyway.  But last night I kept coming downstairs for more (filtered) water and fetching more magazines, and then back upstairs again getting up for a pee because I'm drinking all this flaming water, and by the time I officially let hellhounds out of their crate they were all it took you long enough.  So, we're going out NOW, right?  I wonder if they could learn the concept of 'dressing gown'?^ 

^ Mongo could.  The problem with the Mongos of the world is that they do not sleep twenty hours a day, and they need stuff to do.  If you don't give them stuff to do, they will find stuff to do.    

††† Here four bright beady little eyes roll significantly toward the sofa.  You just keep giving us extra sofa time, beloved hellgoddess, they say, and much may be forgiven.^ 

^ I'm also practising using the argleblarging new TV set up with the new freeview, non-satellite box and the forty-seven new remotes.+  I'm practising in case the Nice TV Man turns out to have more little stories he would like professional writers' opinions on.  Why don't people do their homework.  His manuscript starts with an elaborate description of what the first illustration should be.  Two seconds—okay, maybe twelve seconds—on any reputable how-to-write-for-kids site will tell you this is not what you do.    

          I realise the line about what is acceptable advice-seeking and what isn't may be blurry in some areas.  I try to double-check before I ask Gemma any medical questions, for example, that I'm asking out of my natural, not to say pathological, inquisitiveness, and not out of a desire for free advice.++  And she's also a friend, and I give friends a whole lot of slack because I think if you actually know someone who does something it's reasonable to ask them first, and if she started asking me about illustrations in kids' books I'd just tell her what I know.  Which is not, in fact, much, and she'd be better off researching some good how-to-write-for-children web sites.

          And if this joker had said, the first time he was here, oh, hey, wow, you're professional writers?  Say, I'm writing a children's book, and I wanted to know how detailed I should make the descriptions of the illustrations, maybe you can tell me?, I would have.  There wouldn't even have been any blood loss (probably).  But he shows up on our (Peter's) doorstep without warning one afternoon with his frelling story in his frelling hand?  No.  Not on.+++

            So I don't want to have to ask him any more questions about the TV.  So I'm practising.  I'm not watching TV, mind you, but when I'm going to be lying on the sofa for a while, I turn it on. 

Ajlr

I'm so sorry to hear that The Cough is still unwilling to leave, Robin. I hate that feeling one gets where it seems as if one's brain is going to be shaken out through one's forehead at the very next convulsion. 

I tend to specialise in the brains-leaking-out-your ears cough.  Whatever that is that is causing intolerable pressure on my forehead is unlikely to be brains. 

            Yesterday while I was not watching television there was something so clearly bizarre on the screen that I found myself distracted from the book I was going to throw across the room in a minute anyway#.  Eventually I figured out how to call up 'information' and was apprised that this was a film called 'The Trail of the Screaming Forehead' in which a small harmless American town is taken over by . . . alien foreheads.  Ahem.  I think whoever came up with this idea was having a really bad case of flu-with-pounding-headache at the time and had been hitting the cough medicine a lot harder than is safe. 

+ They breed.  Like coathangers and odd socks. 

++ Even over here, where we do have the NHS, so the absolute question of money is not acute, doctors in their off-duty hours are off duty.  

+++ I am a curmudgeon.  But we knew that.  And I haven't read it—that's Peter's self-immolation.  But Peter mentioned the illustration thing, and I picked the ms up off the table and . . . yup. 

# Carefully missing the Christmas tree.  I'm not even feeling shame about its continued upness yet.  Hey, I'm sick.  

‡ Although the herd of pygmy rhinoceros was a surprise. 

‡‡ Team Sylph and Team Dragon?  Ewwwwww.  I'm on Team Sam.

Here Kitty Kitty (guest post by Black Bear)

 

A while back I did a guest post for Robin about wolves—specifically, about Wolf Park, and MY wolf (Wolfgang) who I did not actually technically meet, but I met several of his friends instead and it was fabulous anyway.  In the interest of equal time, I figured I should also do a post for the cat people among us—myself included, of course!  So here you have it.

I used to work at my local zoo as a volunteer in animal care, and was lucky enough to spend a year or so assisting in the Lion/Baboon/Wild Dog area.  Let me tell you that nothing, but nothing, is comparable to standing in a kitchen in the pre-dawn light doing food prep, and suddenly hearing a full-on male lion's roar from 15 feet away.  It was terrifying and thrilling and marvelous all at once, and I was completely smitten by these big cats.  Any chance I have for further encounters, I will happily take.

So this summer I had the pleasure of making a visit to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Center Point, Indiana. (Not to be confused with Crown Point, Indiana, where John Dillinger once broke out of prison and escaped in the sheriff's personal car.  Crown Point is also exciting, but has fewer tigers.)  While Wolf Park is a research facility, breeding and managing a "working" pack of wolves, the EFRC is purely a rescue facility.  All the animals are sterilized, and most come to the center as adults under unfortunate circumstances.

While I knew that some states in the US make it fairly easy to keep big cats as "pets," I'd grossly underestimated the number of stupid people who actually attempt to do so.  EFRC exists to take care of animals who have been dumped, abused, or seized by law enforcement from people who thought it would be "cool" to own a couple tigers.

I'm going to refrain from ranting about that here, because I suspect you can all fill in the blank.  At any rate, the EFRC is pretty amazing.  They have over 200 big cats on the premises, which is a mostly wooded property way out in the middle of rural Indiana.  Since cats (unlike wolves) don't generally form large social groups, they're all caged separately, or in groups of 2-3 adults who get along well.  The center has lions…

…cougars…

…bobcats…

…leopards…

…and tigers!

Plus a few odds and ends like servals and ocelots, but I didn't see any of those guys on my visit.  Mostly they have tigers—because, sadly, the exotic beauty of tigers means that they're far more popular with exotic "pet" dealers, and there are a lot more of them needing rescuing.  This includes white tigers

and tabby tigers, who have lighter fur and dark orange stripes instead of brown or black.

Visting the Center is a great experience; for a low admission donation, you get a tour of the facility and one-on-one chat with one of their volunteers, who can tell you all kinds of fascinating stuff about these amazing animals.  There's nothing fancy here, no state-of-the-art cages and holding pens; it's all lumber and chain link fences and donated food, and nearly all their workers are volunteers.  The place is a labor of love by humans for big cats, and is absolutely worth a visit if you're ever in west central Indiana.  But they're hard-core about safety–lay one finger on the chain link of an enclosure, and you'll be asked to leave. No ifs, ands, or buts, it's a no-contact facility and they don't mess around.  But it's still a way of getting closer to these cats than you could almost anyplace else.

If you'd like to know more about them (or would like to look at some much better pictures of their cats) their website is here: Exotic Feline Rescue Center.

In which Mongo is comforting

 

It's after one frelling a.m. and I haven't started the blog yet.  Since one of the ways I avoid thinking about how much time the bangleflandadblinging blog eats is by starting that night's post in the (comparatively) early evening and then writing it in driblets while I work on something else at the same time* this is bad.  What else I'm doing may not be very demanding—if I weren't half thinking about the blog I might not find out after it's too late that I've once again ordered enough plants for next season to fill all New Arcadia's gardens** for example—the point is merely that when it's AAAAAAUGH o'clock and for frell's sake I started the beastly blog hours and hours ago . . . at least it hasn't all been the blog.  When I'm up against it like this there's nowhere to hide.  I have to write it and I have to write it NOW.

            Today's problems began last night as they so often do.  Yesterday was seriously bad anyway because I had to get up whether I'd had any sleep or not (I hadn't), so today I decided I would simply stay in bed till I'd had enough sleep.  It might be February.  Well, it wasn't, but it took about twelve hours to get about six hours' sleep, between the cough, the sleeping sitting up because of the cough which means that not only aren't you sleeping very well even when you're sleeping, when you wake up to pee again because you keep drinking water from the sad delusion it will dampen your flaming throat, you are crippled with muscle spasms.  Woman was not made to sleep sitting up.  Fortunately the hellhounds are so accustomed to ignoring my screaming at inanimate objects that they don't react to my screaming at . . . me.  Which either says something rather ominous about the success of my tendency to anthropomorphize (or at least critter-morphize) computers, furniture, articles of clothing and little noodgy objects, or it says something even more ominous about my status the last few flu-addled days.  Or it may just be they don't recognise the harsh rasping croaks that are the extent of my vocalisation lately as having anything to do with the hellgoddess.***

            Anyway.  Twelve hours eats a vicious hole in your day.  I'm still too enfeebled to think about pulling on a bell rope so, barring some half-speed hurtling and a cup of tea with Oisin†, all I've been doing ALL FRELLING DAY is working on SHADOWS.  So I haven't got anything to tell you about. 

* * *

Maggie has (also) had a bad day, and last night was pretty stressful too.††  There have been skeletons coming out of closets and bogeys from the corners.  The world is not the shape she thought it was.  And she has just withstood a creepy-making conversation about when what you have is a relationship and when what you have is a parasite.  And why do we keep pets anyway? 

* * *

 I looked down.  Mongo hadn't quite given up on the possibility of more sandwich.  He was sitting beside my chair with his head pressing rather heavily against my leg.  When he saw me looking at him his tail, of course, began to wag.  "Trombone," I said, and he leaped up and shot away to look for his rubber trombone.  It wasn't a fair command:  I should know where it was before I sent him after it.  You want to reinforce your training with success.  But I wanted my parasitic dog to show off how clever he was.  I heard him scurrying around the living room.  Not there.  He made a quick pass down the hall to the front door, but the dining room door was closed.  It wouldn't be in the dining room.  He scampered upstairs.  I heard him nudging the door to my bedroom open.  It might be under the desk or the bed.  No.  Not in the bathroom either.  (Dog toys occasionally got in the bathroom as the result of the drama of baths.)  Damn.  It was probably in the back yard then.  Damn.  Use your brain, Margaret Alastrina, not your stupid emotions.  He's not going to find it and he's going to be unhappy and feel that he's failed.  Which will be your fault.

Mongo flung himself downstairs again.  I might be giving up hope but he wasn't.  I was just about to get up and open the back door, which was better than not doing anything, but dogs have a strong sense of fairness and Mongo would know I hadn't played fair with him, even if he forgave me, which he would.  But he trotted to the back door himself without looking at me.  And reared up on his hind legs, took the handle in his mouth and pulled down.  The door snicked open.

I had never taught him to do this.

He ran outside and found the trombone under a rosebush.**  He came dancing back in with it again (I admit he didn't close the door behind him) and laid it proudly at my feet.  "You are wonderful and amazing," I said, "good dog."  I got up and fed him the last slice of chicken from Val's sandwich-making.  I also closed the back door.  Then I put the plate that had had the sandwiches on it on the floor so he could lick up all the crumbs.

"I can live with 'parasite'," I said.  "It doesn't bother me." 

* * *

* This does not include the hours I spend reading up on South American vampire bats when I meant just to be checking the spelling of 'pipistrelle', or trying to find a nice neat short definition of the difference between quantum theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum physics^ so that if I'm going to make a fool of myself I can do it forthrightly and in full cognizance, or googling not quite at random in pursuit of that perfectly off the wall metaphor that I know is out there waiting for me on . . . just . . . the . . . next . . . opening . . . screen. 

^ Which appears to depend on who you read.  A bit like asking what the difference between fantasy and science fiction is.  

** Hey.  It's a small town. 

*** Hellhounds are actually being very patient with me.  They are not getting hurtled to their standard full extent due to human infirmity^ and I don't dare let them off lead because I can't call them back.  You don't realise just how much you use your voice for things other than conversation till you haven't got it to use. 

^ My dogminder costs.  Put me in my All Stars and I can still walk.  

† I forgot to remind him to boil the mug I used for forty-eight hours and then let it stand in bleach for a fortnight.  He'll probably remember.  It's a little hard to miss that there's something wrong with me.  Oh, and he claims he's going to write me another blog post.^  And he has the new Finale update.  Sob.  Lust.  Loooooonging. 

^ If this is pity, I'll take it. 

†† Although there was a Very Cute Boy. 

††† Sic.  Maggie's mom likes roses.

Yet another day of no brain and too much coughing

 

Comprehensive ickiness marches on.  Booooooring.  Last night I not only had insomnia but The Cough decided to demonstrate what it could really do.  I had no idea it hadn't been trying previously.*

            So, between having done nothing today** and having no brain to make something up, I will depend on forum comments for structure an d(apparent) progression tonight. . . .

Anne_D

And I'm the only person on the planet who didn't/doesn't like THE SOPRANOS or David Tennant.

Nope, not the only one. Tennant is my least favorite of the new Doctors. Never watched The Sopranos, but from the clips I've seen and the reviews I've read, it's not my sort of thing. 

My problem with the Sopranos is that it's about a nice normal (which is to say completely banjaxed and dripping with neuroses and relationship problems) American family . . . who happen to kill people.  Because they're Mafia.  Whatever.  The point is they kill people.  This is just part of the set up.  It's supposed to provide depth or irony or something.  Ewwwww.  No.  I'm not going there.  Killing people is not a normal, acceptable response to business and personal failures.  It is not a healthy, positive way to deal with rivalries and frustrations.  You want to have a story about going around killing people, you need vampires, werewolves and evil magicians.

            I sat through several episodes at irregular intervals because I had so many friends who loved it.  I'm not all that interested in endless developmental rehashings of personal troubles**, which left the murders.  Squicky.  

EMoon

No, ma'am, you're not. David Tennant's acting in ANYthing (including the modern-dress Hamlet production in which he played Hamlet–a miscasting if ever there was one) seemed to be limited to acting bugf*ck crazy with his eyes bulging out. 

Well, yes.  Exactly.  He makes me look composed and serene.  Take a Valium, David, and sit down.   

Sanderling

But this pretty much explains everything, in my mind – for two years, anytime anything went into their mouth they were left feeling pretty awful. I'd stop wanting to eat after that, too. 

Yes, well, it's not that straightforward.  They have spells when they're all over their food like normal dogs, especially Darkness.  Chaos, even enthusiastic, runs to the end of his enthusiasm pretty fast.  There have been moments when I've thought I might even get a little weight on Darkness.  (These moments go away again.)  But you never know when or why such a spell is going to come on—or how long it'll stick around.  Their moods vary from day to day . . . and meal to meal.  Sometimes the Don't-Eat Fairy coshes them halfway through what was looking like a total gulping-down epiphany.  At least one more item that has to be added to the list of Things Robin Must Brace Herself to Be Made Crazy By however is the notorious sighthound indifference to food.  Salukis are infamous for this.  Deerhounds are too.  My guys are one-eighth deerhound—although one of the whippets of the previous generation belonged to the Food Is Optional philosophy too.  She was a very sweet dog, but completely, ahem, barking, and I have a fair range of experience of canine peculiarities.

 Diane in MN

. . . I'll stop talking about it in case Teddy's bad angel starts getting ideas. DOGS. Yes.  

Chaos is squirting again.  )(*&^%$£"!!!!!!!  DOGS. NO.  Next time it's cheetahs or axolotls. 

Claning

WHY DO I HAVE THE LURGY WHEN I AM A PARAGON OF VIRTUE?

Some health advocates do make it sound almost as though germs are only incidental to diseases and if you get sick it is ALL YOUR FAULT. 

Yes, because you haven't done it THEIR WAY.  Here their book only costs £49.99, the cheap rate at the local gym will only rip £1200 out of your flesh every year and the class/machine/trainer you want won't always be unavailable, the supplements you absolutely must have will only be another £100/month, and the special organic food and fashionable superfoods won't do much more than quadruple your grocery bill.  It's your health, isn't it?  What are you waiting for? 

MNCathy

. . . we took our dog . . . to an off-lead dog park this summer and she went to investigate a pond and somehow fell in. She is not a water dog. I don't think I've ever seen such a look of puzzlement on a dog's face at finding herself knee-deep in water, and she got out fast. A young Labradorcame along shortly thereafter, and she stood and watched in disbelief as it chased around in the water. She clearly thought it was mad.

Yes.  There are water dogs and there are not water dogs.  Mavis, my dog minder, asked me a couple of times last summer when it was beltingly hot if the hellhounds really wouldn't get in the river to cool off and I said they haven't yet.  Darkness has fallen in twice by stalking a duck too near the edge, but he has rocketed straight back out again without pause to invest in the experience.  I've twice waded in on hot days*** and tried to persuade them to join me, but they stand on the shore with that alert, patient look that many dogs get when you're doing something even more doolally than usual and they're hoping that it's not going to interfere with your taking them home again by the most scenic possible route to their nice comfy dog bed (we say nothing about food).

            In my deranged and poverty-stricken youth, I used to housesit for an aging lab who had to be prevented from plunging into the Maine Atlantic in the winter because it was hard on his rheumatism.  

Mrs Redboots

The first of your recipes is known in my family as "Cow cake", especially when iced with chocolate butter icing as my mother cuts it into portions whose size resembled that of the concentrate then fed to dairy cattle. 

I love this.  LOVE LOVE LOVE.  Cow cake.  That's it forever.  —It is one of those recipes that everyone has a version of.  But I've never heard it called cow cake before.  Hee hee hee hee hee hee.  I personally much prefer the digestive-biscuit version to the rice-krispies version that I saw far more of when I was a kid.  Although this may have had to wait till I discovered digestive biscuits, which we didn't have in the States when I was young.  Graham crackers or vanilla wafers just aren't as good. 

BlueRose

It appears your computer equipment is possessed by all nine circles of gremlins. Have you considered something other than Outlook – like Thunderbird?

Outlook is a right bitch to deal with if it decides it doesn't like you, and if you DON'T need the appt bit then Tbird will sort your email side right out.

And I imagine you have all your appts on your iphone anyway 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  You have not fathomed the depths of my daily shame.  My appointments are in my small paper pocket Ringing World diary. †

            I did ask Raphael why I'm on Outlook, and it's as I was expecting:  he says that given the sinister conflation of my somewhat unusual requirements plus what local broadband support is available plus what the archangels themselves can do, Outlook is still the least of evils. 

            Sigh. 

Mrs Redboots

. . . the only problem with 1571 is that you actually have to pick up the phone and listen to the dial tone to know that you've got a message . . .

The message on ours (recorded by me!) says "You're welcome to leave a message, but as we are very bad at checking for messages, please ring our mobiles!" 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  I try to prevent people from even knowing I have a mobile phone.  'Oh that pink iPhone-shaped case that I wear around my neck at all times?  Oh, no, it's an emergency bar of chocolate.' 

* * *

* Somebody tell me what frelling evolutionary advantage is conferred upon one who has insomnia and/or hosts a cough.  Being able to get by on very little sleep would be great, but that's nothing to do with the experience of insomnia:  maybe you're awake when the camp guard has nodded off and you see the sabre-tooth tiger creeping toward the headman's baby and you raise the alarm.^  But next day when you move camp they're going to have to carry you, you're so tired . . . and they aren't going to.  Every early prehuman for him/herself.  So the sabre-tooth tiger gets you instead, next night.^^

            I can't remember if there's any actual science for this or not, or whether it's just the obvious joke that every semi-literate menopausal woman since Darwin has made, but that your caloric requirements plummet the moment you're no longer fertile makes some sense.  That provides another pair of hands to tend the tribe's children while the young women are either pregnant or foraging, and these hands increase the likelihood of more kids surviving and don't cost the tribe anything. 

            Insomnia?  Coughs?  Successful parasites don't kill their hosts.  Coughing gets you left behind too, and you may be glad to see that tiger.  

^ Or maybe you don't.  The kid's a brat, and is going to grow up to be another big stupid bully like his dad.  

^^ Or possibly not.  It may still be full of headman's brat.  

** Except a few paragraphs of SHADOWS.  Not enough paragraphs, but still . . . paragraphs.

*** Yes:  there goes 90% of all nongenre story-telling media.  I'm a lowbrow^, what can I tell you. 

^ With a few exceptions.  Most of which (Eliot, Trollope, Dickens) I would be happy to argue are genre really.

† Remember that a 'river' in England is any minor concavity that contains at least one teacup of water for at least forty-eight hours once a year.  By these standards New Arcadia has quite a nice little river.  It's still only knee high in the middle. 

††  http://www.ringingworld.co.uk/purchase/diary-calendar-other/diary.html

Death-deflecting chocolate

 

Oh BLERG.  When (still) feeling like death and mildew and old socks . . . clearly chocolate is called for.*  Besides, I need a night off. 

              Sometimes what you want is whatever you can do really fast. 

(Almost) Instant Chocolate Gratification 

4 T butter

8 oz dark chocolate

2 T golden syrup, dark Karo, or light molasses (warning:  molasses has much more flavour than the other two.  You need to like the taste of molasses if you use it here)

Cinnamon or vanilla, possibly

8 oz plain digestive biscuits, rich tea biscuits, wheatmeal biscuits, vanilla wafers, graham crackers, or whatever of that kind of thing either takes your fancy or you can grab in a hurry because the necessary moment is NOW 

Melt butter, chocolate and liquid sugar together gently in a small pan.  Stir till thoroughly mixed.  If you want to use cinnamon or vanilla, use a half-tsp here.  I use cinnamon not vanilla when I use molasses, other than that it's whatever.

Rolling-pin your biscuits to fine crumbs.  Stir the chocolate stuff in.

Pour into a greased or carefully parchment-papered (this includes up the sides) 8" square pan and refrigerator for several hours till set.  Don't cheat:  it's messy and annoying if you do.

So I guess I should say making this is dead fast (and easy).  Waiting around for it to finish turning into itself you need a sofa, some hellhounds, and a few trashy novels.

 

Less (Almost) Instant Chocolate Gratification, But Still Pretty Fast 

10 oz dark chocolate

6 T butter

1 egg

½ tsp vanilla

1 c granulated sugar

1 ¼ c plain flour

½ tsp baking powder 

Reserve about 2T of the sugar.

Melt chocolate and butter together and cool.  Beat the egg, then beat in the sugar till light and pale.  Add the chocolate mixture when it's cool enough not to cook the egg** and the vanilla.  Then add the flour.  If it gets too stiff to stir easily, knead the rest in.

Break off bits of the dough and roll cookies into big round pebbles the size of walnuts.  (I do this between my palms.  Some people prefer a table.)  Roll in the reserved sugar.  Then space out on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.  I squish them very lightly with a finger so they don't roll around.  They will not be pretty if they turn themselves from free electrons into molecule clumps.  Ahem.  You can get the lot on a single baking sheet, but use all the space, they do spread.

400° for 8-10 minutes.  They crack all over. 

They don't take nearly as long to cool as the refrigerator bars do to set. 

            And may we all sleep better tonight than I did last night. 

* * *

 * At least Chaos is feeling better.

 ** Generally speaking this is less of a disaster than you might think.  In ordinary daily the-queen-is-not-coming-to-tea baking infinitesimal flakes of cooked egg disappear.  Fortunately.

Cough

 

I am a walking cough;  a cough on two legs;  cough made flesh.  Cough.  Talking is a mistake.*  Eating is perilous.**  I think the arrival of the cough is supposed to indicate you're improving.***  I'm too tired from coughing to tell.  Cough.

            But SHADOWS is still going.†

            I am however cranky†† about the bad news about ultrasonic jewellery cleaners.  I had thought part of the point of the ultrasonic gadgets is that they're gentle on jewellery, possibly to the point of being so gentle they don't really clean anything.  (I do know that you can't do anything to pearls except smile at them and wear them against cashmere.)  I also didn't know, or had forgotten, since I've barely worn my tourmaline ring in twenty years, that tourmalines are fragile.  Feh.  And yes, of course I can ask our nice local jeweller for advice about cleaning, but he will feel obliged to go all professional on me and I was hoping some of you guys might have the answer without the official hedging.†††  Ah well.  More little brushes and washing-up liquid in my future then.  I guess I can bear it.

            And before I bore you all to death . . . I am loitering frivolously with the thought of going ringing at Forza tomorrow.  This is a really bad idea.  I don't have the time, I don't have the energy, I have a novel to finish—the bells there are tricky sods, I already know Gemma is not going to be there, and I might find myself the only mediocre ringer present, with my usual additional burden of not being able to handle those particular bells and the supernumerary burden of the lurgy.

            Maybe I'll just stay home, and post a recipe.   And cough. 

* * *

* Why do hellhounds insist on waiting till I say something?  Isn't the mad waving of hands containing harnesses enough to tell them they should sit?  

** Eating is always perilous.  Ask Darkness and Chaos.  AAAAAUGH.  Having given the impression that he was on the mend last night, Chaos barely made it outdoors this morning to start the diabolical double-ended geysering all over again.  AAAAAAAUGH. 

***  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/09/new-year-health-regime-last  The headline in the paper version is more eye-catching to me in my present state:  'Dr Luisa Dillner Says Switch Off the TV, Stop Snacking and Start Exercising to Ensure You Feel Good Beyond January.'  I haven't watched TV in YEARS,^ I am post-menopausal and my daily energy allowance is 3.5 calories and I NEVER snack, and I walk an hour and forty five minutes to two hours EVERY DAY.  WHY DO I HAVE THE LURGY WHEN I AM A PARAGON OF VIRTUE?^^ 

^ I talked to Hannah today.  "Hi," I said.  Cough.  "Wow," she said.  She still hasn't read CHAOS.  After she does we're going to read either JANE AUSTEN or CHARLES DICKENS by Claire Tomalin.  Or both, because we have so much time to read.  She was telling me about the TV programmes her daughters are watching and I've never heard of any of them.  I haven't been deeply involved in a TV show since BUFFY.  No, really.  ANGEL?  Too gruesome.  FIREFLY?  Eh.  It had its moments, but it never entered my heart and mind the way BUFFY did.+  It's probably safe to say that I wouldn't be writing my first high school novel at fifty-nine if I hadn't watched BUFFY at an embarrassingly advanced age which was nonetheless more impressionable than it should have been.  Which may or may not be a good thing.

            Oh, and the mysterious non-cooperation affliction of our de-cabled TV?  We changed the batteries in the remote and it still refused to climb away from BBC 1.  So there was a knock on the door one afternoon and there was the Nice Man who had installed our freeview box who wanted to ask if one of us would read his CHILDREN'S BOOK MANUSCRIPT.  Fortunately Peter answered the door and dragged him into the sitting room and thrust the remote at him.  There are too many buttons on the wretched thing.  And Peter is reading his manuscript.  I had my mouth all open to do my rant on this subject which is that ASIDE from the fact that I am a cranky cow, what I think about an unpublished manuscript has no more to do with its chances of getting published than what Chaos or Darkness thinks of it.++  Go start researching AGENTS.  What you need is an AGENT who likes your work.  But I was forestalled by Peter's old-fashioned gentlemanliness AKA the man is nuts.  

+ And I'm the only person on the planet who didn't/doesn't like THE SOPRANOS or David Tennant. 

++ Er—you aren't expecting us to eat it, are you? 

^^ Of course they also tell you to get seven to eight hours of sleep every night.  They must be joking. 

† And my email seems to have settled down . . . for the moment.  Sort of.  Or, possibly, not, and I just don't know it.  It was even weirder than I told you yesterday, as I eventually found out when I stopped abusing my damaged larynx with screams for vengeance and had a look for the easily findable stuff that had reappeared.  When I got back to the mews and turned the old laptop on—which is the one I've been using the last several flu-demented days of filing and deleting—I was braced for what I'd just seen on the cottage machines.  But what had come back was NOT what I'd deleted that morning.  It was some OTHER stuff.  Whimper.

            So . . . I basically have no idea.  GIBBERGIBBERGIBBERGIBBER.  Right.  Enough of that.  I have a novel to finish.

            As to why I still use Outlook . . . I forget.  I will ask Raphael to remind me.  I think it's to do with my apparently somewhat unusual requirements combined with my total lack of patience, interest in, or skill in understanding anything to do with computers.  I think it's what they're willing to support me with.  The bright spot, such as it is, is that the shiny new laptop with the vibrantly hated Win 7 on it did in fact discharge its battery by 50% overnight despite being turned off.  YAAAAY.  For once something goes wrong even when there is an archangel present.

            However, those of you hopefully offering advice about the hellhounds:  I think you're probably late to the party.  Long-time readers have heard all this before.  My hellhounds are five and a half years old and I spent the first two of their years of life on this planet trying to find out why they had diarrhea all the time.  The answer is, as I eventually figured out with absolutely NO help from any of the fantastic and expensive panoply of vets, specialist vets, and specialist vets' laboratories and techno-gizmo whatsits that I consulted, that they are allergic to all cereal grains.  (Pancreatitis, as someone mentioned on the forum but I can't find it now, is one of the things they were temporarily diagnosed for.)  I'd tried an elimination diet nearly first thing, but I took them off brown rice while continuing to use barley and oats, and then swapped.  It took me a long time to think of all cereals.  But two years of eating something they were wildly and violently allergic to has left them with some permanent damage. 

            And the only time they won't eat when I'm nearby is when they're already looking for an excuse not to eat, and me being an ogre will do.  (I think this has more to do with the fact that they know I want them to eat and I'll be testy if they don't.)  I'm actually not very fond of the alpha theory.  Why would a good leader want his/her colleagues not to eat?  The alpha business as the great comprehensive answer to everything is less popular than it was, for which I am grateful.  When it first came crashing out it was The Solution, and I thought, since it clearly didn't apply all that well to my experience, that I just had weird dogs.  Well, I do have weird dogs, but the alpha theory has also lost centre stage.  I am, however, a great fan of what works.  If something makes you and your dog(s) happy and healthy and comfortable and satisfied, then it's the answer for you.  

†† Cough 

††† Note to self:  The Answer never exists.

            I can't very well ask the fellow who bought the stones for us.  That was twenty years ago in Maine and I have more or less deliberately^ forgotten everything about him except that he was a self-absorbed twit. 

^ Ie making a virtue of Middle Aged Brain