Robin McKinley's Blog, page 109

Another Great Day

 

Not. 

I got back to the cottage last night later than I meant to, as I had gone on with SHADOWS rather too long after Bronwen left and was late tackling the blog . . . and there were archangels coming in the morning, I mean, you know, morning, before-noon-type MORNING, and while hellhounds (when all is well) have amazing sphincter control, I did want to take them out before archangels arrived, in case I became absorbed in biting the carpet and screaming. 

            And there was a car parked in my space. 

            I have sufficiently impressed upon you that the cul de sac my cottage is on is not merely narrow and land-mined but a seven-dimensional jigsaw and you're required to take six months' advanced driver training at Silverstone before you're allowed to buy a property there?   Every micron of pavement is privately owned and you encroach on someone else's territory at extreme risk to life and limb.  And have I mentioned that it was 3 o'clock in the morning?  If I'd known where the miscreant was hiding I would have been happy to bang on the correct door till they or their severed body parts emerged, but I wasn't going to go looking at that hour.  I managed, by good fortune and fury, to wedge Wolfgang in next to Phineas' car, left a CRISP note on the windscreen of the brigand, went indoors and . . . called the cops.*  They are not allowed to draw blood, more's the pity, but they could at least locate the little rat turd and tell him to move his gorblimey vehicle.  Yes, of course I thought of letting the air out of his tyres, but with modern tyres that's more of a faff than it used to be in the rough days of my youth, and the car was middle-aged and in even worse shape than Wolfgang, so he probably wouldn't notice if I did key the thing. 

            But adrenaline is not your friend when you want to go to bed and sleep.  I turned my computer on which (frighteningly) is pretty much my default response to any and everything any more**, which gave me the opportunity to discover that my email was NOT WORKING.  I did all the unplugging and replugging and closing and restarting and dancing and shouting things you're supposed to do in these situations and . . . no.  Okay, at least Computer Archangels are coming . . . in about six hours.  I sent Raphael a text saying, please don't come before eleven. . . . volleyed through the whole teeth-bath-and-hellhound-snack pre-going-to-bed business, turned the light out and . . . lay there thinking about . . . well, about Maggie's mom and her sisters, and about some of Mongo's friends, and about . . . um . . . never mind.  Thinking.***

            The alarm went off way too early, except I was already awake.  Moan.  The gorblimey vehicle was gone, and there was a note through my door from Phineas' son apologising for his contemptible low-life of a friend.  You may gather I am not appeased.  I found moth holes in one of my favourite sweaters.†  Computer Men were there for over two hours and . . . the new laptop is still eating its battery like a lion tucking into a wildebeest and they never figured out what was wrong with the email, it just started working again.  And then stopped again.  And then started again. . . . ††

            While this was going on there was an exciting Christmas delivery!   No.  Wrong delivery.†††  Boring boring delivery.  I have about thirty-six Christmas things coming and one boring one.  So the one that arrives. . . .

            After we finally had our proper morning/afternoon hurtle‡ and loaded up Wolfgang to traipse down to the mews . . . there was a large delivery truck parked in the archway into the mews courtyard.  I think the driver was eating his lunch.  Parked in the archway, so that no one could get past.  The courtyard behind him was empty.  He could have parked in the courtyard to begin with, or he could have backed up six feet and parked in it now.  But he didn't.  He saw me, got out of the truck, opened the side door in a leisurely fashion, examined his hand-held electronic gizmo for instructions, unhurriedly selected a parcel, ambled over to one of Peter's neighbours, knocked on the door, had a nice chat . . . and frelling FINALLY drove out of the *&^%$£"!!!!!!! archway.

            And now I am going to try to go to bed early.  Beginning with driving calmly back to the cottage and parking in my space.‡‡ 

* * *

* Who were gratuitously polite.  I have insurmountable philosophical problems with the fact that High Tories in positions of modest social authority in small towns in Hampshire are pretty well universally well-mannered and considerate.  It's true that for all my bellowing I'm (mostly) extremely law-abiding^, so when we have contact the fuzz and I tend to be on the same side.  It's still disconcerting.

 ^ I would be capable of letting someone's tyres down—ideologically if not practically—probably not keying.  I'd feel sorry for the car. 

 ** . . . and chocolate.  Between turning your computer on and chocolate, most of the exigencies of life are covered.  

***Maggie  As far as I'm concerned, learning that Shadows has Mongo and maths and physics AND origami is an excellent Christmas present… 

Oh glory.  Are you one of these scientific people?  Brace yourself.  Your namesake is not.  She has certain scientific principles thrust upon her, but she bends the physwiz^ out of them whenever possible. 

^ sic 

EMoon

You said: I haven't got time for unexpected plot developments! It's due in six weeks! It's really simple! Mongo saves the universe! The End!

Yes. That. My idiot book has been changing its plot in the last few weeks and even today, dadblast its fiendish excuse for a mind. Idiot person riding from A to B to tell X that Y is coming for a visit changed his mind on when (actually Y changed his mind on when to send idiot person) leaving fossil bits of conversation relating to the earlier decision scattered across several chapters. 

Riding.  That's your problem.  Riding.  There are no horses in SHADOWS.^  But I wholly concur about the 'dadblast its fiendish excuse for a mind'.  

^ Okay, two or three ponies in the background.  But they're little ones, petting-zoo burn-outs.  And if you tried to ride them they would bite you. 

† They'll mend.  But I'll need to take my wounded garment in to the craft shop to look for the right colours of embroidery floss.  No I am not going to spring for an entire two skeins of yarn.  Probably. 

†† After they left I rang Penelope and cancelled going to see HUGO with her tonight.  I knew I shouldn't be sloping off to the cinema but this was not how I wanted to get out of it.  Should I tell Niall you aren't going to stop round for handbells then either? she said.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. 

††† Had another of those extremely enjoyable experiences on line today.  Got to the check out.  It wouldn't (a) accept my email address (b) accept my password (c) let me re-register (because my email address is already on their database.  I knew that) (d) accept the new password they sent me after I hit 'forgotten password', even though I hadn't forgotten it.    I wrote to customer service and was rewarded almost immediately with a robo letter thanking me for contacting them and promising to respond some time in the next twenty-three years. 

            . . . Meanwhile as I write this I have received confirmation of an order put through the end of last week within their stated Christmas deadline.  This is one of those delivered-live-plants things, and I've fired off plants to half my address book.  When you buy more than eight hundred and forty three they let you choose a few free ones for your home address.  The confirmation is telling me that the free ones coming to me have been dispatched . . . and none of the others is now guaranteed to arrive before Christmas.  Thanks.  Thanks loads. 

‡ In the rain.  All forecasts for today said 'sunny'.  It's been raining off and on all day.  Oh, and there wasn't supposed to be any frost last night?  There was.  I now have several fewer pots that will need bringing indoors the next time we have an official frost. 

‡‡ It's now raining hard.

Audience

 

Bronwen emailed me the end of last week that she was going to be in this area on Monday, and could she drop in?  Sure, I emailed back.  I have my voice lesson Monday afternoon, but we can go ringing with Colin in the evening, if you like.  I can meet you at the cottage after my lesson, at 6:30 or so.

            . . . I was hoping I might come to your lesson, she answered.

            WHAT?  ARE YOU FRELLING JOKING?

            I was, in fact, so blitherblathered, nonplussed and gobsmacked by this insane and unexpected request that I couldn't immediately think of what to say, other than NO.  AND NEVER DARKEN MY DOOR AGAIN WHILE YOU'RE AT IT.*  Since I'm fond of Bronwen I restrained this natural impulse and . . . emailed Nadia.  Do you have a policy about people sitting in?  I said.  Do you . . . by any chance . . . FORBID it?**

            This was happening last night at about two a.m.*** when I am perhaps not at my best anyway.†   For some reason†† Nadia hadn't answered by the time I crawled out of bed again (later) this morning . . . and meanwhile the hours were ticking by and Bronwen was climbing in her car and turning the key in the little hole††† and . . . and . . .

            And when I went to warm up today with my piano at the mews I couldn't sing at all.  Here I had been comforting myself that at least yesterday's indisposition (which has much lessened, thank you) had had nothing to do with my throat . . . and I still couldn't sing.  I was producing these nasty horrible thready little noises.‡  Ugggh. 

            Beginning to panic now I texted Nadia saying, perhaps you didn't see my email (which I sent at about 3 a.m. and you're probably feeding your kid her oatmeal before facing your first student of the day and haven't checked your inbox) and thank the gods this time she answered, and in Best Professional Manner, that she did not have a policy about sitters-in and she did not object to teaching with an audience, but that she felt that unless this was a run up to an exam or a performance it was not helpful to the student and advised against.  YAAAAAAY.  I pretty well burnt my fingers racing to email Bronwen:  NOOOOOOOOO.‡‡

            Then we'd managed to get the lesson time crossgartered somehow so I was waiting‡‡‡ for half an hour before Nadia was ready for me which did not help my tension level any. §  So when it was finally my turn I went in and, setting my knapsack down and removing my music as if I were an insufficiently tested beta model, squeaked that I had been ill yesterday and today I can't sing at all.  When I admitted upon questioning that it had been a Digestive Issue Nadia said, well, of course.  The bottom half of your body isn't speaking to the top half, so you're not getting any of the support you need not to sound thin and reedy.  Lie down on the floor and breathe.

            So I lay down on the floor and breathed.§§

            And, after that, the lesson went pretty well.§§§

            At the end she said, your homework for the next fortnight is to go home and ENJOY singing all these songs you've been working so hard on.  ENJOY.  You know about ENJOY, right?

            Oh.  Kind of.

            And then I came home# and finally met up with poor Bronwen.  And we went ringing at Glaciation.##  We came back to the mews for supper and then she knitted while I got on with SHADOWS.  It's very . . . shadowy.  In a good way.  I hope.   

* * *

* And you can post that knitting book you borrowed back to me.  

** Please.  Please forbid it.  Please.  

*** Having spent an unhealthy amount of time bringing the jungle indoors again.  No frost tonight.  Yaaaaaaay. 

 † I'd also just found out that I'd been a thundering and inexcusable scoundrel to a harmless and inoffensive member of the human race and was reeling from the karmic backlash.  This does not serve to focus the mind in a positive way. 

†† I realise this will come as a shock to all of you, but not everyone lives by their email, their texts, their DMs, and their tweets.  Fancy.  And a substantial number of these non-virtual people have children still too young for email, texts, DMs, and Twitter.  Very real, small children.  

††† I spent SIXTY ONE QUID filling Wolfgang's petrol tank today.  SIXTY.  ONE.  QUID.   Strongest argument for internet shopping that I know.  The next time I fall afoul of one of these barking and berserk sites that demand four passwords that add up to the square root of 19^ and then tell you that according to numerology your birthday declares you to be an axe murderer and/or a bad financial risk and therefore they are rejecting you and the credit card you rode in on . . . I will whisper to myself 'sixty one quid' and persevere. 

^ 4.358898943540674  http://www.math.com/students/calculators/source/square-root.htm 

‡ It's all relative.  Nastier, horribler, threadier.  And definitely littler, which in the circumstances is just as well. 

‡‡ Under most ordinary conditions I have no problem saying No, and please fall in a large mud puddle on your way out.^  But I know that I am a neurotic wet^^ about singing and performing, and—I also understand being interested in the process.  What happens in a voice lesson with a good teacher is just interesting, and never mind if the student sounds like a hamster someone just sat on.^^^  I ought to want to spread the voice-lesson joy around.  Well, I do.  Just not in a way that involves someone having to listen to me sing. 

^ And may you be wearing drycleanable-only.  

^^ Possibly a neurotic muddy.  And my ego absolutely needs the delicate cycle. 

^^^ Shrill and flat. 

‡‡‡ Knitting.  I'm producing a very nice series of hellhound squares in varying textures of knit and purl.  This activity is interspersed with ripping out the first half-dozen rows of leg warmer again. 

§ Possibly the small-child-amusing CD of small-child songs Stella was listening to in a rapt and pensive manner had something to do with this.  When someone is trying to lisp breathlessly and, as you knit, wait for your voice lesson and try not to think about the half a page of SHADOWS you could have got through in this half hour, you are thinking (testily) that they are probably getting paid for the noise they're making, and here you are paying for the privilege of trying to sound less like this. 

            Okay, I have never lisped.  And I'm only breathless when I forget, uh, to breathe.  Still. 

§§ Her mother came in with a cup of tea for her while this was going on.  Don't worry, said Nadia, she's used to my students lying on the floor.

§§§ I was probably just really grateful that it was only the two of us.^ 

^ And the cat. 

# Muttering about sixty-one quid 

## Where I was pretty much a disaster on all fronts SIIIIIIIGH.  I haven't really got enough brain for a voice lesson and a tower practise in the same day.  Especially when there's a little matter of a novel to finish in six weeks.

Bells, with stomachache

 

Today has been a stomachache, punctuated by way too many bells.  And—when I'm feeling this rough—there are also too many hellhounds.  Importunate they all are.   Bong!  Bark!*  I fell out of bed this morning aware that all was not well in the nether regions but assuming (vigorously**) it wasn't serious.  Absorbed my first megadram of caffeine.  Registered that strange green fog hovering over hellhound crate was a jungle.***  Oh.  Eeep.  Further register that it's cold out there.†  Extra reasons for objecting to getting up this early.††  Six woolly jumpers and two pairs of long johns.  These prove useful when the Black Knight at the Ford leaps out from behind a geranium and demands my sword or my life.  Don't be daft, I say.  This is my kitchen.  There aren't any rivers, with or without fords, in a kitchen. 

            There aren't jungles in kitchens either, says the Black Knight, pressing the unpleasantly sharp end of his long pointy sword against my breastbone, which is protected only by six woolly jumpers, which are nonetheless better than nothing.  Now, are you going to fight me or am I going to run you through for a lily-livered coward?

            I'm going to set my fierce, slavering hellhounds on you, I say.

            Hellhounds? says the Black Knight, blanching.  Oh, all right, have it your way.  Are you sure you wouldn't like a nice little set-to?  It would wake you right up.  Much better than caffeine.

            Not today, thanks, I say.  But feel free to stop round for a cup of tea some time. 

            . . . I was a minute or two late to the tower, but the other three of us were still standing shivering in front of the electric fire so that was all right.  We did eventually have six pairs of hands, but . . . it's the week before Christmas, we have three service rings today, it would be nice to have a bit more than the skeleton crew. 

            After Ring #1 I went home and viewed the jungle.†††  Now beginneth the Great Windowsill Wedge.  How many leafy green pots of the cold-allergic can I winter over with the least amount of extra nonsense?‡  After about the six hundred and forty-third, however, which I hung in a sling dependent from a curtain rail, ‡‡ I had to lie down for a bit, and when I got up again to attend to hellhound obligations, somehow or other . . . the jungle sitting on top of the hellhound crate was just as thick and impenetrable as before.

            Sigh.

            So we hurtled, and then hellhounds had lunch and I did not, and then I stared at SHADOWS for a while and thought about late-mid-life career changes‡‡‡.  Then I went to ring the carol service at Old Eden.  Can't you beg off? said Peter (and various friends by email).  No, I said.  We'll be lucky if we have six ringers for the six bells.  In the event we had five to begin with, and I pleaded to be let off ringing up, and allowed to stick to the treble.§   I left afterward without finding out if the mince pies were going to be offered to the bell ringers.§§

            Then it was to do all over again at New Arcadia.  Five ringers for eight bells—eventually a sixth.  But no seventh and no eighth.  Can I ring a touch of Plain Bob Doubles while fading rapidly into the Shadowwraiths' realm?§§§  Afterward I tottered back to the cottage and brought back in again everything I hadn't managed to fit on windowsills earlier.  Plus several things I'd remembered too late last night and fossicked around for today . . . which do seem mysteriously still alive.  And got rid of a few more indoor slugs.

            Finally re-hurtled (relatively) patient hellhounds at about 7:30 . . . and it's already ice underfoot.  Crunch crunch crunch iiiieeeeeeeee. 

            Have risked supper.#  I should go home early, before the roads get too exciting.  But . . . maybe . . . I'll . . . just . . . lie . . . on . . . the . . . sofa . . . for . . . a . . . bit . . . first. 

* * *

* I'm not sure I've ever recognised how similar bells and hellhounds really are.  Indecipherable minds of their own.  Mostly silent and quiescent but alarming when roused.  Needs yanking.  Needs regular yanking or grows cranky and morose.  Weighs more than you think when hits the end of the lead.  Unpredictably unbiddable—except you can more or less prophesy that they'll be at their worst if anyone you want to make a good impression on is present.  Hates cold weather.  Medical bills expensive.  Not interested in food.^ 

            I rarely take bells to lie on the sofa with me however. 

^ Although in fact I have a hellhound beleaguering me at this moment.   Darkness is having a little holiday from not eating. 

            We haven't eaten since yesterday, he says.

            You've eaten twice since yesterday, I reply.  Once at about 2 a.m. and lunch.

            Yesterday, he says.  You're always moaning about how bad your memory is.  Lunch was yesterday.+  And furthermore, you're eating chicken.  You can't expect me to not eat since yesterday gracefully when you're eating chicken.           

+ Hellhound time.  Okay, I wonder if we can cross it with Mandelbrot sets to get that thirty-six hour day? 

** This would be the last time all day I have been vigorous.  

*** Full of wildlife.  We won't get into the slugs-in-the-kitchen situation, my stomachache is enough reality for one day . . . AAAAAAAUGH.  EXTRA PROTEIN JUST DISCOVERED IN MY BROCCOLI.^  Sodding flangdangling organic.  If this stuff were sprayed with Toxic Planet Death I wouldn't have these problems. 

^ This is actually when it happened.  I am not juggling to make a better story. 

† So at least the indoor aspect of the jungle was worthwhile. 

†† Although when hellhounds finally got their first hurtle at about noon the footpaths were still frozen.  Crunch crunch crunch crunch. 

††† And the slugs.  And the Biggest Caterpillar in the Universe which is busy eating the geraniums in the sitting room ARRRRGH.  I found one Nearly the Biggest Caterpillar about a week ago and was hoping that was the end.  But no.  And the crap it's leaving is about the size of ball-bearings at this point.  Why can't I SEE it??  I've started having uneasy thoughts about those trompe d'oeil pictures where (for example) the hero is looking around for the dragon and is standing in the dragon's mouth. 

‡ How much of it is still alive?  How much of it is planning on staying alive?  How many Caterpillars that Ate Brooklyn and Are Eyeing Up Birmingham are lurking among the foliage?  After all, there was a Black Knight.  And his sword.  And his horse.  Oh, didn't I mention the horse? 

‡‡ Note to self:  prop curtain rails.  There are now four hundred and twelve plant pots dangling from them, variously attached. 

‡‡‡ I fancy something simple and straightforward this time.  Experimental physicist.^  Formula-one driver.  Nursery-school teacher. 

^ I'd be rubbish at the theoretical. 

§ This didn't work, of course.  I was bumped off the treble—oh, you'll be fine on the two, said Niall—as soon as our only-rings-treble sixth ringer appeared for a quick pull between passing around the mince pies downstairs.   This is one of those testing-your-auto-pilot moments.  Can you ring a touch of Grandsire doubles when your stomach feels like the Black Knight did run you through with his sword?^ 

            It was worse when we—even more briefly—had a seventh ringer.  Wonderful, I said, I can sit out.  Oh, Robin, said Niall.  Would you please stand with Monty?  —GODS.  I'd rather frelling ring than mind someone.^^

            Speaking of Niall . . . three service rings did rein him in a little, but he still said to me as we were leaving Old Eden, with forty-five minutes till ringing for the carol service at New Arcadia:  We've only got forty-five minutes.  We could teach Monty to ring handbells. . . .

            Does Monty want to learn to ring handbells? I said, grasping at straws.

            I haven't the least idea, said Niall.

            Whereupon I ran for Wolfgang. 

^ Today?  Yes.  Tomorrow?  I hope to be recovered tomorrow.  I would rather go wrong and have no excuse than stay right and have this excuse. 

^^ Nobody died.  

§§ But see previous footnote. 

§§§ Yes.  But I wouldn't want to count on it. 

# Have fed hellhounds.  They ate.

Eight days till Christmas

 

I've just been ordering Christmas presents for me on Peter's credit card.  Mwa hahahahahahaha. 

            Well, he asked.  He says, I don't have enough Christmas presents for you.  Gee that's really too bad, I say, trying not to slaver too openly.  I'm sure (I add hastily) what you have is fine.  [Crosses fingers behind back.] *  Do you have any suggestions? he says, politely averting his eyes from both the drool and the crossed fingers.  Um . . . well, I say, trying to sound bashful, there's that fabulous new book on ROSES that you found the review for, that I keep not quite committing to buying for myself**, and you know maybe an extreme book of scary origami?***

            Do it, he says.  My wallet is in my leather jacket.†  And then he ambles gently over to the sofa and lies down for a nap.

            The power.  The power.††

            Christmas.  Great big feh.†††  I've spent most of the day‡ hacking my way through excruciatingly slow web sites overburdened with other frantic people doing last-minute Christmas shopping.  My memory, not one of my strong points at the best of times, managed to let me down disastrously in a couple of instances—most of the last-minute sites let you order up till Monday but I'd managed to forget that one or two in my mind's eye aren't last-minute sites.  'Five to seven working days' does not ravish me with joy, 'five to ten working days' makes me whimper and 'out of stock, we will contact you when available' makes me fling myself on the floor in a transport of I don't know what, but it looks interesting to the hellhounds. 

            Meanwhile all these gorblimey physicists going on about the impossibility of everything.  How about if they whiffle some of those infinitely complex non-boundaries of the Mandelbrot set into/out of time?  I'm sure the answer to the thirty-six hour day is tucked away in there somewhere, if they'd settle down and apply themselves.  There's a Nobel Prize in it for sure.  Come on, guys!  Function! 

* * *

* I've tried the 'if you have an overwhelming desire to help me pay for the new laptop please don't restrain yourself'^ but he says, no, no, you need something to open.  Aw gee.  He's always been like this—for someone who has to overcome deep-rooted repugnance at the very idea of receiving a gift^^, he has a very romantic notion about giving them.  And furthermore, he says, with a gleam in his eye, you need something that will look good on the blog.

            Hmm.  Okay, he has a point. 

^ And he did help with the iPad.  Although that was before I realised PEG II was an evil fiend from hell/second book in a tr*l*gy and that I wasn't going to turn it in last August and was therefore about to run out of money instead.+ 

+ This means that the old laptop will lurch on almost failing for at least another year.  If I hadn't bought the new laptop it would have blown up in a toxic cloud of sticky purple smoke last week, melting the William Morris oilcloth, leaving a very nasty mark on the table, and causing me to run away to sea.~  Yes, this is still the old laptop.  I don't have time to learn a new frelling operating system. 

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

^^ He was unusually well-mannered yesterday.+  I don't think he ran out of the room even once.  And he seems quite pleased with his phone.  

+ The big problem with visitors is the absence of leftovers.  Like, a glass of soothing champagne tonight. 

** I've now spent easily its list price in maths and physics books.  But then I didn't already have umpty-gazillion books on maths and physics. 

 *** No, I have at least twelve thumbs.  I also have a slight problem about empty flat surfaces to practise folding on.^  But and maths and physics are not enough!  Origami is also important in SHADOWS and I need to know something about it too, before I Schrodinger's-cat^^ it all up for the story!   Why couldn't I write about something easy, like vampires or dragons? 

^ Now even worse than usual.  I spent most of an hour I didn't have this evening bringing the jungle indoors.  But we're apparently supposed to have several degrees of frost tonight and . . . I, er, folded.  I have lost remarkably little so far and I see all those gallant geraniums pressing themselves against the warm house-wall and shivering and I feel like a murderer.  One of the curious aspects of going back to the cottage at, oh, 3 a.m. or so is that you probably know by then if you're having a frost or not.  Ahem.  The mews courtyard freezes at least two degrees sooner than I do at the cottage so if I have to claw Wolfgang free of the clutches of the Ice Giants it doesn't necessarily mean that those faint popping noises you hear are geraniums giving up the ghost back at the cottage.  We've had two or three frosty nights thus far when I've gritted my teeth and gone to bed anyway^^^ but last night caught me out.  I didn't think it was going to freeze and then it did, and pretty smartly too.  The geraniums are definitely looking a little crumbly around the edges.  ARRRRRGH.  So when I went back to the cottage on the second hurtle with crisp-weather-enlivened hellhounds and it was already only about two degrees off freezing I . . . brought everything I could find in the dark . . . indoors.  And the best thing about this?  The BEST?  That my kitchen—and I hope it will only be my kitchen—will be full of revitalised slugs tomorrow morning which were hibernating and believe that spring has come early. . . . 

^^ http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+tote_bag,137590655 Hee hee hee hee. 

^^^ I don't have TIIIIIIIIME.  Listen, all of you, at approximately 9:30 GMT tomorrow morning, I want any of you who happen to be awake to face in a Hampshire-ward direction and shout, YOU DON'T HAVE TIIIIIIIIME, because that's when Niall, as we pull our coats on and prepare to descend the ladder after service ring, will tackle me (again) on the subject of handbells with Titus tomorrow evening. 

† Last year's Christmas present, you know.^ 

^ Last year?  Two years ago?  I'm too old to be bothered to make fine distinctions between mere years.    

†† Sigh.  Yes, he does read the blog. 

††† I don't have time for Christmas.  And I have to get the frelling Christmas stuff down from my attic at Third House this year.  It's been at the mews before this, so I've been able to flounce and sulk at Peter for not hotfooting to accomplish this.  Not only do I not get to flounce and sulk at someone else, I have to frelling do something. 

‡ Barring bringing the jungle indoors

Peter's birthday

 

Fortunately the food was good.  Also the company.  And Peter liked his presents.  He's polite that way.

            I had a typical Lying Awake Worrying About Unscheduled Plot Developments* night/morning last night/this morning so when the alarm went off I took the pillow over my head away** long enough to shout YOU MUST BE JOKING! and turn it off again, and woke up again at nearly noon to the sound of the postperson banging on the front door.  EEEEEAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGH.  He might be bringing Christmas presents.*** I'm getting pretty good at making a single† fluid dive for both dressing gown and front door keys on my way downstairs. 

            Yes.  Christmas presents.  And strange look from postperson, but I'm used to that.

            Then followed long and bitter argument with my wardrobe.  I may have referred previously to the fact that I like clothes and that while the omnipresence of mud and hellhound hair does constrain me in certain directions I am not going to allow it to turn me into an indeterminate-colour-listless-baggy-sweatshirt woman.  At the same time, I am also lazy†† and one epic battle a day is sufficient.  Today was Peter's birthday and I wanted a party frock equivalent that I could put on now and wear through till evening. 

            Feh.

            You know the 'This is the TOTAL GARMENT!  It does anything!  It goes anywhere!  You can wear it as a dress or over jeans!  You can impress the stockholders or—er—hurtle hellhounds!' advertising line.  Like hell you can.  In the first place, if you're going to wear it over jeans you probably need it in a bigger size.  This was one of my catalogue sale specials and I did order a bigger size, since there is no way I am ever going to wear this, you know, seriously, but . . . well, it would fit great if it were a dress, I was twenty years younger, and knew how to sashay.  But it's purple and it has great silly flowers blasting all over one shoulder.  So there began a long wrangle about how to make the wretched thing drape properly.  I was going to wear it.  I had decided I was going to wear it.  I was in a mood to wear it.†††

You're just going to have to guess about the dress part.

At about this point I remembered I hadn't wrapped the presents yet.  And hellhounds were prostrating themselves all over the floor in attitudes of despair and manifest neglect.  ARRRRRRGH.

            So, anyway.  Moving right along.  Presents. 

There are several books involved. As well as ginger chocolate.

Great minds think alike. This is from one of his kids.

The big rectangular sunflower one is a new mobile phone.  It's the same size as the standard non-iPhone-style credit-card or undernourished After-Eight mint mini mobile, which is what Peter has now because he doesn't want anything that calls attention to itself‡ . . . except that this new one flips open and is twice the size of an undernourished After-Eight mint.  The point is that it was advertised as having big buttons!!!!, and while they aren't anything like as big as they looked in the catalogue and/or on line‡‡, still, they're better than twice as big as the ones Peter has been refusing to learn to use. ‡‡‡   Er . . . how do we set it up? said Peter.  We ask Georgiana and Saxon when they get here, I said firmly.

            Then the food . . .§

Four salmon and dill blini, triple roasted with heavenly sauce duck legs, and trimmings

You noticed the CHOCOLATE TART? I don't want you to have missed the CHOCOLATE TART.

That's a very nice bottle of claret. Peter likes claret. AND A HALF BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE TO BEGIN. Because he's married to me.

                  Unfortunately Georgiana and Saxon, techno wizards that they are, had left again§§ by the time I found out I couldn't turn the TV on.  GAAAAAAH.  I mean, it turns on, but it doesn't do anything else.  I'm trying to remember when I last asked it to do anything but hold up our matching set of Mythopoeic Society lions.  Months.  Generally speaking, evenings, I'm working.  Or singing.  Or even . . . reading.  I don't think I've engaged the TV in an active manner since we had our cable pulled out because we never watch TV any more.  Which was months ago.  Peter, who used to watch cricket, snooker, and American football§§§ occasionally, seems to have forgotten it exists.  Siiiiiigh.  Birthday parties.  They're bad for you.  If the food had been less great I wouldn't have been lying on the sofa in a stupor, trying to watch TV.  The hellhounds were very happy however.   Although I'm pretty sure they will consider this a precedent, and tomorrow after dinner. . . .

* * *

* I haven't got time for unexpected plot developments!  It's due in six weeks!  It's really simple!  Mongo saves the universe!  The End! 

** Although Mr Early Riser Man with the crunchy gravel and the three-foot-wide tyres one narrow cul-de-sac width^ from my bedroom window seems to have got himself reassigned to some office that starts later.

 ^ And I mean narrow.  We have a little memorial cairn at the top of the hill to all the drivers who drove up here by mistake and didn't get out alive. 

*** Love the proliferation of web sites saying, order by 11:59 pm 24 December and we'll get it to you by Christmas!  —Although we recommend you plan to open said presents rather late in the day, our enchanted reindeer do get tired. . . . 

† One might almost say parabolic.  

†† And always running late. 

†††  I was in a mood all right. 

‡ Like by ringing.  I understand this. 

‡‡ I think they have another line in women's party frocks.           

‡‡‡ The cottage and Pooka are speed-dialed into his phone book.  What else does he need? 

§ Niall said to me yesterday, I owe you a thank-you.  You do? I said, trying frantically to remember if I might have agreed to any superfluous bell ringing that hadn't got into my diary.^  Yes, he said.  You told Penelope about that caterer you liked, and we had our anniversary dinner at home the other evening.  It was really excellent.  Oh good, I said, trying to slow my heart rate and unplug the adrenaline booster. 

^ I don't have TIIIIIIIIIIME.  

§§ An admirably working new mobile phone sparkling in their wake.  They also added their mobile numbers to Peter's phone book. 

§§§ No, I have no idea why I married him

 

Musings, including the semi-mathematical

 

Usual Thursday handbells today.   I knew both Gemma and Colin were coming (and Niall of course—he's not only our mad despot, he's the one with the bells) so we'd be ringing bob major.  I should be able to do bob major in my sleep* so I worked on SHADOWS right up to the last possible minute before tossing startled hellhounds into the back of Wolfgang and bolting back to the cottage to let people in before they got soaked through.**

            And then I couldn't ring at all.  Bob what?  What major?  What?  It was pretty embarrassing.***  I did settle down eventually and recall my down dodges from my making seconds, but it was bad while it lasted.  By the end of the evening and after, I admit, several false starts, we even got through a plain course of Grandsire Triples with me on an inside pair, which Doesn't Happen.

           I could say that I'm old and crumbly and that I find it difficult to climb out of one obsessive activity and into another . . . and all of these things are true.†  But it's also true that I've always tended to get stuck on whatever I'm doing†† and have trouble shifting location, focus, and lobe of brain to something else.  Stuff that you have to pull out of you, like writing stories from of the infuriating and contradictory mishmash that the Story Council has sent you, is a special and particular drain, but in my case all of the brain-energy sectors are like this.  Which is yet another way that the standard educational paradigms let down both teachers and students:  I was (and am) a student who needs to learn in or to a rhythm that doesn't divide up into standard classroom slots very well—and not all subjects or teaching styles do either. †††  

           I can't help going on thinking about this kind of thing because of the almighty shock to the system the last couple of months of cramming maths and physics has been and continues to be—continues to be chiefly, I think, because in fact I am getting something out of it, invisible to either the naked or the scientific eye as it probably is.  Whoa.  Wait a minute.  Smell of burning circuits.  Although the circuits are as much about self-imposed, or at any rate self-maintained, limitations as they are about over-stressing a system that was never meant to understand the origins of turbulence.‡  And I find it interesting where the worst mental scar tissue is.  The physics stuff I'm trying to tease out into something I can (sort of) understand is all new—none of this was available to the hoi polloi forty-plus years ago when I was trying to find ways of not taking any hard science in school.  And so while it (mostly) makes me feel dumb as a post, I don't mind all that much.  I don't love being dumb as a post, but it's not crucial to my life or my self-respect that I perfectly comprehend the origins of turbulence.‡‡

            But maths . . . zowie.  In spite of fabulous Penelope Windsor Curry and lovely Mr X, maths still pretty much scares me to death.  And if I want to take one or two tentative steps farther into the intrigues of physics I need a few basic maths.  But this means I have to stop throwing up any time anyone says 'equations' to me.  Which may be the next challenge.  Several of you have done a beautiful job on the forum illuminating Caitlin's square rectangle from Tuesday night's blog. ‡‡‡  And I didn't throw up or anything.§  Perhaps progress is possible. 

* * *

* And, arguably, have, since I often, and worse lately, am trying to squeeze One More Thing into yesterday while dawn is trying to come up on tomorrow.^  I have this theory that lying down comfortably^^ in bed counts.  You don't actually have to sleep.  And in my case, frequently don't, except when I'm trying to learn a handbell method or hack my way through another paragraph or two of the thickets of WHAT IS MATHEMATICS?^^^ 

^ Cheez crums but I hate this time of year in terms of daylight:  dawn isn't till after eight and sunset is before four o'clock.+  

+ I may still be eating lunch at four o'clock.  Okay, I'm a slow eater.  Also I work through meals—waste that time?  You want to CHAT?  Are you KIDDING?—and during long pauses of frenzied thought I forget to chew.  

^^ Six pillows.  Although sometimes only five are necessary. 

^^^ Which is too hard.  Even if that nice Mr Stewart+ did the revising. 

            Although speaking of hard, my tiny stumbling forays into areas too arcane for me have resulted in an interesting new parabola++ of recommendations from the tireless amazon.  Today they sent me a come-on for Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Steven H. Strogatz.  What?  So I went on line and checked it out.  It gets five stars from all five of its reviewers, who say things like it is perfectly clear and understandable so long as you're up on your calculus and your twelfth-dimensional Trigoflippingtropy.

            Having established to my own complete satisfaction that I'd rather have my toenails pulled out by hot guppies, I went back to SHADOWS.  But my apparent interest lashed amazon into new spasms of incitement.  This evening they are suggesting Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers (Oxford Texts in Applied and Engineering Mathematics) by Dominic Jordan and Peter Smith.  I don't even want to know.+++  

+ of HOARD OF MATHEMATICAL TREASURES and CABINET OF MATHEMATICAL CURIOSITIES, mentioned previously in these virtual pages as excellent bathtub reading, fame. 

++ I like parabolas.  They're a good example of how a nice simple pure clean graceful swooping line that would be right at home in some William Morris wallpaper and which never asked anything of anyone except perhaps a little aesthetic appreciation can be turned instantly into a ravening beast out of your worst nightmares by the addition of a few equations.  http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Parabola.html 

+++ Down at the bottom of my recs page are the vampire, werewolf, mostly-unspecified demon and knitting books.  It's good to have eclectic tastes. 

** I could do without the exciting weather.  Yes, lying in bed listening to the wind trying to rip your roof off while the rain chisels away under the eaves is cozy^, but us hellhound owners are worrying about the next hurtle.  We managed (mostly) to dodge among the raindrops this morning but tonight was another Tortured Hellhound occasion.  Darkness, who can almost pass for a grown-up upon occasion, forged stoically on.  Chaos kept trying to hide under my raincoat, the lees of walls, blades of grass, and when this did not work, reverted to standard Lump of Misery paralysis.  You know Mongo doesn't mind a little rain.  Mongo is a normal dog.^^ 

^ Speaking of cozy under your eaves, I have to learn this, right? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbB1zx0-we4&feature=related

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

^^ Well okay, maybe not normal.  

*** This didn't stop Niall from trying to talk me into ringing handbells with Titus on Sunday.  Guilt.  Guilt.   I don't have tiiiiiiiiiiime. 

† Especially the 'crumbly'. 

†† Well, assuming interest and engagement with the subject. 

††† Although it's not like this is even a simple comprehensive theory let alone the impossibility of any practical implementation of something like it out there in the real world of schools and grades and university degrees and CVs.  Because lots of people function on schedules and are happy that way.  Yeep.  My husband, for example.  Peter is a time lord.  Peter does things that begin and end at specific times.  He's spent twenty years asking me when I'm going to be finished doing x or ready to do y.  He's got used to the standard answer of I don't knooooooooow but he's never learnt to like it. 

‡ Which is the bit of CHAOS I'm re-listening to right now.^ 

^ Hannah hasn't started yet.  I feel so superior.  

‡‡ Or all the equations oppressing that poor parabola.  

‡‡‡ And Aaron further explained why you can't solve it by adding something and dividing it by something. 

§ Yes, I asked.  And I was going to talk more about it tonight only I seem to have written kind of a lot already. . . .

Whether Brugge or Bruges, it's still a pretty city (guest post by AJLR)

 

We were looking for something we could do for a day, back last September at the time of our wedding anniversary. Something…interesting, not too strenuous, visually appealing; I'm sure you know the sort of thing. Eventually, we decided to be lazy tourists for a day on a trip to Brugge – often known as Bruges – in Belgium.

We're lucky, living where we do in the south east tip of England, to have very easy access to mainland Europe. In fact, we can be in France or Belgium as quickly as London, sometimes, and that's only 90 minutes away. When my brother was living and working in Belgium, near Antwerp, for six or seven years, it was relatively easy for us to visit and we took advantage of that – and the fact that he had learned to speak Flemish meant that we were given a greater appreciation for the culture in Flanders (the northern and Flemish-speaking half of Belgium) than may otherwise have been the case. However, there was so much to explore with him in and around Antwerp and Ghent that we'd not then gone as far as Brugge (Brugge being the name used for the city in its own area of Flanders, while Bruges is the name version used by the Francophone Belgians in the south of the country). The city is currently famous for its chocolate, and lace.

So, on a Sunday morning at the end of September we found ourselves on the outskirts of Brugge, walking down from the main parking area on a broad path through a park and approaching the city proper. Brugge is an ancient but relatively small city with a recently-built and modern port some miles away at Zeebrugge (Brugge-on-Sea) and is prospering. The day we were there (which was sunny and warm) it was very busy and bustling with tourists and locals alike. The scene below was one of the first we came upon as we approached the buildings near the centre.

On the walk into the city

Over the bridge and onto paved streets, we watched the horse-drawn carriages taking people for a tour of the city – and just past there, a refreshment pool for the horses.

Slightly gruesome image but I suppose the carriage horses don't mind it when drinking

The first street we wandered down had, on one side, four chocolate shops, in a row, and on the other a patisserie – with these delectable-looking objects in the window:

Drool, drool...

Life is very difficult, sometimes, the way eatables keep bringing themselves to one's attention…

Leaving the Street of Too Many Temptations, we decided to take a boat tour of the city canals – not for nothing is Brugge one of the cities known as the 'Venice of the North'. It was a delightful trip, lasting about 30 minutes, and with plenty to see as you can tell from the next few photos.

Blue sky, bridge, trees - a beautiful sight from the boat

Lovely brickwork and shapes

Watchdog, keeping an eye on the city's waterways

This dog was dreamily watching the water traffic, but not really bothered by anything.

Cormorant drying its wings - not a common sight in a city

'The Venice of the North'

After the boat trip had finished we wandered off to find some lunch and then went for a walk around the giant flea market in the centre, by one of the canals. Sadly, we couldn't bring ourselves to remove any of these stunning treasures from their home to take back with us…

Stall in Sunday's flea market

And these figures were just a tad OTT – can you imagine trying to eat your way through one of these chocolate statues? We also felt that some of the models in these shops were a little lacking in another sort of taste. I was peering in the window of one shop when I suddenly noticed that I was only the other side of the glass from a realistically-modelled and almost full-sized female bosom, complete in all details. I recoiled, slightly, I must admit. I can't imagine the occasion for which one would take such a thing home and present it for consumption! (And no, I didn't take a photo of it.)

Chocolate models

Moving on again we found ourselves in the main square and stopped to admire some of the stunning architecture.

A city square to be proud of

Shortly after this we found ourselves lured by the window display into a wonderful cheese shop. One of the cheeses, made locally, was about the size and shape of a 10″ round fruit cake, it was mild-tasting and had the texture of solidified cream. We bought a slice – And I Have Since Forgotten Its Name (probably just as well, really).

The lace-making industry in the region is very famous and the items made are both beautiful and (to my eyes) extremely complicated in design. I cannot imagine how long it takes to learn to produce some of these things – a lifetime, I expect.

Mind-boggling work

Lovely old photos of skilled workers in lace

Altogether it was a fascinating day and we're going to go back in the Spring for a weekend, so that we can spend more time in the museums and exhibitions than was possible on the Sunday of this day visit. With some of the most notable collections of Flemish paintings in the world housed in the city, there's a lot still to see.

Maths, Chaos, Darkness and Handbells

 

Susan in Melbourne posted this a few days ago:  http://www.theage.com.au/national/truth-finds-infinite-expression-in-words-and-numbers-20111209-1onmy.html

The novelist Geraldine Brooks* is attending a lecture on 'Singularities in Algebraic Plane Curves' and, perfectly reasonably I think, expecting the worst.  'I slumped into the room, armed with a doodle pad. My plan was to sit politely and let the talk sail over my head . . . perhaps, if I positioned myself wisely, a discreet little nap might be possible.'  But she began listening:  'This is like poetry, I thought, and I leaned forward to hear more. And when I set aside my firm belief that I could not comprehend her, something strange happened. It wasn't that I understood her work, but I understood her vision.'  It is a different world, but:  'I am sure though that our work, the mathematician's and mine, is essentially the same. In her exploration of the singularity in every plane curve, she seeks a way to more perfectly describe that arcing branch, or a soaring bridge, the squiggle in the iron lace of a terrace house, the quivering S-bend of a squirrel's upraised tail. She pushes her way deeper and deeper into the full truth of the world. This, also, is what I must do.'

             As it happens I've only just read this, after coming home from spending two hours helping teach a mathematician to ring the 3-4 to bob minor.  She's an excellent tower ringer but she's sweating handbells.**  She can mostly ring the trebles and slightly less mostly ring the 5-6, but the 3-4 are a ratbag.  Well, the 3-4 are a ratbag;  there are bits of the pattern you meet for the first time ringing a plain course on the 3-4, bits that if you're lucky you'll never see again anywhere else.  During the tea break the three of us were discussing ringing, learning***, and views of the one from the other.  And since this is a sample of three, it's obviously useless for statistical purposes, but Caitlin rings from an almost entirely different perspective, using different techniques and relying on different cues, than I do.  She also loves maths and the hard sciences and hated English in school.  Niall's approach to ringing is somewhere between the two of us—and while he's an engineer and thinks calculus is no big deal†, he liked writing English essays and I know he still reads novels because I see him doing it.  And I thought this was kind of interesting.  I would have expected two of Niall's handbell protégés to be picking it up recognisably and similarly based on the way he teaches it.††  Caitlin and I speak different languages about the same world.†††

            But we speak enough of some same language to talk about the weather and the excellence of the chocolate cake Penelope had left for us—and to find out that we ring bells differently, even if when we're ringing we are perforce 'speaking' the same language.  Meanwhile in another part of the forest, one of the things that yanks my chain about all this out-there physics and maths I'm (still) reading about is how similar the frelling creative process is, whatever name the drooling monster you're trying to subjugate is refusing to answer to.  These physics and maths bozos do things like go for long walks‡ and think and mutter to themselves . . . and are considered odd and anti-social by their friends and colleagues.  Of course I know the stereotype of the mad scientist like I know the stereotype of the in-her-own-little-world storyteller . . . but I hadn't realised we're very nearly the same person.

 * * *

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Brooks_(writer) 

** Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.  Okay, I'm a bad person, but I sweat handbells. 

*** Ajlr wrote

With this—and I think this is the barbed-wire enclosure that did me the most harm, and it doesn't seem to me it's changed that much in the last half century—goes the There Is One Way to Learn mandate, the one way being the way the Teacher teaches the Textbook, and if a student doesn't pick it up that way, well, too bad for the student, that is The Way.

I'm not saying it's perfect these days, there's still a way to go, but there is a lot (and I mean A Lot) of attention paid these days to what is called Differentiation. There're resources (this is just one site, there are an enormous number out there), it's part of Initial Teacher Training, and an ongoing focus of Continuing Professional Development schemes. Schools, colleges, adult ed, work-based learning providers, they all pay attention to it and it's checked by Ofsted. OK, maybe some teachers still don't 'get it' but they are appreciably fewer in number than they used to be. 

Well . . . unfortunately I think you're suffering from Making a Difference Syndrome.  The problem with being on the cutting edge of Making a Difference is that you can see the difference being made . . . in your vicinity.  It is human nature to see what's up close more clearly and in more detail than what's at a distance.  I can give you a really embarrassing example from my own life.  The obesity epidemic that so much journalistic ink and pixels have been spilt on includes not only humans but increasingly [. . . sic] our domestic fauna.^   Overweight pets happened to be topic of the week a few months ago and I read a whole raft of articles about it and I thought (my brow suitably furrowed), it can't be that bad, I rarely see a fat dog when we're out hurtling.  It took me several days for the penny to drop—DUUUUUUH, that's because the dogs I mostly see are the ones that are getting regular walks.^^  And, I guess, people clued in enough about their critters to give them proper exercise are probably also more likely not to overfeed (or overtreat) them.^^^

            The teachers I know bear with Ofsted first because they have to and second because it's better than nothing.  CPD, eh, it's only as good as the individual modules.#  A friend who is an excellent and inspirational teacher took early retirement a few months ago because she couldn't bear the paperwork caused by well-meaning but crippling initiatives to regulate teachers for their students' benefit.  She is not alone—as I'm sure you know.  But I'm questioning where the points on this continuum cluster.

            I'm willing to believe that what's wrong is different than it used to be—and I've no doubt there are resources out there that weren't available when you and I were still on the wrong side of the desk##, due to the efforts of people like you and your team.  That the teachers who still don't get it 'are appreciably fewer in number than they used to be'. . . unh.  I wonder.  I still know bright—or off the wall, or both—kids who dislike school and are failing to learn what they are absolutely capable of learning, because of bad or blinkered teaching.###  

^ And if your plant life is producing a jungle of foliage and no flowers, you may be overfeeding it. 

^^ And I think the reason the penny eventually did drop is because I'm aware of dogs that I'll see regularly for a while . . . and then never again.  Some of them no doubt moved away or their humans' schedules changed and they're taken out at different times or different places.  But some of them, I'm grimly sure, are sitting at home, because their owners forgot that a Dog Is for Life, and Not Just for Christmas. 

^^^ Supposing of course they have dogs that eat. 

# I think of all the homeopathy seminars I've taken that gave me CPD credits, if I'd been trying to stay registered.  The credits received have no relation to the quality or usefulness of the teaching or the information. 

## I mean aside from the fact that you and I grew up in the typewriter age. 

### There's also the Elizabeth Blackwell Syndrome, or, If She Can Do It, Why Can't You?   If Elizabeth Blackwell could get through medical school, then why can't you?  If Marie Curie could win a Nobel Prize (twice), then why can't you?  When I was a young oppressed science-illiterate struggling-feminist girl, these questions bothered me a lot. 

† Gleeeeeep  

†† Another thing I'm conveniently leaving out so I can make my point is that Caitlin is not merely an excellent tower ringer but another of these super-advanced models.  She can ring anything.  So she already has very well established ways she's used to ringing and learning ringing—which are not always as useful as you'd expect learning handbells for the first time.  But . . . Colin is another tediously excellent tower ringer, and did heavy computer things before he retired.  Another maths person.  And he rings a lot more like Caitlin than either Niall or me. 

††† And her eight-year-old, advanced-maths-placement son was sent home with some maths problems this week, one of which she couldn't do.   You have a series of squares, one each of which has sides [insert measurement system of choice, I think it was centimetres] of the following lengths: 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 18.  You want to make a rectangle of these squares—and it has to be a proper rectangle, no leftover bits and no overlaps.  What size is it?  What is/are the equation or equations for this?

            She and her son ended up cutting little bits of paper into squares and shoving them around till they made a rectangle.   And they did make a rectangle, but even working backwards she wasn't seeing how to solve it as a problem. 

            As a mathsless English major and writer of fantasy novels where lately she seems to be finding herself anthropomorphising chaos^ I still don't see why you don't add something up and then divide it by something else—I know areas are different from straight lines, but even so.  Anyone out there feel like explaining it to a level I might attain? 

^ I wonder where that idea is coming from.+ 

+ ::Gentle snoring from hellhound bed:: 

‡ I have yet to see any mention of hellhounds however.  This must be an error.

Wet and Shrill

 

It's absolutely tipping it down out there.  Again.*  Yesterday Peter had warned me that the weather was going to turn torrential by evening, so hellhounds and I had had an extra-specially hurtley hurtle in the morning, looking over our shoulders at the vast sneering grey bulk of the coming storm.**  I then had my head down over SHADOWS all afternoon and ignored the warning signs of tempest.***  By the time we got out it was sheeting and hellhounds were not amused.  I have raincoats for them and they were still not amused.  Look, guys, I said, pee and crap fast and we can go indoors again.  I think internal systems tend to shut down under meteorological abuse, however, and we didn't have a long walk but we didn't have a short one either—with me hauling them along at the farthest extents of their long leads while they gave me the full treatment:  tucked tails, humpy backs, flattened ears, and laser-eyed reproachful looks.  Mind you I'd much rather have lap-of-luxury-prone hellhounds than these hearty bounding things that think weather trying to beat you to the ground the better to drown you is an adventure—I've dogsat too many working hunting dogs who can't wait to rush outside and look for grouse or tapirs or whatever the hell and can't understand why you're being such a poor sport about a little rain/hail/hurricane-force wind/alligators.  But yesterday was extreme.  Today would have been even more extreme except that the dog-minder tells time better than I do and she took them out on their afternoon hurtle before it started getting dangerous out there.  It was starting to rain ominously when I came out after my voice lesson, and the wipers were on high-extra-plus by the time I got home.

            What with everything else going on I think I haven't mentioned that I've had rotten week for singing.  I think there's been some rudeness from a minor virus involved, but the result has been that I haven't wanted to risk aggravating the scratchy-almost-sore croaky situation.  ARRRRRGH.  This is the sort of thing that if I weren't trying to sing I wouldn't even notice. †   This is why singers are so neurotic, Nadia said cheerfully.  I've told you that before. 

            Yes, but . . . Okay, it's much worse— much worse—for a professional singer.  But if you sound like Jonas Kaufmann or Deborah Voigt it's understandable that you get a little stressed if your shining, high-mettled thoroughbred comes lame out of its loose box one day.  As a singer I'm one of those Thelwell ponies where you can't tell how many legs it has, let alone whether it's sound on all of them or not.  When I get discouraged because I'm sounding even more rubbish than usual it's like don't be frelling ridiculous.

            So it hasn't been a good week.††  Also when you can't practise enough you can't derive the benefit of practise either, so I went in there today for my third hour-long lesson thinking, she's going to tell me the hour was a mistake and we should go back to forty-five minutes.  And she'll do it kindly. 

            She didn't.  She told me that everyone has to learn how their own voice works, but that I'm extremely unlikely to be doing mine any damage, so to go ahead and keep experimenting with the limitations imposed by rude viruses.  The hour shot by.  The teacher-magic worked and I sounded better than I have since . . . at least last Monday. 

            I'm even noticeably learning Dove Sei.    

* * *

 * My poor garden.  I swear, when I hand SHADOWS in and doodle my last paid-for-already doodle, whichever comes second, I am going to spend a fortnight DOING NOTHING BUT GARDENING.  I may come indoors for meals.^  The blog will devolve to photos of mud and large green bags of future compost.^^  But at the moment I am grateful not to be watering pots.    

           We had our first hard frost three nights ago and I just threw up my hands—I haven't got two hours to bring everything in and take everything out again—I don't even have two hours to finish getting the summer/greenhouse set up, stocked up, and then regularly watered—speaking of watering.  Meanwhile I got off much more lightly than I deserved three nights ago.  I know it was a hard frost because we came home in it—I had to chip Wolfgang's windscreen clear^^^ and we then came home sideways.  Geraniums and snapdragons often come through a degree or two of frost, although you can't count on it, but the begonias and fuchsias usually don't, and they did the other night.  I think the only thing I lost were the chocolate cosmos, and they are a ratbag to drag through the winter indoors so while I'm sorry I'm also relieved.  Maybe I can find two hours somewhere before the next frost. . . . 

^ Especially if this is happening in February.+ 

+ I wish.   

^^ Especially if this is happening in February.+ 

+ I wish.  

^^^ This is the third year in a row I've told myself I need to get a serious scraper instead of the shy little doodad I do have, clearly made for ornamental use in the Maldives.  It's still better than fingernails.  

** Sunday morning hurtles are always at least a little aggrieved because of this bell ringing shtick, and the prospect of an extra-long Sunday morning hurtle is not always welcome.  By Sunday afternoon/evening hurtle I'm significantly brain dead, but I'm also full of caffeine.  I'm beginning to think that Monday evening practises are also always at least a little aggrieved because of this voice lesson shtick, although at least I can mainline a little more molasses-coloured tea between getting home from the one and going out again to the other.  Once-a-month Old Eden tonight, and a better turn-out than usual^, but this included one beginner and two people only just learning to ring inside, so the rest of us were mostly filling in for learners to bounce off of.  Minimal brain necessary.  Yaay.^^ 

^ Thanks to McKinley's phone wiles, but they're pretty much the same phone wiles every month, it's just this month they worked. 

^^ Brute strength, however, is required for the frelling bells.  I wonder what chaos theory says about possessed-by-demons change-ringing bells?  What's the physics of a 360-degree-turning bell, first 360° degrees in one direction and then 360° degrees in the opposite direction, securely riveted on a rigid frame, and you've just about got it figured out how hard you have to yank the wretched thing to make it complete its circle and suddenly between one yank and the next it comes down on you like a stooping falcon?, which is to say it doesn't rise from straight down 0° to 180° straight up, it rises perhaps twelve degrees and sticks like it's just hit a wall, and there you are turning purple and hauling on the bellrope till you can feel the blisters coming, trying to hoick it back into place again, and meanwhile you've probably totally fallen off your line through the pattern and you may have two or three people yelling at you, but then again maybe not, because they're out of breath hauling on their own anvil-like bells.

 *** Long whippy rose stems beating against the windows like chains and the occasional thud of a raindrop the size of a latke.  

† I've been trying to remember how much of this nonsense I put up with when I was singing for Blondel.  It doesn't seem to me it was this bad, but I'm hoping that's because all of my singing at the beginning was basically a kind of undifferentiated wizened squeal, and by now I'd be noticing the somewhat better days from the very much worse ones whoever I was singing for . . . and not that I've angered the Upper Respiratory deity and it's going to be a ratbag from here on.  I also don't yet have a clue, besides finding out the hard way, when I can sing through an incursion of throat crud and when I'd better not.  

†† Turns out there's a serious drawback to gaining a slightly better grasp of, um, music.  I don't sing favourite arias out hurtling because they're too hard.  I keep going wildly adrift and can't find the tune.  But this is changing.  I was, for example, singing Marguerite's final music—the angels-save-me bit^—pretty accurately this morning.  Except it's my voice.  

^ 'Anges pur, anges radieux, Portez mon ame au sein des cieux' is what my libretto says.

The day after

 

Mornings.  Gaaaaah.  Sunday mornings after an opera are always more than a little aggrieved, and I blew a few gaskets last night.*  GAAAAH.  

Nycteris

I'm not a traditionalist, and up in my wee brain is my own directorial take on Faust that takes place in a college town in the US during the Vietnam war that I will impose on some community center before I die. . . . 

IMO when a concept sucks is when it is unconcerned with telling the story or worse, it is trying to tell a different story than the one the music tells. 

I'm not a hand-on-heart card-carrying traditionalist;  if you promise you're telling the story**  I'll gladly come to your community centre.***   I've seen, for example, LA BOHEME in modern dress, and it works just fine.  Young impecunious artists still starve in garrets—and it's still perfectly possible to die because you can't afford medical treatment.†  But that's the thing:  you're not allowed to turn what something is into something it isn't.  I wouldn't automatically throw out Faust as Robert Oppenheimer†† . . . but you do have to tell Gounod's story if you're using his FAUST. 

Diane in MN

I like Faust a LOT, and despite people who get snarky about it because it has good tunes and big numbers, it can be very powerful in a good production.

It's a 19th century soap [opera].†††  A lot of the old war horses are—my favourite Verdis, for pity's sake, LA TRAV, AIDA, RIGOLETTO . . . OTELLO too, although that's much more of a well-made play underneath than most.  

The final trio raises the hair on the back of my neck every time. 

Ah.  Yes.  I burst into tears.  Every time. 

I thought the singing was terrific (although I have one quibble: Poplavskaya's voice sounds too mature to my ear for Marguerite, who is very young and very naive; it's hard to hear Poplavskaya as anything but a grown-up), 

I agree.  And while I like Poplavskaya's voice, I'm a little nonplussed that she is quite such the flavour of the month . . . and last month, and next month . . . at the Met.  Surely she isn't the only . . . um, well, I'd call her a lyric soprano, but I'm probably wrong.  Someone who has the proper range and warmth for roles like Marguerite.  But she does sound too old for Marguerite—one of the reasons you-the-listener shouldn't just write Marguerite off as a stupid little misery is because she is that young and naïve—and she is also all alone.  Everyone but her brother is dead, and he's off fighting . . . somebody or other.   But this is perhaps the one advantage that someone who saw it has over someone who only heard it—I'm not sure Poplavskaya puts over innocence, but she sure puts over tragedy.  The scene with her utter turd of a brother‡, after Faust (with Mephistopheles' help) puts a sword through him, and he's dying and blaming her at the top of his lungs, she's kneeling beside him, holding out the medallion she'd given him when he went off to battle and that he'd yanked off in a fury when he found out she was dishonoured, oh my, she does that well.  And despite her being too old and having too much self-possession, I could suspend my disbelief for that third-act seduction.  Faust's role is pretty straightforward—he wants to get laid, and he wants it now.  I'm not faulting Kaufmann in the least—he does it up prime.  But Marguerite has a much harder task:  she has to both want and not-want, and do it without just looking like a drippy virgin or a cock-tease.  I think Poplavskaya succeeds. 

but the introduction of the crying/silent baby didn't go over well with me. 

That may be the low point of the entire opera for me—even worse than Faust's suicide—perhaps because the infanticide is crucial to the plot and Faust's suicide is just another of this idiot director's high concepts.  But the way the baby dies is so repellent.  Marguerite has been besieged by devils at the church, poor wretch, and runs off.  Some of the chorus clusters round her for two or three seconds, blocking her from view, and then they move away and she looks exactly the same as she did two or three seconds ago except that her front is now flat, and she's holding a distractingly bad doll approximation of a baby.  She kisses it absent-mindedly and then rushes over to the sink . . . ah yes, the sink.  It is a Symbolic Sink.  Faust drinks from it in the first scene, and Siebel—Michele Losier, another excellent singer‡‡—derives her holy water from it to rejuvenate her withered flowers.  SPARE ME THE HIGH CONCEPTS.  It also sits in the middle of the stage . . . being a sink.  ARRRRRRRGH.  Anyway.  Marguerite rushes over and thrusts the baby into it.   I think she's supposed to make a mad grimace at this point, but if so, her nerve failed her, because what it looked like to me was—oh gods, get this bit over with fast.  

And the ending, as described by Margaret Juntwait this afternoon and you tonight, can only be called bogus. 

Yep.  Highly bogus.   Lowly bogus.  And in-betweenly bogus.

AnguaLupin

I think this is the first time my views on a Live in HD production didn't match up with yours. I (mostly) liked this Faust. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that I actually don't normally like Gounod's Faust, so almost anything they do to it is an improvement. It's so damn Victorian. "Oh, look, our favorite morality tale ever, do hold still while we hit you over the head with the morality bat. And while we're at it, the religion bat, too. Wait, wait, you're running away! Come back! We finish the opera with a paean to Jesus!" Gah. 

Yes but . . . you don't like the opera.  I entirely agree that it's a fairly sick-making morality play.‡‡‡  If you can't suspend your disbelief that far—and no blame if you can't—then this opera isn't for you.  I don't like Shakespeare, but I'm not going to praise a production of one of his plays for making it not Shakespeare.  Well, okay—I might—but only tongue in cheek.  No, really . . .  

* * *

* We had exactly eight ringers, one of them Monty, and so Niall, thank the gods, took the conservative course and we only rang call changes.  I am therefore still alive to tell the tale. 

** And you have the singers.  Ahem. 

*** I will bring several of my own cushions.  Community centre seats . . . 

† Although it's harder in France than some places.  I believe their national health care is one of the better systems. 

†† And the fact that it's been done isn't necessarily damning either:  how many times has Beauty and the Beast been retold?  I'm not a John Adams fan, and one production of NIXON IN CHINA has been enough for me;  I heard highlights from DR ATOMIC and thought, right, that'll do.  In theory backdating Oppenheimer to the most famous operatic FAUST sounds kind of interesting, and when someone sent me the link to the NYTimes review  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/arts/music/a-review-of-the-metropolitan-operas-faust.html?_r=1&ref=metropolitanopera I read it and thought oh, well, it's a critic being a critic^ and tried to hope for the best.  I now think he was being kind and restrained. 

^ Which is perhaps a rant for another day 

††† http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=soapopera seems to think opera is an ironic choice, but I'm not so sure.  The reason I can't watch soaps^ is because nobody does anything except have sex and nervous breakdowns.  When does anyone earn a living or do the housework?  But you need some kind of plot, probably implausible, to hang the sex and nervous breakdowns on, and opera is pretty much the same thing only with tunes, and it's also over in a few hours. 

^ Barring a flirtation with DARK SHADOWS in my youth but I couldn't actually, ahem, stick it for long either 

‡ Admirably played and sung by Russell Braun.  That's a hell of a cast to keep up with, especially when you're playing the scum from the bottom of the black lagoon, and he did it really well.  

‡‡ One of my minor pleasures is a really good cross-dressing girl.  You know the theatrical swagger that a good female actor playing a man puts on?  I love this when it's done well.  Losier did it well. 

‡‡‡ And when the CHRIST IS RISEN comes up in the subtitles I'm sitting there thinking . . . um . . . sometimes I'd rather not be reminded what they're saying.  I'm not a Christian, so that is my bias, but it also does seem to me a trifle inappropriate here.