Robin McKinley's Blog, page 108

Wha'?

 

Bluuuuh.  I'm even more brain dead tonight than I was last night and I've already used the available SHADOWS snippet for the foreseeable future.  It's a great pity that snippets have a dismaying tendency to give the plot away.*  After all, this blog is Days in the Life, right?  SHADOWS is about 90% of my life right now, days and nights.  

Vikkik

(You know, if you like, you can post us a scene from SHADOWS EVERY night until the book is done – we won't object 

That's very kind of you.  I appreciate the vote of confidence. 

although your publishers might disagree with me on that one….)

 Well, self e-publishing is all the rage these days, isn't it?   We could offer a subscription for a New Robin McKinley Fragment service.  

B_twin_1

By then my arms were full of Mongo. "Mongo, you loophead," I said, burying my face in his fur, "what are you doing here?"

*whispers* They do tend to be loopheads. 

While I do not have your eclectic and inclusive experience of the breed . . . I know.  Mongo is drawn from life.  

Ajlr

And your publishers could perhaps start thinking about a range of objects with Mongo on, in some form (a doodle?) for the launch in 2013? I would so buy a T-shirt or something.  

What a splendid idea.  Thank you.  Speaking of a subscription service . . .  We might think about an extended doodle shop.  Definitely t shirts.  Knitting . . . I mean tote . . . bags.  Mugs.  Fuchsia leather jackets with satin logos.  All Stars.  If there are Blondie and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse All Stars—which there are, I have both—why not Mongo, Ebon and Gulp All Stars?  

            I did wrench a little time free and go to bell practise tonight.  Three-dimensionality is great when you've been staring at a computer screen all day (and night).  Although I've mentioned before that there's a strong fantasy element to bell ringing**—it's just not satisfactorily explained by large hollow chunks of metal, long ropes with fluffy bits and clusters of crazy people—and it may be that bells suit the brain-blasted writer better than certain other occupations—boxcar derby, say, or pearl fishing—which would require the subject to re-engage with reality in a much more unpleasantly comprehensive way.  Bells, you're tucked up in a nice little initiates-only bell chamber . . . well, usually.  I had the standard annual phone call from Crabbiton this evening, asking if I were available to help ring in the New Year tomorrow at midnight.  It's not like I'd be asleep.  But Crabbiton is not only a ground-floor ring but the whole point is that the ENTIRE VILLAGE crowds into the church and stares at you.  It's probably good for my character.*** 

 * * *

* Note:  Casimir is very good-looking.  

** Which perhaps balances the horrible reality of learning method lines.^ 

^ While muttering frantically to yourself:  it's not maths, it's not maths, it's just numbers on a crooked line, it's not maths.+ 

+ Speaking of maths.  Some day when I'm awake, so, like, maybe April, I want to talk some more about Shape of Brain and the culture chasm between the lit brain and the maths brain.  I had a couple of ha-ha you lit people are so funny from science brains in response to my blog post objecting to ABSOLUTELY SMALL'S doolally Schrodinger's cat metaphor—in other words I didn't get it.  True.  But from where I'm standing it's a bad metaphor, as is the 50 pound boy travelling at 20 mph a bad metaphor.  They don't engage me with the material, they throw me farther out—like inconsistent characterisation or a howling plot hole in a novel.  Suddenly you're not reading a story any more, you're staring at hen scratches on a page (real or virtual) and deciding you'd rather be getting on with your knitting.  Cats in boxes don't randomly die because you look at them.  When Fayer eventually gets to the photons being in two places at once but collapsing into one state or another if they're measured it's fine.  I don't want to write a term paper on it, mind you, but I follow it okay.# 

            But all metaphors are metaphorical.  They depend on common ground, common language, common assumptions.  Which is dangerous and unreliable, you know?  I know:  I'm an American who has been living in England for the last twenty years and am still daily baffled by this alien culture I now call home.##   How much of my almost  throwing ABSOLUTELY SMALL across the room when I got to the part about the 1000 cats in boxes, 500 of them marked for death###, is not that the metaphor is bad in an absolute sense~ but because I'm reading/listening to it with a lit brain, not a math brain? 

# Being a fantasy writer may be an advantage here, speaking of shape of brain.  So this earnest science bloke says, okay, these particles, they're sort of like waves, and they're sort of like infinite waves, and they can be in two places at once, or maybe they can be everywhere at once, theoretically, just so long as you don't look at them.  Oh, okay, says the never-having-had-a-lot-to-do-with-classical-physics-and-therefore-having-no-mindsets-to-break-but-liking-without-worrying-a-lot-about-cognitive-dissonance-things-the-size-of-pegasi-and-dragons-flying fantasy writer.~ 

~ And, being a fantasy writer, one of the things I am thinking, while this earnest science bloke is digging himself in deeper with this complex and exotic taradiddle of his, is, there's a difference between looking and measuring.  The problem with the subatomically tiny stuff is that our eyes can't focus that small, so we have to have instruments that measure.  What happens if you befriend a flower fairy with very good close vision?  I suppose her body heat or her breathing or something would still upset the photons.  Miffy little beasts, photons. 

## Method bell ringing.  Please. 

### My restraint was chiefly because I was listening to it on Pooka at the time, and I do not throw my iPhone across the room. 

~small or large 

*** No.  It's not. 

 

 

 

Mongo Saves a Little Piece of the Universe, the Piece with Maggie in It

 

 It'll need more saving, though, before the end. 

           I need a night off.  Which is to say I've been banging away at SHADOWS like a mad thing* and if I had more days like this one I'd make the end of January.  And, in fact, I think I've probably got an hour or so of story-telling-brain left tonight, and I want to use it.**  So you won't mind a minor example of Mongo saving the universe for a blog post, will you?***

            This is only second draft.  It may look different after I find out a few more of the bits I still don't frelling know.   It'll also need to be brushed and pressed and its hair-ribbon retied.

 * * *

. . . Army tank?

            Now I could hear—feel—something—the crackles and frizzles and—something-going-wrong-with-the-air—as all the unbent unfolded steel-legged gizmos made contact with whatever was beaming out of the tank.  Whatever the army thought needed to be in a tank to keep safe.  What were they protecting, the thing, or us?

            The new network of the tank-thing and the gizmos were chugging it out, the something-wrong-with-the-air.  I could see two gizmo-boxes from where I was sitting, soldiers standing over them, the lights from whatever feedback they were watching glinting off their faces.  There were almost-visible ripples wandering, weaving down the road, past our bus shelter.  They were like the visual equivalent of being seasick.  I closed my eyes, but I could still feel them, like you feel a boat heaving up and down.  I decided that was worse, and opened my eyes again.

            There was an army guy—in fact, several army guys, but the one in front had more stuff on his cap and his shoulders than the other ones, and he was looking grim and maybe angry—coming toward the bus shelter.  He saw us all right.  One of the guys with him was holding a sort of gun-wand thing out in front of him—oh, her—and she was pointing it at us.  There were three little red flashing lights at the tip.  The flashing was kind of hypnotic.  It looked like it was saying, ha ha ha, got you.

            And suddenly the bus shelter was full of gruuaa.  I was looking at the big angry army guy and as the bus shelter filled up with gruuaa I also saw a medium-sized hairy black-and-white cannonball arc immediately in front of the lead army guy.  Mongo.  I wasted half a second thinking, no, it can't be Mongo, there's nobody home now to forget and leave the door open.  But you know your own dog.  It was totally Mongo.

            Mongo dived across the road immediately in front of the army guy staring at me, and broke his gaze.  He looked at the dog, gestured to one of his aides and looked back at me—

            Except that he didn't look back at me.  He looked toward the bus shelter and then looked confused.  His eyes skated right over the open front of the shelter where Casimir and I (and a very large knapsack and a very large algebra book) were sitting—in a seethe of gruuaa.  The army guy stopped and looked around like he was searching for something he had dropped.  He looked up again, straight at the bus shelter like he was sure whatever it was was in that direction.  Then the woman with the wand-gun said something to him, and I noticed that the blinking lights had gone clear.  Ha ha yourself.  He scowled at the lights, turned away . . . he was missing out the bus shelter, and heading toward the gate into the park.

            By then my arms were full of Mongo.  "Mongo, you loophead," I said, burying my face in his fur, "what are you doing here?"  But my stomach was telling me something was seriously wrong. . . . 

* * *

* With a brief inspirational session of handbells.  Gemma^ arrived first and, bright with holiday cheer, wanted to know how I was.  Uggggh, I said, I'm trying to write a book in five months.  Usually I need about a year.  A good year.  Christmas?  Yes, we had Christmas.  I know this by the presence of a turkey carcass in the refrigerator.^^  And various amusing objects still scattered around the tree.^^^  Oh, and the tree.   

            Gemma's a doctor, a GP.  She's heard weirder life stories than mine# and she works insane hours.  But I had the feeling she was beginning to look a little professional at the end, when I said I had to stop because I had to get back to work, and she said, how much longer will you go on?, and I said, it depends on how long my brain lasts.  A couple of hours I hope.   —If she starts asking me how much sleep I get and what hours I keep I'm in big trouble. 

^ She of the fabulous flower-arranging.  I told her my Christmas garland had been much admired, and she said that her fantasy is to do bespoke special-occasion flower-arranging after she retires. 

^^ And more than the usual amount of chocolate in the cupboard. 

^^^ It's not slovenliness or bad housekeeping, leaving your unwrapped gifts out in plain sight for a while after the occasion.  It reminds you what they are.  It may even prompt you to write thank-yous.  

# . . . Maybe. 

** Yup.  Done.

*** You'll just have to wait for the book to find out what gruuaa are.

Singing and leftover turkey

 

Priorities:  I had a close encounter of an unfortunate kind tonight with a large, turkey-slashing knife, partly, perhaps, because I rarely have close encounters with large, turkey-slashing knives, and am less than adept.  The wretched thing skidded and was coming for me and I had just enough time to think 'it's okay, I'll still be able to type' before it changed its mind and did not sink half an inch into the ball of my thumb, squirt blood all over the kitchen, and require a nine-fingered sprint to A&E. 

Jacky

About the woman who starts the flash mob and where she gets the nerve. My 2 sisters and I sang in a choir a generous 1 hour bus ride from home. We sang on the bus on the way to and back home again. Singing in public is easier if you start young enough, and if you have good experiences of it. We were on occasion either applauded, or inspired others to join in. It wasn't a scary thing. It was exhilarating. 

I take your point (and good for you), but this is not quite the same thing, at least not from where I'm sitting trembling in my seat.  There were three of you, and a bus full of people is still a lot smaller and more organised an audience than that shopping mall food hall with a couple hundred or something* people milling around.**  My empathy keeps stalling on the fact that I haven't got a soloist's voice, but I can imagine being one of the other choir members standing on a chair and adding to the uproar.  But that first woman . . . among other things, if I were her, I'd be worrying that they'd clap a bag over my head and be ringing emergency services before enough of the rest of my gang got going to prove that there was method in the manifest madness.

Glinda

As for the first woman singing in the flash mob – I think soloists are born, not made; I used to have a reasonably decent singing voice, but never ever wanted to be a soloist.  

Again, I can't (ahem) speak to the singing aspect because I haven't got the voice to not want to solo with.  But about performance . . . there is not necessarily alignment between ability and attitude in this, as there is also not in so many things.  Think of Florence Foster Jenkins.

             I remember when I was still running occasional writing seminars.  The hopefuls that made my heart sink were the ones who worked like blazes, had totally the right attitude about putting in their hours and honing their craft by experience . . . and who apparently had no talent, no ear, no imagination whatsoever.  I didn't feel it was any part of what I'd been hired to do to tell anyone this—after all, I could have been wrong—and there's always something practical and pertinent you can say about someone's writing if you think about it.  And then there were the clearly talented ones who couldn't be bothered.  ARRRRGH.  So they'd give you one perfect poem or—usually—two and a half perfect chapters which they weren't going on with because it was beginning to dawn on them that it was going to be work.***  If you could yank that one person's natural skill and replant it in the drudge. . . .

            It was one of the greatest shocks of my life when I was sent out on the road for the first time after BEAUTY came out and I was a shiny new thing, and I discovered that I could do public speaking.  What?  Where did that come from?  I was absolutely not made to be able to put myself over in person.  Clearly there is some mistake.†

            I had been thinking about singing performance however which made me rewatch this clip†† from a slightly different angle.  Last voice lesson we got into a mix up with our music again, which is to say that theoretically I have accompanist's copies of everything I'm working on and theoretically Nadia already has her own copies of (nearly) everything because it's music she's accustomed to teaching.  But I managed to leave at home my extra copy of something she'd managed to leave her copy of at home too.  So she sang it with me.

            This has happened a few times before.  I always enjoy it, which may or may not be a good thing.†††   But this time what I particularly noticed was the difference not in our voices per se—which is to say she has one and I don't—but in our performance.  She invests what she sings, even when it's something that she doesn't herself sing.  I don't invest—even when it's something I'm (supposedly) working on.  I stand there like a little plank with a sort of weak buzzing noise coming out the top end.  Sigh.  This is sort of a good thing in that I'm developing enough brain-space even while I'm singing to make observations—there is a very strong herding-cats element to singing—but it doesn't tell me what to do about an observation like 'eww'.  We've talked about trying, about how to relax and stop trying, to let the music move through you—not unlike letting a story move through you, you might think, but I haven't found the musical on switch yet.  Siiiigh.  Watching these people singing the Hallelujah Chorus this time I was thinking, I bet I can pick out which are the actual choir members and which are the audience singing along.  Okay, maybe some of the choir members are horribly embarrassed at what they're doing . . . but I don't think they'd stay members of that group if they embarrassed easily.  Therefore the trying-their-best but plank-like ones are the audience. . . . Where is that frelling ON switch.

            I've been trying, this fortnight while I haven't got Nadia to take things to, various ruses to startle myself into singing with some feeling.  I've been singing Christmas carols all my life, so those should be terror-free and familiar enough to take risks with.  I've reverted to some of my favourite old folk songs, like Greensleeves (or What Child Is This) and Early One Morning and Ash Grove and Down by the Salley Gardens, which have very simple flowing lines, and come as near to making you flow with them as any mere music can do.  I wander around the sitting room‡ singing, sometimes merely standing facing in directions other than into the piano and the wall behind the piano, and sometimes singing while walking.  Sometimes singing in a furrin language helps—both Non lo diro and Santa Lucia are better in Italian.  Sometimes singing furrin is just more intimidating—Caro Mio Ben and Dove Sei still feel wildly, ridiculously, shamefully beyond my reach—despite the fact that I find them beautiful and respond to them, just not in any way I seem able to let out of my mouth.  ARRRRRGH. 

            There's one semi-exception to all this.  Generally speaking/singing I sound least pathetic on the simple old folk or folk-style songs.  And Se Tu M'Ami is still technically beyond me—I'm pretty sure I told you Nadia tried delicately to discourage me from tackling it, it's just every frelling thing I sing seems to be mournful and here's one that isn't.  That's where Santa Lucia comes from—she gave me that one because it's cheerful.  Too late, though—I was already well stuck into Tu M'Ami.  And of all of them, and however technically calamitous my efforts are, I most get into Tu M'Ami.  With Tu M'Ami I have occasional little glimpses of how the dynamics arise organically from the line of the song.       

             I feel that my perverse streak could take a break here any time.   

Melissa Mead

My maternal grandma used to give me socks. Generally argyle. I came to love "grandma socks," and now I can't look at argyle socks without missing her. I still have a couple of pairs of "grandma socks." They're getting holey, but I won't throw them out. 

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, WOMAN, YOU NEED TO LEARN TO KNIT.  

* * *

* I'm not sure how much you see even in the long shots. 

** Although people in the hall can probably escape more easily if they're not in a social-uplift mood.  You'd have to be extremely grinchy to get off at the next stop and wait for the next bus.  Grinchy and possessed of a great deal of spare time, bus schedules being what they usually are.  

*** On the whole give me 90% work ethic and 10% talent rather than the other way around, but you do need the 10% talent. 

† The Personality Creation admin is clearly as screwed up as the Story Council.  There may possibly be some delivery system problems as well.^ 

^ 'If no one is there, please stick it in the kid third from the right'.  

†† This clip, for anyone who doesn't read this blog faithfully every night:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE 

††† It's a good thing for a choir member to like singing with other people.  It may not be a good thing for a student to like having a teacher to hide behind. 

‡ Much to the consternation of the hellhounds, who are a bit dubious about my singing anyway, and feel that if I move away from the piano toward the centre of the room I should be going to go sit on the sofa.

Absolutely clueless

 

Okay I'm having some trouble with Mr Fayer and his ABSOLUTELY SMALL.  Has anyone else read it?  In the first place.  His Schrodinger's cats.  He suggests 1000 boxes with 1000 cats in them, one each.  The cats—ALL the cats, each and EVERY ONE of the cats—are a mixture of 50% alive and 50% dead.  Already I'm confused.  What do you MEAN 50% alive and 50% dead?   What?  How?  Why?  By what MEASUREMENT (which of course is The Question*) are they 50% alive and 50% dead?  What does this mean to the CATS?  And then, having shut up all these possibly ailing and distressed cats in boxes, which cannot be a positive reinforcement of whatever their level of well-being might have been before you did shut them up in the boxes**, you start . . . opening the boxes.  And by the fact of your opening the box and peering inside the cat magically—yes, I said magically—mutates into a pure state of either 100% aliveness or 100% deadness.  WHY?  THIS IS NOT HOW A CAT IN A BOX BEHAVES.***   Unless of course it DIES of a HEART ATTACK the moment it sees you.  And after the first few hundred boxes you have a nervous breakdown as a result of your sense of responsibility for the deaths of (approximately) 500 out of 1000 cats.  Not to mention the prospect of trying to support the liveness of 500 frelling cats until you can convince the RSPCA to come and take them away . . . and also try to convince the RSPCA that they shouldn't sue the crap out of you for animal abuse, although, supposing they arrive before you run out of cat food, the vibrant, 100% healthiness of the 500 live cats should at least confuse the issue.

            I don't think I'm getting out of this example what I'm supposed to be getting out of it.†

            And then there's the whole 'absolute' size thing.  He goes through the business of how we interpret size as relative.  Something is large or small as soon as we have something to compare it to.  A photograph of two rocks with a blank background tells us nothing about the size of the rocks till the background is adjusted to have a piece of human being in it for scale.  I don't myself see how this is a difference in kind with his 'absolutes' of 'large' being something you can set up an experiment to observe with a negligible alteration to the thing observed compared with 'small' being something you cannot set up an experiment to observe with negligible alterations—'small' means all experiments create non-negligible, which is to say substantial, alterations, no matter how clever you think you are, which pretty well futzes your experiment.  How is this not relative?  It's relative to your ability to create an experiment with this or that outcome.  It's relative to your size and galumphingness.  If we were the size of photons, we could create a sufficiently sub-photonic experiment to measure photons,†† photons being one of those absolutely-small things.  I get it (I think I get it) that large means you can straightforwardly create useful experiments and small means you can't, but—to this English lit major—this just means some science bozo is inventing new definitions for 'small' and 'large'.  That's fine.  The small and large part works.  It's the stuff around it I'm having some trouble with.

            And then . . . back to reality . . . He says, 'Imagine that a small boy weighing 50 pounds runs into you going 20 miles per hour.'  WHAT?  How is this small boy weighing 50 pounds managing to run into you going 20 miles per hour?  Turbo-charged roller skates?†††  His parents should be had up for criminal negligence.  Then he says, 'Now imagine that a 200-pound man runs into you going 5 miles per hour. . . . The small boy is light and moving fast.  The man is heavy and moving slow.'  EDITOR'S NOTE:  that should be slowly.  'Both have the same momentum. . . . In some sense, both would have the same impact when they collide with you.  Of course, this example should not be taken too literally.  The boy might hit you in the legs while the man would hit you in the chest. . . .'  Emphasis mine.  He never does mention the boy's propulsion system.  I'm still worried about the chances of a small boy with negligent parents and turbo-charged roller skates living long enough to grow up and become a famous Olympic sprinter.

            And finally . . . the maths question.  On the VERY FIRST PAGE of the preface Fayer says that all we have to do is develop our 'quantum mechanics intuition' which is what this book is for.  He says:  'This lack of a picture of how [certain quantum-challenged] things work arises from a seemingly insurmountable barrier to understanding.  Usually that barrier is mathematics.'  To understand these things not immediately obvious to the unenhanced human eye ' . . . requires an understanding of quantum theory BUT IT ACTUALLY DOESN'T REQUIRE MATHEMATICS.'  Emphasis again mine.  ' . . . the presentation in this book is descriptive.  Diagrams replace the many equations with the exception of SOME SMALL ALGEBRAIC EQUATIONS—AND THESE SIMPLE EQUATIONS ARE EXPLAINED IN DETAIL.'

THIS IS MATHS! THIS IS TOTALLY MATHS!

 

 I don't think it's merely an excess of figgy pudding pressing on my brain here.‡ 

* * *

* See:  absolutely small, which means that you can't create a means to observe it without also creating non-negligible change to what you're trying to observe.  This is also a working definition of 'spitchered'.  

** Speaking of altering what you were trying to observe. 

*** This is much more my experience of cats in boxes:  http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+womens_dark_tshirt,137590640 

† He says demurely 'I have to admit to simplifying a little bit here. . . .'  Um.  But it turns out all he's referring to is the number of live and dead cats.  You probably would not get exactly 500 of the one and 500 of the other.  Oh.  Okay.  Like that addresses any of my problems with this parable. 

†† And if he gets his totally-ignoring-reality Schrodinger's cat metaphor then I get this totally-ignoring-reality itty-bitty extremely molecularly dense human metaphor.  

††† Aren't there some physics, speaking of physics, about how fast it's literally possible for a substantially shorter rather than a substantially taller person to run, aside from talent and fitness and so on?  Which means a small boy—fifty pounds is little—is even more unlikely to be going 20 mph.  Without turbo-charged roller skates. 

‡ EMoon:

Where is the digestion I had in my 20s, when immense amounts of anything I liked could be ingested without discomfort or weight gain or…whatever? 

The one . . . the one thing to be said for having spent the last forty frelling years fighting my own personal daily battle with my waistline is that when I hit menopause and the diet wars became dirty, scorched-earth and take-no-prisoners, I was to some degree ready.  I mean, I wasn't ready, I'm appalled at how little I get to eat^ and how much I pay for it when I stray a spoonful of brandy butter over the line.  But I am used to the mindset of Calories Are the Enemy, and most of my menopausal friends weren't, aren't and won't be.  I'm not utterly without, you should forgive the term, form in the matter of assuming all food is guilty until proved innocent.^^  This is not to say I won't eventually get old and tired and say THE HELL WITH IT.  I WANT TO EAT TOAST AGAIN.  WITH BUTTER.  AND MARMALADE.    But at the moment—and this is a conversation I have had with myself at least every winter solstice holiday period for several years now, and at various less predictable times dotted about the calendar, and the situation is getting relentlessly more extreme—I'm still thinking about my rather ramshackle skeletal system, its weight-bearing capacity, and the hurtling of hellhounds, and I figure I can live like this a while longer.  Which is, I repeat, not to say there will not come a day when I decide on toast.^^^  But preferably after SHADOWS—or the PEGASUS trilogy—has made me a multi-zillionaire and I can afford to replace my entire wardrobe. 

^ And how much less than that I do in fact eat, so I can keep my CHOCOLATE and sugar in my tea. 

^^ And in this courtroom, it won't be proved innocent.  

^^^ One might almost say 'plump for'.

Boxing Day

 

In which we take all the boxes, the bags, the ribbons, the wrapping paper, the already-broken bits, the totally unidentifiable shreds of whatever and the stuff that should go straight to Oxfam and bundle it up somehow and start making vague plans to have a Major Dump Run in the near future.

I think I'm suffering Caloric Hangover.  Or that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.*  I started ABSOLUTELY SMALL on Pooka on the morning hurtle** and it's like . . . what?***   Oh, gods, frelling science again.†   I thought it was going to be the last lost volume of THE BORROWERS.

I'm also still listening to Christmas carols while hellhounds and I lie on the sofa admiring the view††† and reading about roses and maths.‡  This year's favourite album is an old Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band one:  Gold Frankincense & Myrrh‡‡ which I slap back into the player every time Peter is out of the room for a bit.‡‡‡  The lyrics are included.  Maybe I could try singing along. . . . 

* * *

* Mmmm.  Christmas pudding with brandy butter.  Mmmm.  

** The drawback to frelling holidays is that TOTALLY FRAUDULENT sense that you HAVE MORE TIME TO DO STUFF.  Of course in the present situation what I haven't got is more time, but there are only so many hours a day I can spend on SHADOWS without a total systems crash, and trying to defibrillate wetware can be tricky.  So I spent some quality time this morning, while I was testing the amount of caffeine required to get us on line, putting 1,000,000,000 pairs of All Stars back on their shelves^ and hoovering up the ankle-deep shed geranium petals in the cottage attic.  And in consequence found myself eating lunch at 3 pm again.  Drat. 

^  Yes.  I have All Star shelves. 

*** I'm also having some trouble with the narrator, who I think in an attempt to sound properly serious and scientific instead sounds like your old chemistry teacher who really wanted to fail you.  

† Although I suspect Fayer of having forgotten, or rather of never having known in the first place, what it's like being an ordinary dumb^ non-science person.  In my day one of the few things I 'learnt' about the scientific method was that it was lofty and detached and had no contact either with individual subjective humanness^^ or with whatever was being studied.  The scientist stood at the correct distance with his (or occasionally her) clipboard and took cool objective notes.^^^  Then they discovered that inconvenient business about how the simple fact of observing certain things—teeny subatomic particles, say—changed them, and what do we all do now?   In this 2010 book Fayer mentions in passing at the beginning that 'of course we interact with what we observe' . . . and then keeps going to make his real point about the 'absolute' difference between small and large.~  WAIT A MINUTE.  EVERY SCIENCE TEACHER I EVER HAD~~ IS STANDING IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM AND GIBBERING.

            And if that's not bad enough, he starts with Schrodinger's damn cat.  But @juliagertrud posted the perfect answer to all things Schrodinger's cat on Twitter a few days ago:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itQVDA6_TME&feature=g-user-u&context=G2ac07aeUCGXQYbcTJ33bJuwRQr7QRamAJkMSiCooYTc_y_vBnibw

And I'm delighted to hear that Schrodinger himself called it 'burlesque'.  

^ I'm still going to get back to you on the not-calling-myself-dumb thing.  But not tonight.  

^^ 'I ate too much Christmas pudding last night.'  'Is that really cute lab tech trying to catch my eye?'  'If I don't pick up my dry cleaning soon they're going to give it to Oxfam.'

^^^ This is, just by the way, one of the reasons I bailed on the scientific method.  There is no such thing as objectivity.  Except in a pure, philosophical, Plato's-cave sort of way, which is of limited use down here on the ground. 

~ Which seems to be—but I haven't got my hard copy of the paper book here to check, and this is probably another one I'll have to listen to twice—that 'absolutely small' means that you can't set up an experiment that won't disturb it to a disruptive degree.  'Large' means that you can set up an experiment that will not be derailed by the fact that you're observing it.   I think this is deeply cool (supposing I've got it right).  It's like you grew up with north, south, east and west and if you ever said well what about in or out or Middle Earth you were given detention.  And someone is now telling you no, it's vortex, gron, megabat, dibbleworthy and trout, and it's more like Middle Earth than it is like north and south.  Oh.  Okay.  Give me a minute.  I think I'll like this.  If maybe you could just give me a bucket of ice water for my head. 

~~ This would be up to fifty years ago, remember.  Fifty years ago we were still hunting mammoths with spears. 

†† Diane in MN wrote:

May your computer come to the miracle step of its flowchart and return to normal function. 

How I love Sidney Harris, who decades before xkcd^  was telling us science was funny: http://www.leasingnews.org/Sidney_Harris/probability.gif

http://two.leasingnews.org/cartoons/RUSTY-(5).jpg

. . . And who clearly also has dogs.

            But we will not discuss my computers the day after Christmas.^^ 

^ http://xkcd.com/54/ 

^^ The fact that there is a blog post is all you need to know on the day after Christmas.  

††† Didn't get any tinsel up today however.  Hoovering the attic was enough.  But Georgiana did come for tea and trained Peter and me rigorously in Kindle use.  I had to go download a couple of new things onto Astarte afterward just so I didn't feel all hopeless and retro.  I wonder if I can convince Peter that his Kindle needs a name? 

‡ Now there is a combination to fry the eyeballs and turn the brain into pancake batter. 

‡‡ Which I bought that year, 2001, when we saw them live at South Bank . . . and I was too chickenlivered to ask for an autograph.  Yes.  Really. 

‡‡‡ When I was first over here we had to negotiate how long and how intensely I was allowed to play my Christmas music.  Generally speaking I play it nonstop from Peter's birthday through New Year's and stop, and Peter promises not to kill me.  Although we do get the MESSIAH all year. 

Susan in Melbourne wrote:

To which I offer http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU, but you'll have to watch, not just listen. 

My favourite is this, and I can't remember how I first saw it, but it may well have been someone on the forum: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

Which you also have to watch as well as listen.  One of the things that makes me catch my breath every time is that very first woman standing up and singing.  In the circumstances where does she get the nerve? 

 

Christmas

 

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THE LAST PHOTO ISN'T SHOWING.  IT'S HERE IN ADMIN.  BUT IT DOESN'T APPEAR ON THE PUBLIC BLOG.  HAVE I MENTIONED LATELY THAT I HATE WORDPRESS?  I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE WORDPRESS.  I'LL ASK BLOGMOM ABOUT IT TOMORROW.  TONIGHT I AM GOING TO BED. 

Yes, I worked on SHADOWS today.*  Next question**.

The front door of the mews since last night after dark.

Wreath.  Tactful, Peter-placating***, reusable wreath.†

Tree. You will note Large Box to the right.

I admit I didn't manage to hang every ornament we own on it, but it's definitely decorated.  The important baubles are up.  The robins.  The horses.  The roses.  The bells.  Some time between yesterday and New Year's I'll probably finish getting the tinsel over the lampshades, picture frames, candlesticks, and piano. 

 

Another view of Large.

Yes.  It's Large.  Peter said, You wouldn't buy me a microwave.  I said, No, I wouldn't, and it doesn't weigh enough, unless they're now making plastic microwaves in which case I'm not going to buy you one twice.

 

::LOUD RUSTLING AND RIPPING NOISES::

Highlights:

Gasp!

Yes.  It's true.  I bought Peter a Kindle.  Now all we have to do is figure out how to use it.  Georgiana and Saxon will be here tomorrow:  I'm proposing they do it.  Hey, I bought it.  My job is over.††  But the point is that you can dial up the typeface size, and even with his reading specs Peter finds tiny mass market paperback type size trying.

 

Oooh! Roses!

Peter bought me a book on roses.  How . . . surprising.  Okay, so I've been eyeing it on line for months.  But the gorgeous slipcover is a surprise—as is the fact it's signed and numbered. 

 

 

Yes, it's still a thrill when other people sign their books.

 

I had assumed it was just another drop-dead-glam coffee table book full of glossy pictures but it's a lot more, well, beautiful than that, and a pleasure to handle as an object and never mind its subject matter.†††  It's smaller and fatter than a coffee table book—like a book you would, ahem, read—and the edges are gilt!—and the pages are matte not shiny, and it's paintings not photos.  You even have a sewn-in bookmark.

La France. Usual historical suspect for first Hybrid Tea. Blah blah blah.

I grew her at the old house.  She was a frail heroine, prone to fits of the vapours, and a terrible head-hanger.

The GUARDIAN is always full of helpful suggestions this time of year, and look at what I found only a few days ago on offer at http://www.tattydevine.com/ :

Hee hee hee hee hee hee

 

I immediately turned to Peter and said, don't you really want to buy me a Perspex bat necklace?  What? he said. 

Oh and the large parcel/small coffin/medium-sized old-fashioned maiden aunt?

It's a bin.

No, really, this is a great present.  We have terrible bin luck at the mews.  This kitchen is where most of the heavy cooking happens, and you want a serious bin with a lid, and you want something that it doesn't take both hands to open.  We've had a series of expensive foot-pedal-lid-opening bins which are the joy of our hearts for about six months and then they break.  But they're so expensive you don't just rush out and replace them.  Well, the last (broken) one is over a year old and . . . I saw this in a catalogue (yes, I have some strange tastes in catalogues) and it had all these rave customer reviews and . . . ask me in six months. 

. . . And now I seem to be extremely full of turkey and champagne and Christmas pudding and brandy butter and . . . I forget . . . zzzzzzzz . . . . 

Hope yours was merry. 

* * *

* Not, perhaps, for very long.  But on four and a half hours of sleep I'm doing very well.  Bells were rung, hellhounds were hurtled, SHADOWS was gently drawn a little closer to being finished . . .  oh yes, and it's Christmas.

            For the first time in my life I have a Christmas cactus blooming on Christmas.  By garden centre error and mismanagement.  On one of those raids last autumn, when I went for a £2.99 replacement spool of green gardening twine and came home with so many plants I could hardly wedge them all in Wolfgang, I bought another Christmas cactus.  I need more Christmas cacti like I need . . . uh . . .  more rosebushes.  At least the roses live outdoors.  But this one was a particularly pretty pink with white edges.  It was just starting to come out.  So I bought it and brought it home.

            And all its flower buds immediately fell off.  ARRRRRRGH.

            Christmas cacti are generally extremely tough so I assumed that it would be fine next year but that this year was going to be a bust.  Nope.  About a month ago I noticed it was producing little pale tippy knobs . . . a fresh lot of flower buds.  Yaaaay.  I'm not even going to complain that it's reverted to the standard pale pink of which I have lots.  I have lots because fallen-off or pruned-back branches root really easily.  

 

[image error]

Stop press! A Christmas cactus blooming on CHRISTMAS!

 

** And yes, I've been singing.  But I haven't touched Dove Sei in three days.  I'm singing Christmas carols.  

*** 'I don't need a wreath.'   

† With my eccentric bent for befriending inanimate objects, I find this is another advantage of things like fake, that is, reusable, wreaths and trees.  So every year it's like, hey, how are you, how's it going?, good to see you again. 

†† I told the archangels when they were last here that I'd bought Peter a Kindle for Christmas and it was so sleek and shiny that if he didn't like it I'd take it over.  Raphael and Gabriel exchanged a long look.  Robin, said Raphael after a minute, do you really want another piece of technology in your life?

            No.  And besides, Astarte has Montezuma too. 

††† Well, okay.  Do mind the subject matter.

Grinchly yours

 

IF WHAT FOLLOWS IS MORE OF A MESS THAN USUAL, PLEASE WRITE A LETTER OF APPRECIATION TO WORDPRESS, WHO LOGGED ME OUT AS I WAS FINISHING THIS POST.  I WRITE OFF LINE, BUT IT TAKES ME A GOOD HALF HOUR MOST NIGHTS TO TWEAK AND TIDY BEFORE I PUBLISH AND I WAS ALREADY LATE POSTING.  I HATE WORDPRESS.  I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE WORDPRESS. 

The day did not get off to a good start* when I discovered that my desktop is frelled.  I was only halfway through my first cup of tea of the day, it's Christmas Eve, I have a novel due in five weeks and there's something wrong with my bottom line everything backs up HERE desktop computer. 

            Joy.  Possibly not to the world, but to my world.  This leaves me in the interesting position of relying for the duration of the holidays on one elderly, increasingly doddery laptop, one brand shiny new laptop with a hidden and still unknown canker gnawing at its vitals and a brander shinier new OS I can't use and gives me a blood-pressure headache every time I turn it on**, and one knapsack computer too small too use except bunched up on a train or having a bohemian moment at a café.*** 

            Um.  Well, hellhounds and I had a very nice hurtle this morning.  I had frustrations to run off.

            And the rest of the day has been a blur of wrapping presents and getting the tree up.  Yes!  It's up!  It's even decorated (mostly)!  And Peter put the wreath on the front door (after dark†, but dark comes early these days)! ††

            And I even got a couple of hours in on SHADOWS.  Aren't I fabulous.

            . . . . I'm also exhausted, and I have to ring bells in way too few hours. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS 

* * *

* We're skipping over the standard 'did not sleep and therefore overslept' part. 

** While we were waiting for other people not to show up last night at the tower we were talking about Operating Systems We Have Known . . . and Penelope offered to drag me through enough of Win 7 to get me started.  Next week, when she's on holiday.  Penelope is a wonderful human being.  And I'm the kind of low scoundrel who will take her up on it. 

*** I've happily done a good bit of writing (serially) on each of my (two) knapsack computers, back in the days when I was going up to London on the train regularly.  There's something about being able to work on the road that blergs the exasperation of the too-small screen that doesn't open quite wide enough and the too-small keyboard that engenders even more typos than usual.  Taking notes on it lying on a sofa with hellhounds at home is also excellent but using it for producing text under ordinary working conditions, which is to say my office or the kitchen table at the mews^, and it makes me nuts in about half an hour.  Context is everything.

            Speaking of computers and of context . . . I've been reading reviews of another of these WE UNPLUGGED AND LIVED memoirs which, as these things usually do, is tending to polarise its readers.  I probably won't read it^^ so I'm not going to name it or crank on about it specifically.  But one review refers to the author's astonishing discovery that life is still possible without their laptop.  This is the point at which I decide I'm not going to read the book.  What does this person do for a living?  If they're a journalist, how are they pursuing their craft, pray?  How did they write their book? 

            As I have mentioned on this blog with what is probably distressing regularity, I bought my first computer because I could no longer get parts for my typewriter.  I don't want to learn frelling Windows 7, I just have to—Microsoft, that despicable ratbag, demands it^^^.   I don't watch television because I don't have time, and I am attached at the hip to my iPhone because she's the phone number that my 84-year-old-husband's emergency service will ring if he falls downstairs.  And yes, my iPad is a pretty toy.#  Sue me.  I could live without Montezuma and Fingerzilla if I had to, but is playing them really different in type from reading a no-brainer murder mystery or LOTR for the 1,000,000,000,000th time because I'm too tired to do anything else but too wired to sleep?  People have always needed (ahem) downtime . . . and have always wasted good time and good brain on the latest fashion in glitz.  I'm very interested in what computers and the internet are doing to our brains and our society but it's not simple.    

^ I tend to forget how silly this is.  It's normal to me. 

^^ I finished CHAOS!  In spite of reading/listening to most of it two and sometimes three times . . . I couldn't put it off any longer!  I am bereft!+ 

+ I will probably download ABSOLUTELY SMALL~ tonight.  Or possibly YOU ARE HERE.~~  Decisions, decisions.~~~ 

~ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Absolutely-Small-Quantum-Explains-Everyday/dp/0814414885/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324772668&sr=1-1

http://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/absolutely-small/

 ~~ http://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Are-Here-Portable-Universe/dp/0099502429/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324772752&sr=1-1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5291540/You-are-Here-a-Portable-History-of-the-Universe-by-Christopher-Potter-review.html 

~~~ Also dependent on the download working.  Speaking of Life with Tech. 

^^^ I hope to live long enough to see someone bring this monumental creepazoid down.  

# On a somewhat related subject . . . the Mac thing.  I'm not going to shift from PCs at this point for a variety of reasons, starting with that if I'm snarling about having to wade involuntarily into Win 7 I certainly do not want to learn a whole new solar system with too many moons and a binary star, and ending with the fact that Blogmom doesn't do Macs.  But . . . in fact I am yearn-free.  I love my Pooka and my Astarte.  But they've got important stuff wrong with them from the stupid-end-user viewpoint—stuff that makes me wonder if their programme designers were off their meds that day.  Ultimately my little pink darlings are still gizmos like other gizmos.  Mac?  Feh.  

† If we're counting, I had lunch after dark.  

†† Peter is worrying about his Very Large Present.  I already have a garden shed! he says.  I don't have space for whatever it is!  —Mwa hahahahahaha.  When I showed up with it tonight—and it did not want to fit into Wolfgang^—he looked at it dubiously and said, well, at least it's a flatpack shed.  

^ It would have fit fine into the boot but the boot tends to be full of wellies and compost and Mysterious Sticky/Crumbly Objects.  And yes I could have put a clean hellhound blanket down or something but . . . I got it into the front seat.   Where it sat stiffly and disapprovingly upright like a combination of a small coffin and an old-fashioned maiden aunt, and hellhounds sulked because everything else was in the back seat with them.  GAAAH.  CHRISTMAS.  I fall farther out of the loop every year.  I'm not, as I also keep saying, Christian, but I do respond to the still, contemplative, something-larger-than-you-are aspect, and 'Christmas' makes me feel as if I've landed on a strange planet and the how-to manual I shipped out with is not only several hundred suspended-animation years out of date but was already wrong when it was new.  Wait.  Christmas is about what?  And we do what to celebrate?  Never mind.  Please pass the champagne.

Christmas Eve Eve

 

I'm not READY.  Hells, I'm not started.  I REALLY must get the Christmas decorations out of the attic at Third House . . . tomorrow.  Must.  Really.  Our nice little plastic tree has one rather serious disadvantage, which is that it's a ratbag to put together* . . . and after Peter retires snarling** I will have to slam all the ornaments on at extreme speed.***  I ALSO HAVE TO WRAP ALL THE PRESENTS.  Well, all of Peter's presents.  I withdraw further and further from the whole Christmas thing every year—the official clan and/or people I don't know very well and/or owe favours to tend to get plants by post† and charity certificates of one sort or another.††  Peter still gets presents.†††  Which means WRAPPING.‡

            I have a novel to write.  In five weeks.‡‡

             . . . .I'm listening to Handel's MESSIAH on Radio 3.  A while back, and I can't remember which singing thread, there was a certain amount of giggling on the forum about how doing it yourself makes you more critical of other singers, and I meant to say, but I think I never did, that it also makes you more in awe of other singers.  How do they do that.  Wow.  Golly.  Swoon.  Adore.  Despair. †††  What I do find absolutely true however is that doing it myself, however feebly, engages me in other people's performances to a degree that is sometimes frelling inconvenient.  It's beginning to remind me of what a cow I can be about other people's books—I don't care if it won the Pulitzer, it's not good enough—which is marginally more understandable in my professional field.  It's just shameless when I start getting snippy-pernickety about singers.  But . . . this is a very nice MESSIAH, but where is the passion?  'He Was Despised' shouldn't be beautiful, it should make you cry.§  

* * *

* Peter does this.  But I'm not giving him much running-in time.  

** This is approximately the only time all year that I see Peter snarl. 

*** Fortunately there are rarely speed traps in Peter's sitting room. 

† Which I'm extremely relieved to report seem mostly to have arrived with a loud simultaneous thump today.  This includes mine.^  One of which is clearly frost damaged and since there hasn't been any local frost in several days^^ has to have happened en route somewhere.  SIIIIIGH.  The fact that any recipient of a little frill of festively decorated twigs that looks more like a voodoo fetish than a live plant will know that it's not my fault is very little comfort.  

^ Since they have this system for the orderer to order something for herself by ticking 'myself' during check-out, you'd think they could follow this through so that 'myself' doesn't receive a card that says, 'look inside for a message from the person who gave you this gift!' and in my case says 'Happy Christmas, Mrs McKinley Dickinson!' which begs the question slightly about 'to' and 'from'.  ^^^ 

^^ Except the imaginary kind that gives the indoor jungle something to complain about the nights I don't bring it in.  At the moment I can't bring it in, the top of the hellhound crate is covered with not-yet-wrapped Christmas presents.  One them is kind of . . . large.  No frost tonight.  NO FROST TONIGHT.  ARE YOU LISTENING?  —It was tipping it down earlier, creating a bottleneck of wet, cranky, last-minute-shopping people midtown even of little New Arcadia.  Hellhounds and I sat in Wolfgang, listening to the rain drumming on the roof and feeling smug, having returned from our hurtle about forty-five seconds before the heavens opened.+  I am now paying for this complacency, as the frelling weather has cleared off and the temperature is dropping . . . and dropping . . . ++ 

+ I spent that forty-five seconds chatting to Phineas, who encouraged me to let the air out of the tyres of Mr Gormless, should I be so unfortunate as to have contact with his misdeeds again, and whom Phineas apostrophises as not the full shilling.  

++ Speaking of plants, Katinseattle wanted to know about this one from Gemma's gift:  http://www.hardys-plants.co.uk/product.asp?plant=131  

^^^ There's a Schrodinger's cat opportunity here, although in this instance the cat is permitted to be alive in both its states. 

†† I give driblets and drablets all over the shop including the obvious big guns like Amnesty, Greenpeace, Medecins sans Frontieres, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children—insert your forty-six favourite charities here.  But I do like to give slightly cheerful things at Christmas, although I realise this is the wrong attitude for celebrating the birthday of someone who was willing to be crucified in the hope it would do the rest of us some good. 

            Admirable intentions don't always translate into reliable admin, and there are several Big Holy Green Guys I will no longer touch with a barge pole, but for anyone who's interested, here are a few UK furry-critter organisations that I've been subscribing to successfully for years.

http://shopping.rspb.org.uk/c/VirtualGifts.htm?utm_source=rspbwebsite&utm_medium=navigation&mediacode=T06ITH0221

What they offer you varies from year to year, but I've put in an awful lot of hedgerows.  

http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/sponsor/default.aspx?view=all

Lurchers and sighthoundy critters never seem to need sponsoring, or not for long.  At present I sponsor Hamish.  I admit I have just a flicker of doubt about these guys:  your sponsoree never dies, they're always placed with a private owner and so don't need sponsoring any more.  Really?  

http://www.guidedogsgiving.org.uk/sponsorapuppy/?gclid=CJju7qCnma0CFUUPfAodYFhsmg

I've been doing this so long and they roll over so fast I can't remember the name of the current half-grown critter.  But the cuteness factor is extreme.  Not only do you receive regular 'pupdates' of your own protégé but they send you stuff like the Guide Dog Puppy Calendar every year which is all little fat furry darlings and is a good thing to stare at while you're waiting for your first cup of tea of the day to turn black. 

              And I'd belonged to the Bat Conservation Trust for years before I realised I had a problem.  I hadn't noticed you can now adopt bats.  I, of course, don't need to.^

http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/adopt_a_bat.html 

^ Hee hee hee http://www.bats.org.uk/ecards.php?action=ecard&id=43 

††† So do a variety of friends.  But rarely at Christmas.  Or at their birthdays.  When I get around to it.  Sometimes it takes years.  There's this box in the corner of my bedroom. . . . 

‡ I suppose the next boundary to withdraw over is wrapping . . . but stuff looks so pretty after it's been wrapped.^  I'm hyperventilating slightly about Peter's Very Large Present however.  It's . . . Very Large. 

^ Aside from questions of blog photos. 

‡‡ Only four people showed up for tower practise tonight YAAAAY.  We hardy few barely waited the obligatory quarter-hour before declaring a bust and all rushed downstairs and out into the night.  The other three may have gone to the pub.  I went home to SHADOWS.  Which is still going well, except for the 'five weeks' part. 

‡‡‡ Why don't I take up knitting?^ 

^ I haven't ripped out the leg warmers lately.  Because I'm cravenly knitting hellhound squares. 

§ Sung in this case by one of my new heroes, Iestyn Davies.  How embarrassing.  But . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH3E64G0oCI

Oh go away with that Christmas

 

Today I was roused out at about 8:30 again* . . . this time by the postman.**  Two postpersons.  I heard the first one [gender therefore unknown] and put a pillow over my head but I wasn't quite asleep by the time the second one showed up and started hammering in that brisk, you-love-me-really manner that delivery persons are unappealingly prone to.  So I did my slither-into-dressing-gown-front-door-key-grab thing and stumbled downstairs.  Unnnnnh.  One of the parcels wasn't even about Christmas—and the one that was about Christmas was boring back-up stuff to the main event, which has already arrived.***  Now that's just unfair.

               There were handbells today just like any Thursday instead of three days before Christmas.†  Hellhounds and I hurtled back to the cottage because I was desperate for an excuse to get away from my computer earlier rather than later—usually I throw all of us into Wolfgang at the last minute and hope to arrive before my visitors do††—which meant we were outdoors in daylight twice today, even if this latter was a fainting, fading, twilight sort of daylight.  Better than nothing.  Including the seeing what I'm tripping over and/or what canine effluvia I'm picking up.  The electric torch clenched between the teeth mainly casts shadows, all of which look alike. 

Abigailmm

Rejoice, for the longest night is past, and the sun is returning! 

Yes.  Totally.  I am more conscious of daylight every year—every winter, when I am a year older than the last time I had to do winter.  I've been hanging on a bit better this year than some by making a deliberate effort to have the hellhounds' longer hurtle as near to midday as possible—it's way too easy (especially for someone who keeps unsocial hours anyway) to hurtle briefly in the morning so as to get back to my desk sooner, and then do the longer hurtle at night when I have no brain left and might as well be outdoors shambling around after hellhounds.  But I begin to feel as if I live underground or at least in the Arctic Circle—I would so not be a happy bunny living above 66°33' north—and I know vitamin D is a wonder drug, but handfuls of the stuff is not as effective for me††† as a regular hour of midday daylight.  As midday as you can get, this time of year, when the sun gives the impression of slinking around the horizon and looking for hedgerows to hide behind.‡ 

AJLR

I think there must be a bit of herbaceous plant in my ancestry because this time of year I'm a sere and crumbled being, just waiting for the sun to come back. Why didn't we evolve with a hibernation option?!

Hibernation,  yes.  And in return, during the long days of summer, we don't need to sleep at all.  Think of all the GARDENING we could get done.

            I took a couple of the biggest [non-rose] thugs out of the cottage garden this autumn so now standing in the kitchen door waiting for hellhounds to pee and come indoors again without sampling any of the dangling indoor-jungle foliage I keep looking at all this freshly available space.  If I didn't have A NOVEL TO WRITE and 1,000,000,000 more doodles still to do . . .

PamAdams

 I am still doodling, of course, but I admit the factory conveyor belt has slowed. Nothing else is going to get there before Christmas

Ha! Mine just arrived yesterday. And when I opened Deerskin to read a random page, I found myself in the chapter where she saves the puppies. 'All still alive?' So naturally, I had to keep on reading….. 

Oh good.  One of my nightmares at the moment is worrying about things that don't arrive.  There are a number of wistful people inquiring if theirs have gone out yet and the answer, I'm afraid, is usually no. ‡‡   But I'm challenging over three decades of bad postal karma by having run this auction/sale at all and I'm hoping that the sheer chutzpah of the assault will amuse the evil gods of such matters, and let me and my envelopes pass.  Not to mention the doodle shop Blogmom is constructing for the future.  One thing at a time.

            Which at the moment is going to bed. . . . 

* * *

* jmeadows

. . . a couple weeks ago there was a strange barking that kept me up half the night, too. Maybe it's the same dog! I haven't heard him since, so I guess he could have made it to England. . .

 I hope he is well on his way to Indonesia.  I'm sure he and komodo dragons will get along really well. 

** Isn't it charming the way the advertising says, ONLY £17.52 FOR THIS FABULOUS ITEM THAT NO ONE SHOULD BE WITHOUT IN OUR MODERN HIGH TECH WORLD!, and you think, okay, I need a Christmas present and the price is right . . . and then it turns out that to make the dranglefabbing thing work you need a spinglefropper for £123.19 and a zadazdad for £94.82, and if you're wise you'll also get the extended warranty for £1,377.40.   Feh.

            And then before you regain your balance and sense of cynicism they start deluging you with emails for bargain accessories. 

*** It SHOULD be written in LETTERS OF FIRE all over both the post office and all local delivery system head offices that IF THAT VICIOUS COW AT ROSE COTTAGE ON THE MOUTH OF HELL CUL DE SAC ISN'T IN, LEAVE THE THING.  Or prepare to lose body parts when she comes after it.  Gah. 

† I do have to fetch the Christmas stuff down from the attic at Third House. . . . soon.

Exchange between husband and wife in response to last mention of Christmas stuff on the blog: 

From:  PeterDickinson@famousBritishauthor.com

To: RobinMcKinley@crankyAmericanauthor.com

Subject:  Brilliant Idea!!!!!! 

Why don't you put all the Christmas decorations up at the cottage?  

From: RobinMcKinley@verycrankywithnosenseofhumourAmericanauthor.com

To:  PeterDickinson@funnyfunnyfamousBritishauthor.com

Subject:  !!!!!!!! 

Ha ha ha ha ha.  Because then we'd have to have CHRISTMAS here and YOU WOULDN'T LIKE THAT.  Also, your sitting room is probably more photogenic.  It's all about the blog, all the time. 

. . . Scuppered by his own argument a few days previous.  Mwa hahahahaha. 

†† Colin^ was early.  Will you STOP with the early already??

But look what Gemma brought me.  Isn't she LOVELY?  Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?  Hells.  Maybe we have to go ahead with the whole Christmas show after all. 

Hellhound bowls and homeopathic remedy to the left, breakfast apples at the top and TEA to the right.

^ Colin wanted to know if Bronwen had had a good time.  Yes, I said, she's threatening to come back.

            Niall wanted to know if she was ringing handbells.  I said I thought she was ringing tunes because that was what was available where she is, and he looked distressed.+  Oh, and have I mentioned we're ringing handbells next Thursday as well?  Hey, why not?  Everybody else is on holiday. 

+ There may have been hand wringing.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 

††† Your experience may vary 

‡ Except of course for those memorable occasions when it's shining directly in your eyes no matter which direction you're going.  I blogged about this once:  entire hurtles, so heading away from the cottage, the mews, or Wolfgang, making a big circle or other lumpy non-geometric shape and ending up at the point of beginning, and having had the sun in my eyes the entire frelling way.  All right, you physicists!  Explain that one!  This is totally a medium-sized star in a nothing-much solar system in an obscure arm of the Milky Way having a snit!^ 

^ Clearly the sun doesn't like winter either, since this only happens in the winter.  I'll worry about the implications of the southern hemisphere some other blog.  Presumably it'll have something to do with the sun picking on whoever's available when it's in a bad mood. 

‡‡ Victim of my own success.  Grovelling apologies.  It's a couple of things:  neither Blogmom, who ran the admin end, nor I, drawing pen poised, were anything like ready for the response we had—thank you again, everybody—but even another fangs with muffin—I mean another muffin with fangs—requires a little trickle of brain energy to accomplish.  Even if I weren't frantically trying to get a novel written there'd be an upper limit on how many doodles I can turn out in a day that would have to do with focus rather than hours I'm (more or less) awake.

 

Unngh SHADOWS unngh

 

Okay, so I got to bed later than I meant to last night either.*   And then at about 8 a.m. I was dragged out of sleep by a short, sharp, authoritative bark—very like Darkness either when he feels that insufficient attention has been paid to hellhounds lately or when he's in trouble and needs to go out now.  I realised after it was too late to block the adrenaline spike that it was not Darkness—it wasn't loud enough to be from the kitchen, and it was coming from the wrong direction anyway.  I began to drift uneasily back to sleep again—one is not rational about dogs that may need to go out now, even when one's intellect is saying it's not your dog—and the wretched animal did it again.  There are dogs at the top of our hill which have been known to bark, but both of them, one lab going rarfrarfrarfrarfrarfrarf and one dachshund going yipyipyipyipyipyipyipyip, you, which is to say I, can turn into white noise and ignore, both because of the stupid stuck-on quality (I'm more likely to wake up again when they stop) and because these are CLEARLY not my dogs.  This abominable creature, whatever it is, did the one short commanding bark once or twice a minute, and then silence for three or four or five minutes, for about an hour, by which time I was longing to let the air out of its tyres and call the cops.  It was also beginning to get to the hellhounds, who ordinarily ignore exterior barking.  So there'd be BARK and then rustling from the hellhound crate and I'd think, in my woozy state, oh, gods, it is Darkness after all. . . .

            We did all eventually get back to sleep again, but it was not the most restful night/morning of my life.  And I've been thumping away at SHADOWS** and when it was time for hellhounds' second hurtle tonight it was like, you mean I have to get out of this chair?  And do what? 

            So I thought, to spare the brain I don't have available anyway, I'd respond to a few forum comments.*** 

gamma

Honestly, I would give Hugo a miss anyway. 

You comfort me.  It did get mixed reviews over here, but they were interestingly mixed, and Penelope really wanted to go.  I'll ask her what she thought.

EMoon

Oh gods…audience at a [voice] lesson???

At first my voice died to nothing if I heard footsteps in the hall outside the choir room where my lessons usually are. Which, considering that it's the church complex and people move around it all day, was not helpful. Then it died only if they opened the door to the choir room (instantly. stopped.) . . . Now I still don't want anyone there during a lesson, but Suzanne . . . sometimes needs to come into the room…and I can sort of keep going. . . . Sort of. After a couple of years.

Someone else? A friend? At the thought my throat tightens up. And yet I can sing in the choir…but there are others around me, covering up my voice (I think. Maybe not true but I can think that.)

Yes.  This would be me too.   Blondel kept threatening to take us to one of the practise rooms where he was a professional vicar choral, and I kept saying that if he did I wouldn't be able to sing.  I've got used perforce to Nadia's mum† but I have to not think about it really hard, and one of the things that went wrong the day I had my lesson at Nadia's house was the presence of other people.  Aren't we a little old for this nonsense?  Feh.  And totally, about the choir covering you up.  Although in my case I haven't got much doubt that it's true.  At best I make an on-pitch noise which helps to thicken up the more interesting noise that the singers are all making.  My usefulness is as a kind of audible corn starch.  

Besunami

Extra protein in your broccoli? Ewww! Yuck! When I was little I loved lettuce and munched happily with our bunnies. One night I bit down on a leaf and there was a big crunch where no crunch should have been. My father told me I'd probably gotten a spider egg sac. Great parenting, Dad! To this day I can't eat any crunchy lettuce parts. 

Ewwww.  I'm amazed you haven't needed years of intensive therapy to overcome this damaging trauma.††  I think I've told the story?, about an entire branch of the Dickinson clan swearing off broccoli forever after Peter served them some from his garden—this was before my time I wish to emphasise—that was perhaps somewhat overpopulated.  He gave up trying to grow broccoli shortly thereafter because it tends to be rather liberally inhabited.  Let the professionals deal.

Susan inMelbourne

Q: What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?

A: Finding half a worm in your apple!! 

I think I grew up with this one.  I can't remember when I didn't know it—speaking of trauma—I've eaten a lot of apples in my life.  I started cutting them up young, however, so I could check their insides.  When I persuaded Peter to go organic at the old house and we stopped spraying our apples, this got a bit crucial, but since there were always far more apples than we could eat anyway, having to cut away the occupied bits was not too sad.  (My little apple tree at the cottage seems relatively immune.  I have no idea why.)  I will say however, delicately, this being a family blog and all, that while I'm not happy about finding protein in my broccoli, still, it's cooked.  And I spent five years in Japan at an impressionable age where I ate all kinds of weird-to-the-western-mind stuff like deep-fried grasshoppers and chocolate-covered ants.^   I can deal with the occasional  cooked half caterpillar in my broccoli.  I have not yet however had to face the raw half worm in my apple and I don't want to.  (Raw!  Spider sac!  EWWWWWWW!!!!) 

^ Hey.  It's chocolate.  

PamAdams

~ I don't think they take fifty-nine-year-old women as able-bodied sailors, do they? Well that's out then.

Perhaps you could settle for being the 'pretty cabin boy.' 

::falls down laughing:: 

 http://folksongcollector.com/handsome.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDn_3VysILs

I've always liked the captain's wife's comment at the end:  Yes, Mrs Captain?  And what are you hiding? 

* * *

* Hey, I'm just doing what I'm told.  Singing Christmas carols is fun.  And it does give me an opportunity to notice that I do have a bit more voice than I did this time last year.  When I was whining to Nadia on Monday about thin and reedy—and about the continuing frustration of not know what to do about this when it happens—she said in her best brisk manner that I should concentrate on the fact that even when I'm singing less than my best (and she's big on the fact that 'best' by definition is rare and you can't beat yourself up for failing to attain it every time you open your mouth) I am singing better than I was ten months ago.  Yes.  True.  It also amuses me a lot to be brisked at—I'm not quite sure what the correct verb is:  she's not patronising me, she's brisking me—by someone about thirty years younger than I am.  

** I am still doodling, of course, but I admit the factory conveyor belt has slowed.  Nothing else is going to get there before Christmas;  I might as well concentrate on SHADOWS for a few days.  So I am.  

*** I should resurrect Ask Robin.  Good grief.  The problem—it's not a problem, it's me being shiftless—is that most of the questions people want to ask authors are about . . . authory and publishing things.  Which is reasonable.  It's just that I have about have .01 micrograms' interest and/or knowledge of these things.  About writing, it's something I do, like walking or breathing.  I can't tell you how I do it and it seems to me a bit daft (and embarrassing) to try.  Merrilee exists as a sort of Deep Space Nine/Babylon Five where my publishers and I can both dock and find someone who can talk/walk/breathe with both of us.^    Over here on the planet Gonzo Mongo we are mostly interested in hellhounds, bells, singing, yarn, roses, chocolate, etc.

             I am ashamed that I almost never blog about other people's books however, since I still read all the time and it's not all maths and physics (and knitting.  And roses).  I'm enormously enjoying Lauren Beukes' ZOO CITY right now for example. 

^ I have never satisfactorily decided if my publisher is the Vorlon, or I am. 

† As I got used—more or less—to Blondel's neighbour, who, on a week day afternoon, had the revolting habit of sitting in his garden.  Which Blondel's studio overlooked.  And Blondel would kind of stare at me if I suggested he close the window.  I comforted myself with the thought that I wasn't very loud, and Blondel's piano was between me and the window.  I'm louder now.  And there's an open hatch between Nadia's mum's kitchen and the dining room, where the piano is.  I'm not thinking about it.  I'm.  Not.  Thinking.  About.  It. 

†† Also, lettuce is one of the cheap joys of life, and there aren't that many cheap joys, aside from library cards.