Robin McKinley's Blog, page 112

Prospective Anguish

 

Voice lesson tomorrow.  How can it be TOMORROW again already?*   I've been putting my practise time in and I'm still nowhere as far along as I meant to be.**  I've been reminding myself again that you can't have a breakthrough every week or you'll be trying out for the Met[ropolitan Opera] by the end of the year.***  I can have a nice, supportive, ordinary voice lesson tomorrow and it will be fine.

            Except of course that I'm convinced that I'll sound underprepared—as if I've been lying around admiring myself all week instead of practising.  It's exactly the same arc of non-triomphe as all the rest, about having something to lose.  When you are first learning something—okay, when I am first learning something—I have nothing to lose.  Everything is a huge fascinating wonderful exciting adventure.†  And then . . . suddenly . . . you've learnt something . . . and now you have something to lose.  I remember vividly this happening the first time I tried to learn bell ringing—when I went from being a very mildly precocious learner-handler†† to being someone who was supposed to be able to ring call changes reliably enough to ring Sunday service.  I had something to lose.  I don't think I seriously considered dropping out at that point††† but I was glumly aware that ringing had gone from being the best fun ever to a responsibility.‡  Feh.  Thanks to bell ringing however ‡‡ when the something-to-lose line was crossed in my voice lessons, first singing for Blondel, and now, more emphatically, because whether I like it or not I'm farther along with Nadia than I had the chance to get to with Blondel, it was like oh, frelling gods, you again, and wasn't a huge crisis.  Only a moderate sized crisis.   I live to make life hard for myself.  And I'm good at it.  SIIIIIIGH. ‡‡‡

            One of the singing things I haven't been getting on with this week is learning Dove Sei§ because I've got hung up on various other things instead—the new warm-up exercise with the consonant clumps, fitting the frelling words to the frelling tune of Se Tu M'Ami, and ditto Cold Haily Windy Night—which last is embarrassing since not only is Cold Haily my own whim, it's in English and it's a folk song.  How hard can it be?  HA.§§ 

            Dove Sei turns out to be one of these madly famous arias that I don't happen to know.  So of course I turned to YouTube.§§§   There are a lot of countertenors but I wanted a mezzo if I could get her.  And there, lo and behold, was Marilyn Horne, one of my idols.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-mo0oPw6vg 

LISTEN JUST TO THE FIRST TWO BARS.  I AM SO OUT OF HERE.# 

* * *

* This, you realise, from a woman who regularly wishes she had more money than sense^ and could have another voice lesson midweek. 

^ Not that this would, in fact, take a great deal of money. 

** Rather similar to where I am on SHADOWS and doodles.  Sigh. 

*** Not with this voice.  I suppose I could try out for Singing Stagehand.  

† This is assuming you're learning something you want to be learning.  Although the first week of a new year of school often had this effect on me.  This was the year I was really going to learn stuff.  As well as get all As.  Then reality struck.  

†† This means I was ringing both strokes together by the end of my first lesson.  Which for anyone who has tried to learn to ring may sound pretty good.  But in the first place the two of us learners^ were told to come half an hour before proper practise started, so we were the only ones ringing—most beginners have to put up with the scrum of the general practise—in the second place we had a very good teacher, and in the third place . . . I caught up with the being stupid part as soon as I tried to learn to ring inside.  

^ The other one, a bloke, dropped out after the first few weeks.   He wasn't getting over being afraid of the bells.  It happens.  

††† That would come later, with the arrival of the ME.  

‡ I don't know if most of the rest of the adult world negotiated the 'growing up' thing better than I did, but I still arbitrate the responsibility/fun boundary with much angst and second-guessing.  I'm not sure I ever quite regained the 'fun' of bell-ringing that first time, much as I loved it, but some of that was my stupid health getting stealthily worse while I tried to ignore the whole situation.^  But that was also the first time I'd tried to learn a wildly, spectacularly, visibly brand-new thing in a lot of years.  I'd started learning gardening when I moved over here and married a gardener but gardening happens a lot more slowly, you're much less likely to be ruining five or seven other people's day and the tower's local reputation if you screw up, and generally speaking you can whip your failures out and fling them on the compost heap before anyone else (but your husband) notices.  I was ready for the something-to-lose phase when I started ringing again this second time at New Arcadia—and in fact almost didn't notice, because I was so busy panicking about the approaching learning-to-ring-inside phase.

            I was thinking about this today, ringing Grandsire doubles and bob minor for service and lurching successfully through both the Evil Long Thirds Grandsire Single and the Dreaded Three Four Down Bob Minor Single^^ despite being half awake at best.  I'm a mediocre ringer but . . . I am a mediocre ringer.   I'm not a beginner or a drop-out or someone who only turns up when she has nothing better on.  I aspire to being the same kind of mediocre singer . . . which is where I came in. 

^ Speaking of responsibility.  But I've told you, haven't I, that I started bell ringing the first time during the two-year period before the ME floored me, when I had Regularly Recurring Glandular Fever+ and had had to give up riding horses (again) because of stamina and reliability, neither of which I possessed.  Bells don't need regular exercise.++  And if you can't come some week because you're horizontal, someone else will fill in.+++ 

+ Mononucleosis 

++ Actually, they do.  Which is why we keep grimly ringing at Old Eden. 

+++ Theoretically.  We need more ringers.  I'd like to start with a band for Old Eden.  And another one for Ditherington.  And a third for Madhatterington.   Sigh. 

^^ Which is just the luck of what bell you're on and what touch your conductor is calling, but it still feels very unfair. 

‡‡ See all the above footnotes 

‡‡‡ One of the things I'm whacking myself around about presently is my having ADMITTED TO YOU that if I'm really unhappy with a doodle I'll do it over.  This has roused my perfectionism to a shrieking hysterical froth.  I can't redo every doodle I'm not 150% delighted with, because if I did I would still be redrawing the first one for the 1,000,000,000th time.  The ones in books are especially traumatic because they're in BOOOOOOKS.  BOOKS are SERIOUS.  Also expensive, if I really have to do one over because I spilled tea on it or something.

            Have I mentioned that the doodle-icious books are VERY LABOUR INTENSIVE?  Yes.  Very.  This is the something-to-lose thing with great toxic Lovecraftian knobs on:  on the short list of practical definitions of pure fun, one of them is getting to DRAW in your own books.  How fabulous is that?  And I'm busy trying to ruin it for myself.  ARRRRGH.  

§ Handel.  Rodelinda. 

§§ I've also wasted a certain amount of time riffling through the rest of the book, which is on loan from Nadia, and I have to give it back.  But hey.  This counts, right?  It's Familiarising Myself with the Repertoire.^ 

^ Like hell.  It's reading THE THIRTEENTH CHILD in the bath instead of ALGEBRA I FOR DUMMIES. 

§§§ Where I've been bolstering Se Tu M'Ami with a lot of Cecilia Bartoli.  Funny the way she agrees with Nadia.  

# After I finished lying on the floor and sobbing, however, I found a student recital performance that I really liked:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhTEvKX–xc   It's not perfect—there are a few rogue moments with the tune—but she's got a gorgeous voice and she's so obviously into it.  I can't aspire to the voice, but I can aspire to the into-it-ness.  And the idea that you can not be perfect.  Which assists in putting aside the desolation of not being Marilyn Horne.  Or Janet Baker.  Or Cecilia Bartoli.  Or . . .

Bark at the Moon – guest blog by Black Bear

This year for my birthday, I decided to buy myself something I've been wanting for a long time:  a wolf.

No no—I'm not one of those folks who thinks wolves and dog-wolf hybrids make dandy pets.*  I didn't go out and buy a black-market wolf and bring her home to live with me and the cats (for which I'm sure the cats are grateful.)  No—I went to Wolf Park, in Battle Ground, Indiana, and I adopted a wolf named Wolfgang.

Wolf Park is an amazing place.  They've been around since the early 1970′s; their founder, Dr. Erich Klinghammer (sadly recently deceased,) was a pioneering animal behaviorist and ethologist, specializing in canids. He published the first wolf ethogram—essentially a comprehensive dictionary of wolf behaviors and their meanings and contexts. Right now Wolf Park consists about 75 acres of land, including a small lake, and is home to 14 wolves, 2 coyotes, 2 foxes, and a herd of bison.  All the animals (except possibly the bison) are completely socialized to having humans around—it's not like a zoo, where the rule is generally hands-off animals unless it's necessary for vet care. At Wolf Park, the staff are constantly interacting with the wolves.  Wolves are social animals, after all, and the staff are well-versed in the social cues and signals they're giving us with every turn of the head or flick of the ear.  And one of the privileges of being a wolf "adoptive parent" is that you also have an opportunity to interact with a wolf face to face, under the careful supervision of staff.  How could I pass that up?

 

Wolf Park - The Visitors' Center

When I called to schedule my visit, I was told that unfortunately Wolfgang ("my" wolf) is not currently receiving visitors.  He's the alpha of the main pack, and his behavior has become a little unpredictable, so the staff are no longer letting him meet his adopters. He and the alpha female were removed from the main pack enclosure while we were there—we could hear him complaining up a storm!  But in the meantime, I learned that I would instead be meeting his brother Wotan, a low-status male named Ruedi, and a year old female named Dharma.  I didn't mind a bit—meeting a wolf is meeting a wolf, after all!

There's a lengthy training session for wolf visitors, which I found completely fascinating—it was basically an introduction to the basics of wolf behavior and body language, with a staff member talking us through slides showing various facial expressions, interactions between the wolves, and basic wolf etiquette.  When you pet them, don't pet them too long.  Pause after a few seconds to let them decide if they want you to continue, or if they're going to move off.  If they put their nose somewhere you don't want it, gently push them aside while saying "MINE."  Pet on the neck and around the ears, if they let you, but not down the back or along the flanks.  Watch their faces for changes in expression.  Above all, DO WHAT THE STAFF MEMBERS TELL YOU.

After the training, we got to go to the main pack enclosure; there were 5 of us adoptive parents there that day, 3 of whom had done this before.  I can't imagine it gets old, though.  Wolves.  Come on, right?

Wolves. Wows.

 

 

It was amazing.  They're big, of course, and gorgeous—all three were very distinctly different looking, and it took me no time at all to figure out who was who.  Ruedi's got striking black markings and lovely blue eyes.

 

Ruedi, posing handsomely by the lake.

Wotan is a big fella, with more of a buff color around his shoulders and face.

Wotan would like you to admire his nose.

 

And Dharma?  Couldn't mistake her for anyone else, could you?  She's a black wolf—which of course doesn't mean inky black, but more a soft dark charcoal color.  I was smitten.

She walks in beauty, like the night...

 

The wolves weren't all over us—they have visitors and staff in there every day, so it wasn't quite as exciting for them as it was for us.  We kind of hung out, and they came and investigated us, wandered off, came back.  I got in plenty of wolf-scratching time, and eventually got showered with kisses and wolf-breath from both Dharma and Ruedi.  We got to watch them go "fishing" for slices of pepperoni tossed into the water by staff. It was really pretty incredible.

 

I highly recommend a visit to Wolf Park if you happen to be passing near Lafayette, Indiana on Interstate 65. They're open to the public; there's a modest ticket fee, but with that you get a full tour of the park plus a lecture on wolf behavior.  If you're lucky you'll catch a feeding (they mostly eat roadkill deer from the abovementioned highway) and if you really want to go all out, come to one of their bison-wolf hunt displays or a "Howl Night."  There's nothing like it.

 

Satisfactory.

 

 

* I'm of the opinion that if you want an enormous wolf-like creature that will walk on a leash and cuddle with you on the couch, you can look up one of the many fine malamute rescue organizations around the country.  If I could have a dog, I'd have a malamute.  I'm sadly allergic to dogs though, so I'm forced to live vicariously through the dogs of others.

Your Body Is Your Instrument

 

Read as given that I was running late.  So I was trying to sing myself in toward singing again for Oisin, and because I was worrying that he might suggest recording me this week* it was not going too well.  But I was, I thought, beginning to get somewhere finally.  Non lo diro col labbro.**  Tra la. 

            And then the phone rang.  It was Raphael.  You may remember that my workhorse laptop has chosen this moment, when I am both running out of money and writing a novel in five months***, to begin dying.  It does seem—thoughtfully—to be allowing me enough time to install its successor, but I am guessing that I had better not hang about either.  Raphael was ringing to say that having ordered what we had decided on, and having been informed that it would be promptly dispatched . . . there was a follow-up message that that particular model was now out of stock, which, in the computer world means permanently, but they would be would be delighted to supply, blah blah blah.  The problem is that Blah Blah Blah has a smaller frelling hard drive.  I want more memory than god.  That's the plan.  That is in fact the CHIEF AND ONLY plan.  More memory than god.  And here they are messing with me.  Mind you, the lesser creature has nearly more memory than god—but I remember that this computer had more memory than god four years ago, and that didn't turn out well.†  So Raphael then had to go patiently through my alternatives while I howled and drummed my heels. 

            A decision was finally reached—for the computer that has more than more memory than god, which would please me more if it didn't involve another £150 which I can ill afford.  But I'm only too sure I'd hit the wall with the smaller one.††

            So I put the phone down, went back to the piano and . . . had NO voice at all.  It might have been two years ago, before I'd so much as met Blondel.  ARRRRRRGH. 

* * *

* Left to myself my answer will always be, Noooo!  Nooooooooo!  The immediate conclusion of that one is never having started voice lessons in the first place, and it's too late for that.  Therefore the less attractive option is to face the Nooo Monster down.  This is a bit like eradicating bindweed^ by glaring at it. 

^ http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=241 

** I have a new insane purpose.  —Aside:  I don't know how professional singers do it.  Well, they do it by (a) being good at it and (b) spending professional amounts of time at it.  I'm talking about learning lyrics.  Once a melody is more or less lodged in my head it (more or less) stays there so long as I keep using it and check with the piano occasionally.^  Lyrics are another matter.  I sing a lot on vowel sounds anyway^^ because they help me make the noise I'm looking for—and my warm-ups are pretty much all vowels.  But when you're singing to, you know, sing, la-la-la^^^ is unsatisfactory.  The common childhood tendency to sing all the time till this is hammered out of you by sensitive grown-ups who can't bear the racket# is reasserting itself in me lately.##  This means I want more stuff to sing.  Which means learning lyrics. 

            I have now sung frelling Non lo diro col labbro waaaay often enough to know the lyrics off by heart without thinking, but do I?  Only if I'm not thinking.  The moment I notice that's what I'm doing they disappear like chocolate chip cookies at a picnic.   I was out singing and hurtling recently### during a break from listening to BRIEFER HISTORY while I tried to bend spacetime and my brain into an algorithm for comprehension% and sang straight through Non lo%% including the two lines in the middle where it suddenly CHANGES!!!! %%%  My first thought was that I must have fudged them, but no, I could kind of taste their having been there on my tongue, you know?  —But could I do it again, now that I was paying attention?  No of course not.  So I'm now wandering around with a photocopy that I can fold up in a pocket, muttering Forse con le faville dell avide pupille . . .

            Oh, and Se Tu M'ami, which I treated you to my fabulous phonetic version of?$  AAAAAAAAUGH.  I can get through the words or I can get through the rhythm.  Not both.  The tune at that crucial point is undemanding, but trying to squash or prolong the syllables to the beat is a . . . giant throbbing neon ratbag. 

            Although my problems are not all Italian.  I can sing She's Like the Swallow and Down By the Salley Gardens without missing too many words, even out hurtling, but I had this clever idea of getting Cold, Haily, Windy Night out again and learning the rest of the verses.  It's one of these songs—as I have already discovered—that is harder than it looks, but despite being another of these miserable betrayed-love songs, it doesn't sing like that, and it's great thundering fun.  But by my frelling hemidemisemiquavers, trying to make the lyrics hang with the tune is AMAZINGLY DIFFICULT.  

^ Hmmmm.  I wonder if there's a pitch pipe app for iPhones?  There certainly ought to be.  Must check.  In a minute.

^^ On Nadia's advice I have bought a copy of another standard text, Vaccai's Practical Method of Italian Singing.  Nadia said to learn just the first exercise, which I am endeavouring to do.  But in a doubtless laudable desire to stress singing Italian correctly with lots of vowels and as few consonants as possible, Vaccai has broken up all the words, rather than syllabically, with the consonants all clumped together, instead of next to their vowels where they belong.  I see what he's getting at—given that Nadia has been trying to make me give more space to the VOWELS for ten months now—but it makes me crazy.  I can't read it at all.  So at the moment I'm singing aaaaaah-eeeeeeeee, and I'll put the frelling words in next week, having checked with Nadia that there are no nasty surprises lurking in the articulable shrubbery anywhere. 

^^^ Or aaaaaaah-eeeeeee-aaaaaaah 

# It took me a while to comprehend that, generally speaking, the melody is not considered an optional extra.  By then it was too late. 

## And if I'm going to strengthen the beast sufficiently to go back to the Muddlehamptons and not bomb out the moment I take on two germs and the left eyebrow of a virus, the more singing the better.  

And I'd better go back to the Muddles.  All other things being equal~ I've already paid my annual frelling membership.  

~ Which they aren't, of course.  I'm not sure even I, with my gift for fantasy, could keep taking voice lessons in a vacuum.  

### Having first checked there was no one anywhere near.  If the hedgerow rabbits don't like it, they can move to a different hedgerow for the time it takes us to hurtle past. 

% FAIL.  I find it interesting, the depth of the crevasse you fall in the moment you trade in your comfortable, fuzzy, stuffed-toy, having-read-a-lot-of-hard-SF-when-you-were-younger, English-lit-major 'understanding'^ of something like thermodynamic entropy or frelling relativity for a flounder and bumble toward some genuine, however layperson and superficial, grasp of the real stuff.  The chief thing I've learnt thus far is that I know why I was a lit major.  

^ Which is to say clueless familiarity 

%% MULTITASKING!!!! YESSSSS! 

%%% I was so startled I stopped, and hellhounds promptly hit the ends of their leads.  And turned to look at me aggrievedly.  They know they're not supposed to hit the ends of their leads, but I'm supposed to warn them if I plan to stop suddenly. 

$ abigailmm wrote:  My parents went on a tour . . . One stop was a small chapel in a village in Czechoslovakia (this was back when it still WAS Czechoslovakia.) . . . the entire village turned out . . . The children sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" . . . Afterward, my father picked up a piece of paper that had fallen on the ground. It was the lyrics, like your Italian, rendered phonetically for a Czech speaker! . . . 

This isn't a treasured family heirloom or anything, is it?  I'd love to . . . er . . . read it.  

*** Theoretically 

† I want to be able to watch BUFFY on the new one for more than the first year or so, when it runs out of memory.  

†† Who needs to eat?  Not me.  Sigh. 

 

Never Promise Anything for the Day After Your Birthday

 

. . . at least not if there was champagne involved.  Although I don't think I can blame the champagne, I drank lots of water* and was stony sober by the time I went home**.  But it makes a better story.

            I woke up late, of course, but I haven't not woken up late in weeks, so that's barely worth a FRELL as I bound*** out of bed and attempt to launch myself into the already half-over day.†  One of the first things to catch my eye as I let hellhounds out of their crate was a business card sticking through the mail slot in the door . . . I had—that is, had had—an appointment with the house-alarm people this morning.†† ARRRRRRGH.  I'm already two months late getting the thing its annual check up††† and I finally make the appointment AND I FORGOT.  No, of course I didn't look at my diary last night—I thought I remembered what was happening today.

            What was happening today was handbells.  I did manage to remember that.  I was sufficiently on the spot even to email Niall to double-check.  Yes.  Handbells.  Okay.  And since I still don't want to do anything too fraught with my clearly-improving-and-we-want-to-keep-it-that-way voice I wasn't going to choir practise.  I would have the night OFF and press on with SHADOWS.‡

            Niall was even whip-crackier than usual about thrusting bells into our hands and getting on with it.  Colin, who likes a bit of chat first, commented on this, and Niall said, oh, but I have to leave early tonight . . . and the other three of us chorused, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO RING A HANDBELL PEAL SOMEWHERE.  No, no, protested Niall, the picture of wounded innocence, because our daughter's new film society is launching tonight, and I want to go.

            NOOOOOOOO.  Head-clutching from the menopause-brained American sitting to Niall's right.  The irony is that I had reminded Niall of the approach of this significant event earlier in the week and he'd forgotten.  Tonight Niall looked at me pityingly.  I'll give you a lift, if you like, he said.‡‡  Penelope is going in early to help Selena set up.  —So I threw my poor handbellers out early because I had to sprint the hellhounds, and then we shot down to the mews—where Niall was already waiting—and I slammed them indoors with Peter and ran back down the drive and fell headfirst into Niall's car. . . .

            Penelope keeps trying to educate me.  She's taken me to manga/anime before‡‡‡ and I'm like, what?  I did know it was going to be more of the same tonight but . . . I hadn't quite grasped the . . . er . . . the . . . er . . . Oh dear.  I'm not the natural anime audience, I'm afraid.  The evening started with a series of shorts about an extremely etiolated female mercenary naked but for her weaponry going around killing things in a creepy monochrome technoscape and—and this was the kind of interesting bit—getting killed herself.  Repeatedly.  Oh.  Well, that's one take on dealing with your serial protagonist.  I didn't like it worth a damn but I thought it was clever and creative and . . . icky.  But I squick out easily. 

            Roll on the main event.

            . . . I pretty much hated it.  I also thought it would NEVER BE OVER. It's ugly and stupid and the characters all suck and about half of them are only marginally identifiable one from another and there is almost no plot, just a lot of blowing stuff up.  A lot of blowing stuff up.§  It is, I'm told, a classic of anime.  Fine.  I don't need to discover any more fascinating new worlds.  But bouncing off this one like a pigeon caroming off your sitting-room window still destroyed a perfectly good working evening. 

            The whole thing took three hours. We got home after eleven. 

            And I still have to sing§§ . . . 

* * *

* Never mind what it does to your liver and, if I get it wrong, the never waking up properly the next day which is my version of a hangover, the REAL reason I'm not a big drinker is because of the getting up five times in the night to pee.  

** Since going back to the cottage involves driving a car, I tend to be a little obsessive on this point.  I haven't yet decided we'd better walk, but it could happen.  I really need that dog cart against this possibility, to transport my two-ton knapsack and briefcase equivalent. 

*** Poetic License Alert 

† Never mind getting dressed.  The first thing is to get the caffeine stewing. 

†† I'm sure I've told you this:  yes, I have a house alarm.  Yes, it is very silly when you live in a small cottage with several thousand books and two hellhounds, but everybody else in the neighbourhood has a house alarm, and you don't want to be the only one who doesn't.  

††† See 'silly'.  It's hard to get your brain around the needs of your house alarm. 

‡ Hellhounds and I did manage to have a good hurtle.  My grey louring birthday was bracketed by two gorgeous autumn days, all crisp and sparkling, but this time of year I'll take my good weather any time I can get it.  Meanwhile having polished off A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING^ as an audible.co.uk download^^ I've begun A BRIEFER HISTORY OF TIME and . . . well, compared to BRIEF, yes, it is vastly more user friendly.  But I got halfway through listening to the explanation of special/general relativity for the third time, realised my brains were melting, and shifted over to Bryn Terfel singing Vaughan Williams for a while.

            None of this is going to show in SHADOWS.  Sigh.  It's not even going to make cocktail party conversation since I never go to cocktail parties.^^^ 

^ And have come away, I fear, with my standard jumble of semi-acquired factoids, an impression of a lot of very peculiar people+ and an uneasy conviction that the only bits I'll remember in six months are the bits that have since been thrown out of the canon by superyarn theory or quantum knitting. 

+ I am glad I did not have the famous Mr Newton as a next-door neighbour, for example.  Not at all a nice fellow.  

^^ And download, and download, and download, and download . . . SHORT was broken up into three files, and each one needed to be loaded at least twice . . . taking at least half an hour every time.  New evening schedule:  back to cottage, lock door, remove shoes, gallop upstairs with herd of hellhounds+, whip out Pooka and try to download something again. 

+ There are absolutely more than two of them when you're sharing a narrow twisty staircase with them. 

^^^ I've received two invitations to publisher Christmas parties in the last week.  Shudder.+ 

+ This would include the publishers of both SHORT and BRIEFER, but somehow I doubt . . .    

‡‡ This was pretty funny in its own right.  Niall drives all over Hampshire in his world-saving avatar as a water engineer.  But he doesn't have a clue about Zigguraton.  Turn here, I said.  And here.  And—no that's not the way to the media centre—that's one-way the wrong way.  This is why you brought me, right? I said, when we had finally arrived.  So you'd get here. 

‡‡‡ While Niall is ringing handbells. 

§ It also rouses the King Henry Conundrum.  You know the folk song (possibly as immortalised by Steeleye Span)?  Where a giant loathly lady demands King Henry kill all his dogs and hawks and horses to feed her and then he has to go to bed with her?  And when he does this she turns into a beautiful lady and it's all hearts and flowers?  I have objected to this since the first time I heard it.  Henry is still a sh*t for killing all the critters that trusted him—and he f*cks her??  That is clearly implied in what she says to him after she turns into the fairest lady that ever was seen: 

I've met with many a gentle knight

That gave me such a fill,

But never before with a courteous knight

That gave me all my will.

EWWWWWWWWW.  MAJOR FRELLING EWWWWWWWW.  Courteous knight?  He's a psychopath.  And, you know, all the critters are still dead and he still killed them.^   This is not okay.  

            At the end of tonight's epic the hero/villain TRANSFORMS and becomes a Superior Being.  Pardon me, he still killed a lot of people when he was a nasty selfish petulant monster with (almost) unlimited power.  Now he's TRANSFORMED it's all okay? 

            No.  It's not.  He gets the King Henry Anti-Award. 

^This shows up in SUNSHINE, in case any of you loyal readers are wondering why it looks familiar. 

§§ But not King Henry.

Happy Birthday to Me

 

In the first place I am Not Sober.  There was not only champagne, with which Halley and I dealt robustly, there being only minor help from Peter and no help at all from Nina, but because with Halley present we had at least some chance of getting through a bottle of champagne, there was also a bottle of sweet wine to go with the chocolate pudding.  Which pudding was AMAZING, by the way.  AMAZING. . . . but I'll get to that in a minute.

            So.  Um.  Have I mentioned that I am Not Sober?  The champagne was also . . . nice.  Really nice.  Every time someone got the bottle out again I said 'yes please'.  I've also been on the phone kind of a lot today.  So now it's late and I haven't started the blog post and . . . I think I have mentioned I am Not Sober. . . .  Where shall I begin?*

            I received an Excellent Birthday Card this morning which wished me Happy Tea in my Teapot of Life** and that the sender further hoped I would celebrate my birthday with chocolate, champagne, sunshine and roses—adding well, perhaps not roses in November. . . .

            HA. 

Old Blush, AKA Parson's Monthly, and she is. If it's a mild winter I'll have roses on Christmas.

There was remarkably little sunshine though.*** 

            And, speaking of pink, which I often am, Nina and I had declared that the dress code for tonight's party would be Jeans and Bling.

Bling. And a pink pullover. Of course. Some verities are eternal.

I rarely wear the pocket watch because I'm too dumb to use it.  It's built so that if you pick it up by the loop in your right hand you will be reading the clockface correctly.  I can never remember this, so I pick it up and then have to look frantically for the twelve and get tangled up in the chain while I'm trying to readjust.  The bottom pendant does in fact date from my childhood in Japan.  The characters are supposed to say something like happiness† and long life but I always wonder if really they say something like Public Restroom This Way or I Am an Apple Dumpling.  It's still a pretty pendant.

Oh, and shoes.  You may have seen these before.  They are among those that only come out for special occasions.

Special occasion shoes.

 

PRESENTS.

The voice lessons are invisible.

I have totally failed to get an effective photo of my fabulous new black cotton-canvas trench coat.  I was greatly hampered in my attempt to record the evening's festivities by the fact that Peter has refused to have anything to do with my no-longer-new fancy-schmancy camera.  SIIIIIIIGH.  So you'll just have to imagine.  It's an excellent black cotton-canvas trench coat AND THE SLEEVES ARE LONG ENOUGH.  In my world this does not happen.

You'll just have to imagine it being fabulous.

Nina and Halley gave me a funny card

 

Wow. Thinking. Wow.

And a book on . . .

KNITTING.

Hee hee hee hee hee.  Well, since there's a Large Visible Shelf of Knitting Books immediately to my left as I sit at the kitchen table these days this may give people ideas.

And then . . . the food.  This was the starter:  Pecorino, Asparagus and Broad Bean Salad with Lemon Oil and Caramelised Onions.  If you look closely you may observe that one quarter of it is missing its slabs of pale cheese.  Usually when you leave the dairy item out of a dish that calls for it you can tell.  It's not very interesting or it's unbalanced or something—I've gotten a bit testy on the subject after years of being the party pooper but our local caterer is just one person in a small town and the choices were not vast.  I figured anything with asparagus and broad beans was going to be okay.  And in fact it was brilliant. 

Mmmmmmmm.

The fish, which was another compromise since Nina is a vegetarian, was also top notch and sublime—sea bass with ginger.  And then . . . and then. . . .

MMMMMMMMM. (Yes, all right, I got the plate with the roses on it.)

 

The pudding.  Totally amazing.  Totally totally totally amazing.  It's a sort of almost-solid very gooey chocolate mousse further enhanced by a chocolate short crust.  I won't be able to button my jeans tomorrow . . . but that may be the champagne.  And the sweet wine.††   Alcohol is distressingly caloric.

            It was worth it. 

* Probably not with the fact that Awakening:  the Dreamlike Git has hung itself and refuses to unhang, so after wearing little indentations in Astarte's screen with retries I wrote to BigFishGames customer contact and am receiving really helpful advice like that hot spots are sometimes quite fiddly and I should spend some time CAREFULLY trying to attach stupid token A to stupid large object B but if I continue to have problems to pleeeeeeeez get back in touch because they're here to help.  Snarl.  

** My Teapot of Life is yellow.  The funny thing is that I have a gigantic yellow teapot. 

*** But no vampires either.  It probably balances out. 

† Or possibly happy tea.

†† Which survived its meeting with that chocolate.  It deserves a medal.

Gigantic Throbbing Neon Ratbags

 

Also, doodle update.

You didn't doubt me, did you?

 

And just in case you're wondering, yes this is larger paper:  it's A4. * I'm not, in fact, all that good at small, and gigantic throbbing neon ratbags . . . well, they need room to move around in. **   This is the paper size for the bats in the belfry doodle since to get the grins on the faces of the bats satisfactorily grinny I again need some extra space.*** 

            I should have mentioned the doodle level last night, when I was busy moaning about everything . . .  but then I spent too much time gloating.  Yes, I absolutely am still stumbling through the doodle orders, but, all appearances of extreme silliness to the contrary notwithstanding, doodling is . . . no, really . . . a brain drain.  Okay, pick yourselves up off the floor and wipe your streaming-with-disbelieving-laughter eyes as you will.  Let's put this incomprehensible datum down to a variety of factors:  first and perhaps foremost that when I started this auction nonsense I hadn't held the business end of a drawing pencil in about twenty years.  That yanking myself back into drawing, ahem, fitness, even when it's only doodles, takes time, practise and thought.  It's about eye, you know?  Well, any of you who draw know.  Eye and hand—er—coordination, coordination of any sort not being my strong suit at best.  Even though it's just doodles.  Also . . . I'm actually really happy to be drawing again, and I don't want to ruin it for me.  Plus, even at silly-doodle level I have standards.  If I'm not happy with a doodle, I'll do it again.††  This is why I mostly pencil each doodle in first, and go over it with pen after I'm (relatively) pleased. †††  But this takes longer than if I were boldly and expertly dashing off each uniquely brilliant design. 

            And then, speaking of dashing and uniquely brilliant, there are the challenging petitions.  Again, these are fun, except for the time element‡ involved.  I admit I am still a trifle stymied by a request for a doodle of a 'squirrel running away with a brain'.  A brain?  No, no, I'm sure I don't want to know. 

           Meanwhile . . . Fiona was supposed to come today, and haul the next load of doodly things off to the post office, but I got very nearly nothing done last week barring a little of SHADOWS and a lot of moaning.  So she's now coming next Tuesday.  I won't be finished yet.  I'm hoping to finagle her into coming once more about a fortnight after that . . . and that should be all the basic doodles, either on their own or in books.  I've already warned (I hope) the people with the really exotic orders that they may still be waiting a while, and I'm afraid I can't guarantee to have got the doodle-icious books done yet either—they are INCREDIBLY labour-intensive.‡‡

            Again, I'm sorry.  Aside from my pig-headed stupidity about not recognising what was going on with PEG II, most of what's gone wrong is circumstances out of my control . . . but if I hadn't been pig-headedly stupid about PEG II circumstances wouldn't have got out of control, because I'd've set PEG in its varying lengths and incarnations aside several months sooner, instead of putting off the auction till I got it sorted, because I wasn't going to get it sorted . . . thus also leaving me trying to write a novel in five months as well as fulfil the auction obligations. 

            You know this living even a censored life on line leaves a lot to be desired:  it's very hard not to demonstrate your essential feeble-minded pratness even when you're trying to be careful. 

            HEY!  IT'S AFTER MIDNIGHT!  IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!  DARK CHOCOLATE MOUSSE‡‡‡ IN EIGHTEEN HOURS! 

* * *

* http://www.papersizes.org/a-paper-sizes.htm  The standard doodle paper is A6.  If I weren't trying to keep the postage costs down I probably would have used bigger paper even for the basic doodles. 

** I'd've coloured the houses too, but I ran out of marker pens.  The only colour I had left was purple.  Clearly I need a better assortment of marker pens.  

*** I have a friend thinking about coming to visit next spring.  Maybe April? she says.  WILL THERE BE BATS YET?  ::Headdesk::  And, just by the way, no, there shouldn't be bats yet.  Bats are supposed to arrive—that is, indoors—in May.  Although they were early this year because we had such an early spring.^ 

 ^ Which then pissed off and left us with a non-summer.  Never mind.  We all seem to have thrived+ anyway.++  

+ !!!!!!!!! 

++ I have got to get that mosquito netting before . . . April.   I'm going to have an interesting time trying to rig up a frame over the sofa bed for insane visiting friends.  Not to mention buying a second lot of netting. 

†† My standards may, of course, be a little unusual.  

††† And you better believe I pencil it in first when it's a doodle in a book.  I've still already had to throw a couple out^ BECAUSE I AM TOO DUMB TO LIVE AND GOT THE DEDICATION NAME WRONG. 

^ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH            

‡ The end of January^ is MUCH TOO SOON. 

^ What do you mean 'what's the end of January?'  SHADOWS is due the end of January.    

‡‡ And I hope you like them.  They're huge fun to plan and to do but . . . time-consuming and Demanding of Brain. 

‡‡‡ An entire chocolate cake in the house, with post-menopause zero-metabolism, is not to be thought of.  Sigh.  There isn't that much about being young that I miss—aside from the ever-shortening future—but I miss eating.

Triumph

 

Best.  Voice.  Lesson.  Ever.

            Being fifty-nine-years-old-minus-two-days I am reminding myself that this is a high and won't last.  Learning stuff—at least in my experience of learning stuff—always follows a jagged line with nearly as many downs as ups—assuming that 'learning' indicates the eventual tendency will be up even if there are moments when you doubt it.*  So . . . brief triumph.  Still. 

            It has been pretty much a ratbag of a week as regular readers know.  This stupid eternal head/throat/possible bronchial involvement virus morphed into a proper Chest Thing.  The ME hates me to get sick on anyone else's dance card, so it came back and smacked me around for infidelity.  I missed SIEGFRIED plus two attempts at the same concert, as well as not one but two opportunities to ring handbells with a good band—and my standard Thursday handbells.  I didn't even try to go to Forza tower practise last week.  There are at least two Ongoing Social Crises It Would Be Tactless of Me to Discuss in Public.**  Hellhounds have been underhurtled.    Blah blah blah blah snarl blah. 

            There were two bright spots.  SHADOWS***.  And singing.  Singing, it turns out, fits into kind of an interesting niche.  Most of what available brain I've got lately has to go on SHADOWS.  Practising handbells, even though one can do it sitting down, for example, is way too mentally demanding†, and trying to concentrate on two jagged blue lines, speaking of jagged lines, makes me lightheaded and the hot pincers grasping my temples start to bite in.  But I can still sing—sort of.  But even sort-of singing involves, well, singing, and at my level it all frelling counts.  You can also learn the tune and practise mouthing your Italian even if you're leaning on your piano with the other elbow while you pick out the melody with one finger.  Also singing is cheering.  I think I've told you I tend to be an easy endorphin high—it may not last, but the break in the heavy cloud cover is worth trying for.  I assume it's all that breathing that brings it on when you sing, and very useful this is when Extreme Hurtling is not an option.

            So I've been singing—what the hell.  I also had that seriously traumatic experience of trying to record myself singing to get over:  sheer back-on-the-horse-that-threw-you stuff.  And I'm pretty sure I did tell you that I was giving myself a few days to tackle the Chest Thing with homeopathy and if I made no progress I'd go to a doctor.††

            I think I noticed that the Persistent Gloop in my throat was thinning before I noticed that the Chest Thing seemed to be weakening.  But over the weekend I've been singing almost frantically, like I was up for an audition or something.†††  And today before I went off to my lesson it did cross my mind that I was in what passes in my case for good voice.  It's like the last few weeks of taking forever to sing 'in'‡ have strengthened the critter generally.‡‡

            I think Nadia may even have been startled.‡‡‡  We got me sung in so quickly we had more than the usual amount of time to work on pieces, which since I had two I particularly wanted her to hear was convenient.  She was very good about it when I admitted I was singing Se Tu M'Ami anyway, despite the fact she had more or less told me not to—but everything I've been singing is so frelling MOURNFUL and this one isn't.§   So I asked if she'd be kind enough to provide a little damage control on the Italian.§§

            But the real exit-stage-left-BEAMING moment was at the end.  The other song I wanted her to hear was The Roadside Fire, the Vaughan Williams setting of the Stevenson poem §§§ which I'd sung [at] some months back.  I hadn't touched it again till recently, when I was looking for things to sing in with.#  And I found I was singing it . . . really rather differently than I had done only a few months ago.  Hmm, I thought.  I think this is a good thing.  I think I'm singing it more forward, with more voweling and less gargling.  I think there may even be some expression going on, of my affection for the song.

            Yes, said Nadia.  Better vowels, more space, looser jaw, more flow—you're also about three times louder than you were.  Clearly these last weeks, however frustrated you've been feeling, you've also been learning.  Well done.  With the voice you're demonstrating here today## you can certainly hold your own in a choir.

            Exit beaming.

            Mind you, tomorrow I'll sound like Tom Waits.  Or Florence Foster Jenkins. ### 

* * *

* I may perhaps have a severe case.  I made reference to this system once to my first shrink in terms of thirteen steps forward and twelve steps back.   He said drily that the standard phrase was something more like three steps forward and two back.  Oh. 

** ::Spits nails::         

*** Trust me, you aren't anywhere near as glad as I am. 

† Not to say just mental  

†† Ewwww. 

††† Hahahahahahahaha 

‡ This is Nadia's phrase, but it's very useful.  I don't know if this is a function of being wobbly and new, similar to what I've read or been told more than once by athletes, that the concept of your 'second wind' just means you aren't fit yet.  But there's a stage, at least when you're a wobbly new singer, between warming your voice up and like waking it up so you can actually do something with it—besides sing scales.^  The last few weeks, possibly because of this virus I've been unwillingly harbouring, it's been taking me forever to 'sing in'. 

^ And possibly Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes 

‡‡ The Recording Trauma may have been a kick in the rear too.  Move it!  Don't just stand there!  Move on!     

‡‡‡ Which made two of us.  She led me briskly up to G#/Ab^.  I haven't been above F#, and often just F, since the Virus Drama began, and I've never been above G in a lesson, so a whole half-step higher, and I hadn't anything like run out of top end yet. 

^ Bless her understanding of the soprano personality:  she called it 'Ab'+ which makes it sound, you know, higher. 

+ It's the same note:  A flat.  G sharp.  But A is the note above G on the keyboard.  So you want to claim the A. 

§ She acknowledged this point.  The thing about all these gloomy morbid things is that you tend to sing the nice long legato lines more slowly and it's easier to grab a little time to think, which is comforting to the new and wobbly.   

§§ From my notebook:  Mah delyee wohmeenie Il conseelio io pair may non segweeroh Non pair kay mee pee ah chay Il geelyio lyee altree feeyoree spretzeroh.  Heavens help me.  I'm sure she'll have adjustments to make next week.

            She also said she'd think about something more jolly for someone at my level to sing.^ 

^ It's not like I'm not contributing to my own downfall.  I picked up another song from the book She's Like a Swallow is from . . . Down by the Salley Gardens.  Because I love it.  But it still goes:  'But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.'  Oh good.  Nice and cheerful. 

§§§ Yeah, so I like singing baritone songs, sue me.  Here's Thomas Allen again.  I wish I could find one with piano instead of the full orchestral flapdoodle which I think makes it gooey rather than romantic, but if it's out there YouTube isn't finding it for me.  And the problem with most hot professionals singing (relatively) simple songs is that they feel they have to yuck it up.  Allen knows just to sing it.  The sound quality isn't awfully good either.  But . . . well, it's Allen.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQll2FLrtPc 

# You can only sing Drink to Me Only so many times.  Roadside Fire is actually a terrible choice since in its simple way it's pretty complicated.  But I love it, it's in English, and it does have a nice flowing line. 

## Remember that voices are fickle little ratbags:  your-body-is-your-instrument.  The voice you have today means very frelling little about the voice you may have tomorrow.  Persistent Gloop is only the beginning. 

### http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtf2Q4yyuJ0&feature=related

Ringing, singing and remembering

 

It's Remembrance Weekend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day which tends to mean extra ringing.*  But it means extra ringing with the clappers half-muffled** which is surprisingly disconcerting to the less-than-fabulous ringer.  Half-muffled means that the handstroke bongs out as usual, but the backstroke has leather, rubber or padded neoprene between the clapper and the bell wall and produces a dull thud.   Suddenly you discover that while you've always believed you were wholly dependent on ropesight you use your ears more than you had any idea of—till now.  Which is to say since the last time you rang half-muffled, which may be this time last year.***  Leading is particularly obnoxious, because you probably can't hear the last bell's backstroke as you're yanking off your handstroke, and ropesight when you're leading is at best only half-helpful because that's where the break in the row comes—from handstroke to backstroke or backstroke to handstroke, as the first bell in the row follows the last bell of the previous row.  If you're the treble for call changes endlessly following the tenor while the other bells are swapped around at the conductor's discretion it can get a bit hallucinatory, not in a good way. 

We rang—call changes—on Friday midday to coincide with the procession around the churchyard.  I managed to lose track of time (how unusual) and was racing hellhounds home while the veterans were marching up Sheep Hill during the two-minute silence and as we spun round the Sheep Hill corner there was a Moron with a Dog—at least the dog was on a lead, but it was a loose lead and the moron was paying no attention to it whatsoever, and it promptly made a lunge for the hellhounds and . . . the two-minute silence was not successfully preserved.  But I did blast back to the tower in time to ring (clumsily).  Practise Friday night, still muffled, was extremely odd, with the good ringers shrieking themselves silly at us poor lost adrift nongood ringers as we attempted to ring methods, not merely call changes . . . although I had furtively staked out the five.  Number five bell is at the bottom of the ladder to the belfry, and the two trap doors between you and the bells are not the aural equivalent of double-glazed and even half-muffled you can still hear the backstrokes.  Mwahahahahaha.  This morning at Old Eden . . . well, I'm glad it was only call changes. 

* * *

 Meanwhile . . . between the rocket up the backside of this prospective hour-long lesson thing and the fact that the ME is still limiting my activities† I've been singing like a mad creature.††  Whatever this frelling mutant virus is it does seem to be showing some signs of clearing the hell off which means not only sitting down less during practise sessions††† but my throat may finally be shedding its load of persistent gloop‡ which would be great news.  

blondviolinist

. . . it wasn't necessarily a lack of dynamics that were my problem: it was a lack of the tone colors and phrase direction. I could hear the music in my head, but I couldn't make my violin sound like that. (Partly, I didn't have either the left- or right-hand facility yet to make the tone colors I heard in my head, but I didn't know that yet.) Everything coming out of my violin was bright and not nearly connected enough, and I was missing all the rich texture I wanted. Of course, I couldn't articulate any of that. I simply was frustrated.  

. . . Yes.  It's not even that I've listened to too much Beverly Sills and Cecilia Bartoli—it's not only them I'm hearing in my head, it's what I'm trying to do, even more or less within the limits of the voice I have to use.  If it weren't for Nadia constantly reminding me that the voice is a muscle and you have to build fitness carefully, correctly, and over time, I would assume that I merely have the vocal version of my maths brains.‡‡  You'd think, for example, that as I become capable of being louder I should also retain the ability to be softer, right?  Well . . . sort of.  But it doesn't seem to mean anything somehow.  Sometimes I'm louder.  Sometimes I'm softer.  Not nearly connected enough.  Missing the texture.  Yes.  Exactly.  I can do loud, and I can do soft.  It's like bumping a couple of bricks together.  No flow.  No connection.  No progress—no, you know, journey, from one end of the song to the other.  Bleeeaugh.  

Mismatched Socks

. . . you may be talking about dynamics, but not quite in the way you mean (if I'm right in thinking that you're thinking about the dynamic markings as something that would make the piece feel musical if only you could manage to follow them correctly). 

Well sort of!  I'm a natural going-off-the-rails person, and besides, I'm not trying to pass any tests, so if I want to disagree with the particular edition of a song‡‡‡ in a book, I will, unless it's Britten's or Schubert's own, religiously preserved. 

I began learning to sing five years after beginning to learn to play an instrument (violin), and one of the things that still trips me up all the time (seven years after my first voice lesson) is the difference between the way I deal with dynamics as a violinist and the way I deal with them as a singer. For instrumentalists, and for members of a choir, dynamics are a tool you use consciously in order to create the impression of a particular emotion, and hopefully to get your audience to feel that emotion. For a singer who is making her/his own artistic decisions, dynamics are the natural (ok, natural plus a bit of exaggeration) result of feeling the emotion yourself– the causal relationship is reversed (this goes double for tone color, and maybe half for phrasing). I think, although I'm not positive about this, that this difference fundamentally stems from the your-instrument-is-your-body issue. 

Yes.  I am certainly struggling with this—and you're right, it is different when your-instrument-is-your-body.  One of the things Nadia said to me last week—taking flamingly unfair advantage of knowing that I'm not only a writer, but a writer who talks about the story telling me what to do—is that singing is a form of channelling.  I channel my stories:  I need to get out of the way and let them tell themselves, with me as the fingers on the keyboard.  She says it's pretty much the same thing with singing:  you train yourself to be as good a channel as possible . . . and get out of the way.  I get this.  Moan.  I so get this.  I can't do it, but I get it.

Personally, I find that when I can't make a (vocal) piece feel musical, it means that I haven't yet made my peace with the text– maybe I find the lyrics too over-the-top to relate to, and still can't imagine myself actually saying them under any circumstances, or maybe I'm still a bit hung up on the foreign language I'm singing in (this often happens to me when I'm at the stage where I know what the phrases mean but not which word means what). However, I know an awful lot of singers who are not nearly as text-oriented as I am, and can manage to be musical even when they have no idea what their lyrics mean, or even which ones come next, so obviously different people approach this in different ways. 

It may just be that it's still early days for my singing.  I don't at the moment need to know what every Italian word means;  I need to know what a phrase is about, and then the music . . . erm . . . tries to tell me how to channel it.  With greater or, mostly, lesser success.  At the moment the wall I'm banging my head on is the connectedness, the flow.  That's why Nadia suggesting I think of every phrase of Caro being a sigh was so helpful.  

Julia:

. . . Not just with music teachers either- when I worked in the WritingCenterat my university, the same thing would happen to me. Time and time again, I'd find myself calmly and clearly explaining to a student about how he or she might proceed in organizing, clarifying, or simply beginning a paper… and I could help them. But when it came to fixing or even facing the same issues in my own work, I was just as stuck as the students I was working with had been. It took my professor or another member of theWritingCenter staff to drag me out of the hole. . . . 

Uh huh.  This is why I talk so little about writing, and am so reluctant to give 'advice' or even describe much about how I do it:  I feel like such a dork.  Yes, I'm a professional writer, have been a professional writer for substantially over thirty years (gleep):  obviously I have workarounds, I have ways to keep going, I have markers on the road.  Yes.  I do.  And they're all embarrassing. 

* * *

* Except when it doesn't.  I turned up for service ring this morning and . . . there was no one there.  Dorothy showed up shortly after me and we looked at each other in consernation.  Occasionally our flawless communications system breaks down.  I knew about the extra ring at Old Eden this morning, but that doesn't mean anything about New Arcadia;  usually on an OE day we merely ring both.  Dorothy didn't know about Old Eden, had made other plans and couldn't stay—which meant we were only five at OE.  I could have used that extra hour in bed.  When I cornered Niall after we rang down at OE he said he and Penelope would have been at NA this morning too if it weren't for a chance conversation with one of the Inner Circle^ last night.  I would have phoned you, he said, only it was too late.  It was after eleven.

            Snork.^^

^ Apparently Ringing Masters and Deputy Ringing Masters don't count 

^^ Although it's true I consider a ringing phone after about 9 pm a crime against humanity.  This is a tangential reason why I like staying up late.+  He could have texted me. 

+ Although this has been known to cause other problems.  That extra hour in bed this morning wouldn't have done me that much good since Crunching Driveway Gravel at 7 a.m. on Weekdays Man across the road started his frelling leaf blower at about 9.#  It sounds like a replay of the Assyrian descending on Sennacherib.  I'm assuming the Angel of Death in that case was noisy.  

# Nine in the morning on a SUNDAY.  At the mews they're not allowed to use ANY noisy machinery ALL DAY on Sunday.  

** I've told you this, haven't I?  There are proper muffles and half-muffles for bells, and for £14,635.99 you too can have a set for your bells.  Or you can go to your local tack shop and buy a few pairs of strap-on fetlock brushing boots and a few pairs of rubber pull-on overreach ankle boots and get out again for under £100, for the same effect.  The bells don't care.^ 

^ If you're Liverpool Cathedral, where the treble weighs about as much as a small town and the tenor is vast on a Cthulhuian scale, you probably do need tailor-made muffles.  The rest of us lesser mortals have a simpler situation. 

*** We do ring funerals occasionally, and occasionally-occasionally we ring them half muffled.  Half-muffled is terribly effective, and if you know whoever died it may be a bit rough on you.  Note that I want half-muffled for my memorial service, and then at some later date a really cracking quarter peal, unmuffled, possibly Stedman Triples.^   And a quarter of Yorkshire on handbells.  And if you fire out you have to do it again till you GET it.  

^ Or possibly Frelling Whose Idea Was This Gigantighastadon Megalolithic Sarcophagic Triples.  

† It is ebbing, it's just not doing it with any grace or finesse. 

†† No, not Lucia.  I have no designs on her at all.  But I am totally having a hack at Rosina in a year or twelve.^ 

^ I wonder how many seventy-two-year-old Rosinas there have been? 

††† And hellhound hurtles 

‡ Persistent gloop: you can look it up in any medical dictionary. 

‡‡ Although I'm continuing to have a rather goofy good time with my hard science books.  I did a little unseemly hooting over the maths puzzle in Awakening^ this evening however.  It's clearly aiming for the preteen girl client base which is fine^^ but I would have said that even preteen girls can do a little more than count to fifteen without dangerous mental overheating. 

^ http://www.gamezebo.com/games/awakening-dreamless-castle/walkthrough 

^^ I'd like the incredibly anodyne princess a good deal better if she had dreadlocks and a confusing genetic background. 

‡‡‡ I've also listened to Oisin, and even Nadia, rant too often about bad editing to take dynamic markings any more seriously than I feel like it in some paralytically classic teaching text.  I think someone on the forum has for example referred disparagingly to the plinkety plinkety accompaniments in the hoary old standby Italian Arie book that I, and every other trainee classical singer who has ever lived in the last sixty years, has.

Secret Onion Relish: guest post by Hedgehog

 

I'm cooking a batch of Secret Onion Relish.  It's quite a time-consuming process, and I seem to get around to it only once or twice a year, usually when some friend who had a jar of the last batch tells me it was delicious and … hint, hint.  So here I am, with ten pounds of white onions in their third hour of simmering, nothing much left to do but to stir occasionally, await the Right Consistency, and write a word or two to an old friend.  

Since this Relish is a secret recipe, I am sure I will burn eternally for writing about it at all, let alone in a Blog.  I had it from a little old lady who had it from the even older and smaller lady who established the restaurant that made it a local legend.  She has long since gone to a better place, and would anyway be disinclined to sue someone who is old and destitute and far past his mental prime, for what would be the advantage? — at least, I hope so, for that's my sole defense.  Anonymity would not avail me, because the little old lady I got it from would give me up in half a heartbeat.  There is scant honor among cooks here on the mountain. 

It's Saturday night.  I couldn't undertake this relish on a week night, because it simply takes too long.   As it is, if I run out of time tonight, I can cook it some more tomorrow morning. 

There's a lot of molasses involved.  Five cups of it, to my ten pounds of onions.  Also two-thirds of a cup of cider vinegar, among other things. 

Last night a friend from work came to dine with me.  I had no Secret Onion Relish to share, hence my cooking binge today.  He told me a story.  A young warden accompanies an older and very experienced warden on a fishing trip.  They catch nothing for hours.  Eventually the old warden extracts a quarter-stick of dynamite from his vest, lights the fuse and tosses it in the stream.  The young warden is appalled:  "How can you do such a thing, having sworn an oath to uphold the law?"  The older warden produces another quarter-stick with an even shorter fuse, lights it, tosses it into the youngster's lap, and says:  "Now, are you going to keep runnin' your mouth, or are you going to fish?"  — So I'll just keep running my mouth for a while, so to speak, and let the relish simmer down.  It's important to be patient when you're cooking Secret Onion Relish. 

I have not yet mentioned the brown sugar.  There are two pounds of it in the original recipe, but I often use somewhat less, because I prefer the relish not-so-sweet;  and I also furtively increase the cider vinegar to a whole cup, if no one's watching.  But it's all personal taste. 

 … And now it's Sunday morning and the batch is once again on the burner after a few hours of rest.  It's still possible to stir it fairly easily and plenty of liquid still to be simmered away, but the culinary outline is plain.  I have just sampled it (by the way, hot onion relish is absolutely delicious on cottage cheese) and I was wrong about the cayenne pepper.  I am going to add another half ounce, stir well, allow a few minutes, and re-sample. 

Um … the trick with this extra half ounce of cayenne is to make very sure that it is evenly distributed throughout the relish, by stirring even more than you think is enough.    

I'm just saying. 

That distillate, like life itself, has quite a bite to it if you let it sit on your tongue a while. 

So here is the secret of Secret Onion Relish, spelled out: 

            10 lbs white onions

             5 C molasses

             2/3 C cider vinegar

             2 lbs dark brown sugar

            1 to 2 oz cayenne pepper, to taste

            4 or 5 apples, chopped fine

            …and perhaps 1/2 cup of tequila, if you like tequila!

Combine all ingredients except the onion.  Heat slowly in an 8-qt or larger pot while you skin and chop the onions, gradually adding them to the liquid mixture.  (If you do it this way, the early onions will cook down a bit and you'll have room for the rest of them in the 8-qt pot;  if you start with the onions, the pot will likely overflow.)  Simmer the mixture for 3 to 6 hours until the liquid is reduced and the relish reaches an almost-jelly consistency.  Serve with meat dishes, or with cottage cheese, or anything else that appeals to you.  It's nothing if not versatile.  

When I simmer this mix, I tip the pot lid a bit to let the steam out, and the pot invariably spits little bits of sugar all over my stove and my kitchen floor.  I learned, after my first few batches of relish, to put newspapers down on the floor in front of the stove before I start.  

In my experience the typical yield is about 4 qt of relish, which I divide among  several large and small canning jars while it is still boiling hot;  cover, cool, and store.  

Make sure to contribute some to any friends whose lives could use a bit of extra kick, because I can assure you that this relish will succeed where less stubborn relishes would fail.  If you enjoy it, remember me kindly. 

Love to all,

Hedgehog

Better

 

I'm better.*  I'm still not planning on conquering the world this week but maybe next.**  I would be better better if I hadn't had the standard nonsense of my energy starting to flow back in yesterday evening with the result that I COULD NOT GET TO SLEEP LAST NIGHT.***  So today has been a struggle.  A different kind of struggle, but there's still been a certain amount of Antaeusian wrestling about it, and holding a giant over your head gets really tiring. 

            Also my brain is lying on the bottom of my skull like a soufflé hit with a shovel.  Have I mentioned that both Niall and Penelope have degrees in hard science?  Niall thinks he's going to teach me the rudiments—repeat:  rudiments—of calculus† and Penelope has loaned me a couple of basic physics texts that she used when she was a classroom teacher.  I took the easier†† of these two alarming-looking textbooks to the sofa with me this afternoon with the very basic text that I bought about a week ago because I know from experience that one explanation isn't going to shatter my ignorance, and . . . whimper. 

            Meanwhile, there was Oisin. 

jessgoesnorth

I wonder if the quality of the recording was part of the problem. Lots of recorders compress the sound in a way that cuts out all the nice resonance which you're working to get into your voice. . . .  Built in microphones are generally pretty poor as well – various singing fora recommend proper recording equipment that costs a fortune but a separate microphone you can connect to a computer might be a good stand-in if you want to record yourself more often with less wincing! (I'd always go for recording the sound alone rather than sound and video… less to wince about!)

I don't know how to turn off Pooka and Astarte's video—I don't know how to record sound only and as you say it's not going to solve the built-in microphone problem.  I did know that I wasn't going to be getting a great result but no, it didn't occur to me that it might be quite this destructive—I mean that what I'm hearing when I play back is that much, ahem, less accurate than the original noise I was making.  But this is almost exactly what Oisin said to me today:  record on an iPhone?  Am I crazy?  But it's worse than that—because he does have professional recording equipment and in fact has a little handheld gizmo that he says has fabulous sound and (he added heartily) that we'll use that.  Gleep.  You're all systematically destroying my wiggle room, you know?  I was deliberately recording myself when I wasn't at my best, and I also knew that Pooka and Astarte as jills-of-all-trades were not going to be fabulous recorders, even if I didn't know how unfabulous.  Ah well, there will still be the wiggle room of the fact that I get feverishly anxious about singing for Oisin.  Which probably explains why I keep forgetting to photocopy my music.††  So I can only sing stuff that he can bear having me shrieking past his ear, and then I usually can't read the lyrics well enough anyway and am busy panicking, so sing most of it on 'ah'. 

But for example the accompaniment to She's Like a Swallow is really pretty (as we discovered today).  It's one of these frellers where the accompaniment is having its own party and mere singers are not invited, however, but it would be worth persevering.  Hmm.  This may the moment to experiment with the CD in the back of the book.

Have you thought about recording your lessons? Not only does it capture the good bits, but I used to find it very helpful to sing along to recorded warm-ups from lessons to try and recapture a bit of that singing teacher studio magic!

. . . And the bad bits.  But yes.  Nadia also mentioned a long time ago now that some people do record their lessons.  That went straight past me like a bullet, with me cringing frantically out of the way.  But it's occurred to me again lately.  Because it is so frustrating that I'm now at the stage where I'm more relaxed at home—I have not merely a G and an A at home, but more often than not a B-below-high-C—and Nadia never bothers luring me above G, and sometimes stops at F.  I can hear myself shutting down.  I can't get the (comparatively) lovely round notes out of myself that she can—but I can yowl up to G and usually A without thinking about it.  So I have been wondering if it might be worth trying to record a lesson.  On whatever Styrofoam and chewing gum tech I'd be using I'm not going to get the round notes, but I would get what Nadia says to me. 

PamAdams

I do weight-training. Pushing through a too-heavy lift, even though I need a spotter to assist, will improve my strength tomorrow.

If it doesn't break you.  However I do have enough sense not to be trying to sing Una Voce Poco Fa.  Yet.

I've been working on my own for the last year. . . . However, I'm definitely noticing a tendency to coast, so am signing up for more training.

Yes.  This is one of those the world-is-divided-into-two-categories things.  There are the people who understand about taking lessons/going to practise sessions even when neither your job, your relationship(s) nor your mental health demands it and you're never going to be professional/the best/even sort of moderately good at it, and the people who don't get this at all.  I am absolutely in the former category.  Generally speaking anything I want to spend time doing on a regular basis I want to do better.  It's just . . . more interesting, trying to do something better.  I do have the excuse of writing stories for a living—the more different things you can crawl inside of, the more stuff you have to draw on when the Story Council sends you something impossible.†††  But my personal experience of first-class music is absolutely enhanced by my ridiculous struggles with piano and voice—and my possibly even more absurd forays into composing mean that I look at scores with a whole extra dimension of curiosity and engagement.  Oisin was playing Durufle and Reger on the organ today and I was hanging over his shoulder and thinking, how do they do that?  —Aside from being brilliant, that is. 

Bratsche

When I ask my students to record themselves, I ALWAYS tell them they need to discount at least half of what they hear as the fault of their recording equipment. (Unless, of course, they have professional level recording equipment on hand, which none of mine have ever had.) We're very used to hearing other people performing who have been recorded with pretty good equipment in decent acoustic spaces.

I entirely forgot about the decent acoustic spaces part.  I don't suppose the boiling water and the clash of pans were doing me any favours the other night.  Sigh.  But there is a fabulous little handheld doohickey in my future. . . .

And I do have a doodle of gigantic throbbing neon ratbags, as requested by Blogmom on the forum last night.  You will be thrilled to know.  But this is long enough and you'll just have to wait.

            Mwa hahahahahahaha. 

* * *

* jkribbitdesigns

. . . thank you for sharing your coping skills and thank everyone on the forum for sharing their experiences. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia 15 years ago . . . I'm in the midst of a huge flare. . .  It's very discouraging. Reading the last couple of posts from Robin and all the comments on the forum, I don't feel as alone in this. . . .

I find it pretty discouraging that so many of us still feel so isolated.  Some of it is the nature of the disease(s) themselves:  if you're tired and sore and stupid engaging with the world is hard:  you're too tired, you hurt too much, and your brain is porridge.  But some of it, I feel, is that there's still a bias that what's wrong with us isn't a real disease—and that we're only welcome in polite society if we pretend to be 'normal'—which we can only do on a good day, we can't predict when we're going to have a good day, and why should we have to anyway?  I know there are exceptions, but the people I know who get it usually get it because they have some direct experience of someone with one of these slippery conditions.

            Anyway.  I talk about my ME more than I planned to when I started this blog, for exactly this reason—that I hear from too many people saying it's a relief to hear more injured parties talking about it.

Diane in MN

Could an infection have sparked your ME flare? 

Almost certainly.  I think of it as my jealous boyfriend.  How dare I have a flirtation with a random virus?  I belong to it. 

** No, I haven't got time to conquer the world.  I have to finish a novel. 

*** Thanks for all the game recs.  The only ones I'd seen by the time I shut down the laptop last night were Maren's, so, while I was lying awake I investigated them on Astarte and for the venial reason that it was the cheapest I bought THE AWAKENING.  But you may remember my little broadband issues.  It took nearly an hour, give or take, to download the freller—I went back to my nice paper-tech book for a while and eventually gave up and turned the reading light off again . . . and lay there in the glinting twilight of Astarte's screen.  Yes, of course I could have put her in the next room^ but I was transported to an ancient era when you might fall asleep with the TV on^^ and wake up to darkness and an empty flickering blue screen.   How many of you remember when, not only was there no internet, the TV went off the air every night? 

^ Some kind of Rubicon is crossed when you start sleeping with your technology.  Astarte is on the bed.  Pooka is on the shelf beside, next to the kitchen timer I use for an alarm clock.  Pooka is of course (metaphorically) hardwired to Peter's emergency buzzer . . . and Astarte is also my ereader.  It's logical really.  

^^ I have never had a TV in the bedroom+ but there have been several eras in my life that have involved falling asleep on the sofa. 

+ Eww.  Sorry, but eww. 

†  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 

†† Which is to say the one with more photographs and fewer equations. 

††† Slightly in my defense, my copier lives at the cottage, and my piano and my music live at the mews. 

‡ Like right now.  I have a Definition of the Universe Through Your Friend, Physics waiting in my email inbox.  I need to read those basic physics books fast.  I should really learn not to ask experts.  They may answer.  They may then expect you to enter into a conversation with them on the subject they feel you brought up.  Gleep again.  Gleep cubed.