Robin McKinley's Blog, page 114
October 31, 2011
Singing and ghostbusting
I'm just back from seeing GHOSTBUSTERS. No, really. Special Halloween screening. Penelope brought it up while we were de-[cob]webbing the tower on Friday night.* She pays attention to these things.** I of course do not. Although this means that I'll have been inside that cinema—any cinema—three times in eight days, which does not happen.***
Anyway. I'm glad to report it's still funny. Although how a cellist in an orchestra is paying for a corner penthouse flat overlooking Central Park is a little beyond me but never mind.† I love all the bullfeathers science twaddle Ackroyd and Ramis are always spouting in this intense boy-geek way. I love what a sleazeball Murray is—that character that he patented. Of course I love the Staypuft Marshmallow Man. But I particularly love Sigourney Weaver's legs. When Penelope mentioned going I remembered the song, the Ghostbusters hearse, Annie Potts as the secretary, Listen do you smell something?, and He slimed me! . . . but chiefly I remembered Sigourney Weaver's legs, when the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster have been getting it on on the roof and she draws herself together and steps down off her balustrade like an empress descending from her throne.††
I was also worried that it would have dated badly: when you're watching something from the 1920s it's what it is, and the style and mannerisms—and the haircuts—are part of the picture and not distracting. I was afraid the 1980s were going to be at that awkward stage where everything (especially the haircuts) are still recent enough to be cringe-makingly embarrassing. But I just thought it was huge ridiculous fun and no harm in being of its time.†††
* * *
Meanwhile . . . Monday is voice lesson day. Um. EMoon has been writing about her voice lessons . . .
. . . it's been strongly hinted that I should be preparing a chunk of the Verdi Requiem (eep!)
I would kill to sing in Verdi's Requiem—to be able to hold my end up in a performance worth performing.
and also–last week's decision–should consider tackling Schumann's song cycle about a woman's life. In German. Do I speak German? No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenliebe_und_-leben You're singing this? Whimper. Whimper. I think I'll stop this singing nonsense and . . . take up knitting . . . no, wait, I can't use that line any more. But the Frauenliebe-something? I know someone who is singing that? That's like . . . the lieder version of singing Violetta in La Trav or Rosina in the Barber. Whimper.
At home and in the car I cannot sing half as well as in lessons,
Me too. But I'm now also screwing myself up in lessons by knowing I have something to lose—I get tense about whether I am going to sing well enough for Nadia—which is all about me and nothing about her—whereupon I sing less well.
but I'm singing (a little) better. I simply cannot hear the nuances that Svengali hears, and thus don't self-correct. . . .
Yes. This is part of the frustration of the winding myself up I reflexively and irresistibly do—Nadia can get better noises out of me even when I'm tensed up than I can do at home when I'm (comparatively) relaxed. KNITTING. KNITTING IS MY FUTURE. I suppose when I move on to cardigans I'll decide that that's performance too, and . . .
The exercise of looking at myself in the mirror while I sing vowel exercises is…hideous torture. . . .
Thank the gods Nadia does not ask this. Either I'm not at a point where it would be useful . . . or she knows I would run away to Brazil. I could take up the samba. At home. Alone. With no mirrors. I might hum a little while I trip over invisible obstacles on the perfectly flat floor.
. . . . Svengali said what else did I have in my folder? There's that Vivaldi, that "Qui sedes…" thing from the Gloria, I said. Perfect, he said. But I haven't, um, learned it, I said. Well, just read it, he said. My heart sank all the way to the basement and we were on the third floor. He flipped open his copy and . . . commenced to play the piano part, leaving me to figure out where to come in. Both temporally and altitudinally. . . ."It's VIVALDI! It's got lots of NOTES! Fast notes! High notes! Accidentals! You can't read that. . . !" But there was Svengali, playing away, apparently certain that I could, and would. And the musical part of my mind, that has actually been singing in this choir for 7 years now, though very much NOT solo, was noting "2 sharps, 3/8 time, not TOO high…"
…panic and euphoria fought for dominance (panic won every time Vivaldi did something interesting with the tempo; euphoria when I correctly read–to my own astonishment–a bunch of sixteenth notes bobbing up and down and around with what I used to call "twiddly bits." . . . )
Here's what it should sound like. . . .
. . . Siiiiiiiiiiiigh. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't bother telling you about my voice lesson. I'm still having Throat Crud problems, but Nadia pointed out that we're also going through change-of-season weather and along with making the ME flare it's probably making my voice . . . uh, de-flare, as it were. So, soldiering on. I told you last week she'd said I could retire Non lo diro col labbro but I should keep bringing in Caro mio ben, and she gave me another song out of the book Non lo is in—which is an Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music anthology for people who are trying to go for grade level marks. It's a folk song that almost sounds like lots of other folk songs, but not quite, and it's wonderfully pretty and comparatively easy‡ in that slightly misleading way of a good folk song, called She's like the swallow, and it's about a girl who apparently dies of love despite the fact that the bloke singing the song was apparently her lover and loved her. Backstory. I want the backstory. But. Whatever. I was actually more or less singing it today, although I've only had it a week—and I sang Caro with something almost approaching, you know, feeling. Even when I have enough of a clue about maintaining the frelling melody to have some brain-space to think about dynamics and line and all that miserable stuff, I don't know how to think about it. It's a language I don't yet . . . sing.
Today's Nadia-magic was first a tongue-relaxing and jaw-loosening exercise . . . how do the Nadias and the Svengalis know these things? It doesn't seem to me enough to say that they're trained musicians and voice coaches; it's like saying, oh, Sigourney Weaver was floating four feet above her bed because she was taught how. And then Nadia made me sing leaning—lightly, but leaning—against the door. And my voice just frelling opened.‡‡ Nobody's going to ask me to sing Schumann any time soon‡‡‡ but . . . um . . . anything is (ultimately) possible with magic.
* * *
* First check. Some godlike being or other decreed that some kind of pre-pre-pre-preparative rumbustiousness, which had not previously been budgeted for in either time or money, had to go on in the belfry. So all the ropes came off and the initiates with their hard hats and their blow torches and alembics or what have you climbed up and occupied our bell tower this past week. They were going to be out on Thursday, so Vicky and Roger could put the ropes back on and we could have practise on Friday.
They were not out on Thursday.
They were not out on Friday. Thereupon Vicky in her turn as demigodlike being decreed that we were going to have a major clean-up because the operatives had made an awful mess with their crucibles and mortars and pestles and things. And then the tower hoover blew out the electricity^, and . . .
Penelope's voice from the torch-beam-spangled darkness said, Do you fancy going to see GHOSTBUSTERS on Halloween night?
GHOSTBUSTERS? I said. Golly. —I'd moved back to Maine by then, but I was spending as much of my time in Manhattan as Down East in the '80s and I'd seen it several times within the first few years after it came out but haven't seen it again since.
Postscript: The toilers and labourers were not out on Saturday either, which meant we did not ring service on Sunday morning and we're all cranky.
^ On account of after-dark hellhounds I carry not one but two pocket torches as standard equipment.
** She's also one of the movers and shakers in the local film society, which specialises in small independent films in languages no one has ever heard of and therefore there are no subtitles, concerning things like yaks and nuclear fission. It's a bit of a relief to know she's capable of slumming.
*** For DON GIOVANNI, GHOSTBUSTERS, and SIEGFRIED. ::whiplash::
† The one thing that did bother me is the scene where Bill Murray finds Sigourney Weaver possessed by the fell spirit of the Gatekeeper. At the end of it Dan Ackroyd phones him and says, We have a situation, you have to come now . . . and Murray says oh, okay, that's fine, I've filled her up with Thorazine, and he leaves. Thorafrellingzine? And, note, she's not only unconscious, she's panting, which is a sign of, you know, stress. Okay, okay, this is not merely 'only a film' which doesn't always cover it for me^ but only a silly film and in terms of irresponsible modelling there aren't going to be too many situations in the real world where you're going to have to deal with demonic possession. But thorazine? It's an antipsychotic, for pity's sake, and we all know she's not psychotic, she really is possessed. And what's he doing carrying thorazine around in his frelling pocket anyway? He's got a PhD in psychology, don't you have to be a doctor of medicine to get your hands on antipsychotics? And how much of an antipsychotic^^ does it take to knock someone out cold? AND SHE'S PANTING.
It's true, I'm old, and I have (almost) no sense of humour.
^ The running little old ladies and small cars off the road because you're driving at 200 mph to save the world doesn't work for me.
^^ Okay, it's also good for reducing anxiety. But there seems to me a credibility gap between 'calm' and 'unconscious'.
†† At 6 foot, there's a lot of legs going on. Although speaking of legs, and while I'm complaining, something that bothers me every time I see this movie is the way the demon dogs run. This has nothing to do with what you could create with your digital design toys thirty years ago and what you can do with them now—this is someone not bothering to look at how things with four legs run, demonic or otherwise.
††† Penelope agreed, but then she's almost as old as I am and remembers those haircuts.
‡ And, let us not overlook, in English.
‡‡ . . . Sympathetic magic? Doors . . . er . . . open?
‡‡‡ And the truth is I'm planning to skip German altogether, so that's okay. I'm also not sure if the gruesome political incorrectness of the Frauein cycle would rub me worse or wear off into inconsequentiality if I were working on it. Keep us posted.
October 30, 2011
Photo Safari I – guest post by CathyR
Well, what would you think if you received a phone call out of the blue saying "Congratulations, you've won a safari to South Africa"? Probably the same as Paul thought – it's a con, what's the catch?
Fortunately he didn't (as I am wont to do) hang up!
"Did you stay at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Birmingham in May"?
Mmm – yes …
"Do you remember completing a competition entry, when you checked out of the hotel"?
Mmmm – no not really ….
"Well, you've won first prize in the random draw – a five day safari trip to Kruger Park in South Africa. We'll be sending you an email".
Wow, ok!
And then came the email:
Which finally convinced him.
We'd won!
He then had the job of convincing me – and ten months later, we went on our safari!
We left it as late as possible, and chose the end of August. This is the end of the SA winter, the end of the dry season. With water supplies concentrated around fewer waterholes, and almost no foliage on the trees, conditions would be optimum for spotting wildlife.
Hardened cynic that I am, I thought that this was going to be "safari for the masses". I envisaged being packed in a safari jeep with loads of others, going out in convoys, and generally being herded around and not seeing very much. How pleasantly surprised I was to be proved so wrong!
Our prize itinerary included time at Elephant Whispers (a sanctuary with six tamed and trained elephants rescued from culling)
This was a really interesting morning. One of the guides gave a fascinating talk, with one of the elephants lying down so we could feel his ears and his skin, and look under his feet …
After the "Interaction", we went on a short elephant ride (no dignity here, for us tourists, when it comes to being helped off the back of a very tall elephant)! Elephant Whispers was just on the other side of the Sabie River from our accommodation, the Hippo Hollow estate. We returned to Hippo Hollow and then, from their side of the river, came the elephants to have a good old wallow and scratch and play around in the mud and the dust and the grass and the water. What a treat that was, to sit in the sun and watch them for an hour and a half.
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Tembo, the largest of the six elephants, wanting to come out of the river onto the hotel-side river bank, and having to be dissuaded!
Our safari "proper" with an early morning game drive. We also had as part of the prize a full day safari and two sundowner safaris, which left us with two mornings/early afternoons free. Concerned about the potential hordes of tourists, we booked ourselves on private early morning safari, to guarantee at least one trip with just us two and the guide. As it turned out, we were the only ones on the full day safari and one of the evening drives as well, so we had three private trips in all, which was just fantastic! ^^
For our second free morning, on our last day, Paul persuaded me to have a go on the Skyway Trail, Africa's longest aerial cable trail comprising nine separate cable slides over – and through – 1.2km of forest. http://www.skywaytrails.com. To say I took a bit of persuading is putting it mildly. But the alternative was quadbiking, and I'd tried that before. Never again!! *
And it was fantastic!! I loved it!! As soon as we'd finished, I wanted to do it all again.
Paul said smugly, "I knew you'd enjoy it"!
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At the top of the first, high slide. This is SO not a good idea. There is NO WAY …
Wheeee!!!
Touchdown!
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Through the woods
Fantastic! I want to do it all again!
* I do not do adrenalin at all. I don't like fear! If you'd seen me having a go at quadbiking in Namibia three years ago, you'd have laughed! I was absolutely pathetic! Two – very slow – circuits of the practice track and that was it – I was in the jeep with the driver following the others on their quadbikes over the dunes! Much more fun – and I could take pictures.
^^ Photos to follow in part 2.
October 29, 2011
Return of the Knitting Lady
Which is to say I went to see the Met Live DON GIOVANNI this evening.*
This is a good one. If you have a chance to see it—and have some idea what you're getting into**—by all means go. There'll be a repeat some time soon so check your bowling alley's special events schedule.*** The sets are a bit lame but not, I feel, obtrusively so, and the singing—and acting!—are excellent.† I have some niggles—Luca Pisaroni as Leporello, for example, while he clearly inhabits the role, might be told that sometimes less is more. Yes, good comic timing, got it, now lighten up. And while I don't think there's anything much that can be done with Donna Anna, who is written as a wet, Marina Rebeka, while she has a lovely voice, is really very wet indeed.
Although that brings us to the usual Mozartian conundrum, which is that so many of his characters are appalling. There isn't a single person to like in DON GIOVANNI although some of them are very repellent and some of them only tending that way. One of the things I really liked about this staging and performance however is that there was no nonsense about the Don being a lovable rogue: he's not, he's a total prick. I've always had trouble with the he's-just-a-bit-of-a-lad-nudge-nudge-wink-wink standard characterisations I've seen previously; and to my eye and ear, Kwiecien has the voice and the charisma to bring the character off as toxic pond scum and not lose the plot of the Don as the great seducer.
There were nonetheless at least two surprises in the characterisation. I wouldn't have said it was possible to make Don Ottavio, who matches his sweetheart Anna for wetness, sympathetic, but Ramon Vargas brings it off, by just, somehow, playing it straight. He has two†† big famous arias about how much he loves Anna and how his happiness is dependent on hers, blah blah blah blah blah. And he turns to the audience and sings this awful drivel with this simple sweet openness††† that makes you—plus, that is, the ravishingness of his voice—go 'awwwwww' and get all melty and think that really she doesn't appreciate him.‡
The other surprise is how appealing Zerlina is. Come on, girl, you don't really think the Don is going to marry you, do you? Get a grip. But you see her being dazzled half against her will—and she'd like to believe it, and with that nasty piece of work she is marrying I can't blame her. Aside from the near-slapstick of Leporello, and the bad-joke mania of Elvira‡‡, there is surprisingly little real humour in GIOVANNI—not surprising when you think what it's about‡‡‡, but the lovable-rogue nonsense confuses the issue. Zerlina, here, has a pretty lightness and brightness to her, in a story that can really use some.§
Oh, and the Commendatore is painted an impressively creepy blue-grey when he comes on at the end to dispatch the Don. This scene was also done very well: in the lovable-rogue versions, much is made of the Don's courage in the face of what he knows perfectly well is death and damnation. Here, it's less about courage than that he is mean, petty, and self-absorbed to the bitter end. Outta here, Don. Elvira is still manic and Anna is still rebuffing Ottavio, but that's a Mozart opera for you. But you go for the music.
Go for the music.
* * *
* For anyone who's counting, yes, I missed ANNA BOLENA a fortnight or so ago. I'm getting more and more mail asking about how I cope with ME, so here's a little tangent on that. Even going to a cinema opera—far less threatening (and expensive) than the live variety—and sitting slumped in your chair for a few hours is surprisingly tiring.^ Attention is tiring, and there's also the superfluous nonsense of getting there and home again. One of my bottom lines, which I've mentioned here many times, is that driving a car is very draining because of that constant, hyper-aware attention that you have to expend every microsecond you're behind the wheel. There are buses^^—Peter uses the buses a lot—but they aren't much use for evening things.^^^ So my going to the relatively local Met Live requires factoring in driving both ways. This means having the physical energy and a low enough level of brain-fog to drive and to sit through several hours of opera. The two categories are related, but they can be perversely divided and divisive and must be monitored independently. And then there's pain. Generally speaking the level of pain I deal with is pretty minimal, especially in comparison to other people with ME and, especially, fibromyalgia—but I'm not too good at sitting still. It's one of the little ironies of ME that the tireder and more ME-slugged you are, the more you ache—so the days when you really cannot move . . . you have to. Gah. Severity is again related to energy and brain-fog but is its own self-determining little ratbag. A fortnight ago the physical energy was borderline, the brain-fog not too bad . . . but I was pretty sure the sitting still would do me in, and I wasn't expiring of longing to see Anna Netrebko as Anna Bolena, so I gave it a miss. Now I was at least half expiring of longing to see Mariusz Kwiecien# as the wicked Don, so I was going to go today barring bubonic measles, boiling tigers or the unwelcome re-emergence of R'lyeh from the bottom of the briny. As it happens today is the first day since Darkness fell spectacularly ill the end of last week## that I've felt relatively okay myself, although I knew this okayness was pretty frelling shallow.
I thought tonight was worth the risk. And it was. But the sitting-still was a near frangledabbing thing. Good job I had an aisle seat.###
^ This is assuming you like opera, that going is something you want to do.
^^ Fewer and fewer buses, but that's another issue.
^^^ They're also no use for going to my voice lesson. It would be an all-day epic by bus.
# GAH . . . Who does not seem to have his own web site and is not all over YouTube. But here's a clip from the DON PASQUALE last year that he was such a cutie in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd8s265bpGo&feature=related
There are one or two clips of this DON GIOVANNI already up, but they're really dark, which is one of the drawbacks of this staging, it is dark.
## He has clearly forgotten all about it. Which makes one of us.
### Self-medication with the complimentary glass of fizz is good too.
** The wicked Don is not my idea of a good first opera, non-stop fabulous Mozart tunes or no.^
^ The fabulous Mozart opera for beginners is MARRIAGE OF FIGARO.
*** The one with the screen in the back room
† I also want Donna Elvira's dress.
†† I think it's two. It's late, and I'm falling asleep.
††† The fact that you're aware that every hemidemisemiquaver is calculated is beside the point, when it's calculated this well.
‡ Everybody in this opera is a raving dysfunctional of one sort or another. There's the sex-addict titular character, who brags about doing ten peasant girls in a single night. There's the co-dependent self-victimising servant Leporello. There's the vindictive harpy ex-girlfriend whose life has been reduced to a single burning desire either to get Giovanni back or to tear his heart out. And there's the wet, who is going to claim rape if anyone pursues the question too closely, but who is peculiarly fixated on the man who, having ravished her (or not), killed her dad; and whose somewhat equivocal grief is nonetheless extremely useful for putting off her fiancé. There is also the peasant bride who is rather too eager to listen to the Don's clearly bullfeathers blandishments, and her peasant husband, who is stupid and a thug. Those two are going to have a really happy life together.
‡‡ Feminists beware. I can just about cope with Elvira, however. The poor old Queen of the Night, not so much. And don't even talk to me about Cosi Fan Tutte.
‡‡‡ Rapist-murderer who has got away with it for so long because he's a wealthy nobleman finally sent to hell by the ghost of the man said good citizen killed for daring to come after him for ravishing his daughter. Nice.
§ After Leporello, disguised as Giovanni, beats Masetto up, and Zerlina has found him and is saying there, there, sweetie, where does it hurt, he says my head, my hand and my foot^. She flicks a little look and smile at the audience and says, well, if the rest is healthy . . .
^ . . . or something like that. Nothing, ahem, central.
October 28, 2011
Rain, Books, Maths, Bell Fund, etc
The latest item to be left in the pouring rain was the authors' copies of the new trade paper edition of FIRE. In this carrier's defence, the space under the little roof by the dustbins is not large, and the box was an awkward shape. Still. Feh. However, the knight in her shining raincoat* arrived before the damsel drowned. I'd forgotten the trade-ed FIRE was due—I mean, I assume it was due. Publishers have been known to be delayed or to push things back to a later list, but they rarely produce books at random.**
It can now stop raining till my final box of auction-ordered backlist is scheduled to arrive***, and then it might want to get a head start on the ankle-deep puddles†. The ankle-deep puddles are doing really well at the moment: one of our standard hurtling routes is navigable only by wellies†† and I made an effort to be back at the cottage yesterday on time so that my handbellers did not have to stand around in the rain waiting for me.†††
Speaking of handbells . . . tonight at tower practise we had a progress report on the bell fund, and gobsmackedness was generally expressed‡ at the amount the Days in the Life auction/sale has raised.‡‡ At the moment the bell fund is not only on track, it's ahead of the game. Yaaaaaaaay. Of course we're also busy finding out that just as the original £10,000 quote was low, the £12,000 it was raised to probably isn't going to cover it either, so we may not be as ahead as all that. However I've already said that I don't mind where our—that is yours and my—bell money goes as long as it goes to bells. There are at least two bell-restoration charities that work within the central council—I know this because we're eligible for grants from them—so if we end up with money left over when all is said and done I'll simply plough the Days in the Life money back into someone else's bell restoration.‡‡‡
Meanwhile Vicky said that we might consider making up a wish list§ for what might be done if we can afford it. And Niall's eyes went to a certain plain wooden cabinet that hangs on the wall of our ringing chamber. We could get those old handbells repaired and retuned, he said.§§
Yesssssss.
* * *
* Actually it's an extremely old, hard-used and beat-up raincoat and the zip doesn't work any more. I'm still wearing it. I'm fond of it. As soon as it starts getting cold as well as wet I will shift over to my fabulous raspberry pink Goretex coat bought in that dazzling crescendo of serendipity at the end of the season last year.^
^ I blogged about it, but I think I'd be sorry to hear you remembered.
** I have this sudden vision of the entire sales, editorial and marketing departments of this or that megapublisher at one of those epic twice-yearly meetings crouched around a table with two dice on it.^ Or possibly a roulette wheel.^^
^ Did you know that slot machines—the one-armed bandits of yore—are now digital? You don't get to pull anything? Hey, what's the fun of that?
^^ And the devil plays the croupier.
*** This one, for once, is not my fault. The hardback BLUE SWORD was between printings and out of stock when I ordered it back in August or so—which of course explains why it was our biggest bell-fund-sale title. I had a few copies but nothing like enough. But they reprinted about a fortnight ago so, barring further postal malfeasance, all is well.
† I was thinking comfortably that the book depository http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ always sends books individually, so they fit through the mail slot in my door. If it's going to keep raining, however, perhaps they would like to make an exception. I am sure there's an amusing equation to be had out of the penetrability of cardboard to rain depending on the cube root of the hypotenuse of the contents.^
^ Because moderation is not my best trick and because the end of January is very soon and because I don't, in fact, know what I'm looking for , and because I have been a math phobic for thirteen months short of sixty years and I'm waiting somewhat nervously for it to kick in now and would like to get this over with , I picked up a book I'd given Peter last Christmas: PROFESSOR STEWART'S HOARD OF MATHEMATHICAL TREASURES.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/18/ian-stewart-curiosities-treasures
Which is a hoot. Not all of it is puzzles and equations. The third snippet is about Bhaskara, a twelfth-century Indian mathematician. After he screwed up his daughter's marriage prospects, he wrote one of his most famous brain-bending treatises and named it after her: Lilavati. As Stewart puts it: Hey, thanks, Dad.
And thanks to you generous maths-and-hard-sciences folk out there who have offered assistance. I am compiling a list. Meanwhile, or in the very very short term, like between now and the end of January, I suppose my generic question is, if you had an elderly hellgoddess, not awfully bright but given to enthusiasms and capable of considerable stubbornness, who wanted to know something about how mathematicians and physicists grapple with numbers and theorems and things (and possibly each other) to Define the Universe, what would you tell her?
Yes, since you ask, I do remember lying in my bassinette and thinking, inchoately, because words were still some months off yet, ewwww. Maths. Ewwwwww.
Arnica at the ready. Phobias can kick very hard. I am really going to have to register a protest with the Story Council on this one~. Which they will no doubt file in the 'no action' bin with all my other protests.~~
~ But not till after the end of January
~~ If pressed, some harassed flunkey will probably snarl at me, You said you wanted something in a hurry. You got it. So stop complaining.
I've now got the first one on my book depository wish list. The other book of Stewart's that, by its description, I really want is WHAT DOES A MARTIAN LOOK LIKE? which is out of print. Like I need more stuff to read.
Nice name. Hmmmm. I'm sure, after having the standard life path closed to her~, an intelligent~~, well-educated young woman would want some adventures. Hmmmm.
~ Indeed she may have engineered this.
~~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilavati
†† No I am not going to carry you. You can jump.
††† The little roof beside the dustbins is definitely too small for two people and a bag of handbells. Not to mention that it's only about shoulder high.
‡ I believe 'gibble gibble gibble' might be a rough translation of Vicky's reaction—as tower secretary and all-purposes dominatrix she's been pretty much single-handedly responsible for the running of the bell fund: organisation, keeping track of money coming in and money promised, follow ups, resulting reporting to the church and various councils and so on and so on and so on. She must have a flow chart the size of Balmoral.
‡‡ I gave a 'not less than' figure since I haven't even booked my appointment with the Tax Man yet.
‡‡‡ There are at least two local towers I'd be delighted to contribute to the rehabilitation of, so if it comes to that I'll keep you posted. It being my name on the cheque I'd be able to assign where it goes.
§ New ropes cost a fortune for example, and there are a lot of really grotty hateful old ropes out there still in service because the tower in question can't afford to buy new ones. And no tower puts up a new rope till the old one is at least somewhat grotty and hateful.
§§ You know he hadn't even NOTICED that yesterday was the first time I'd got through to the end of Cambridge on frelling handbells without resort to reading it off a piece of paper with the lines on? Lksdjfhgkjdsfjkliowerunvn&^%$£"!!!!!!!
October 27, 2011
Cambridge. My doom.
No, the bell method, not the city.*
When you are unceremoniously and repeatedly dumped off the air, and the blog you post to every night with, lately, increasing difficulty as it flickers from life to death like Schrodinger's cat, takes six minutes to load and then crashes when you ask to see the forum, and when two emails in a row are eaten by demons** when Outlook freezes and then refuses to crash but just hangs there in suspended animation while you press the same surreally cyclical set of buttons*** and scream, you have several options, following the nervous breakdown caused by trying to get an emergency email to Blogmom, asking her to post an Out of Service notice on the blog because enough is enough is enough and you're TIRED of being bent into a pretzel by your technology†:
Go to bed early. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.††
Disgorge an additional 65,000 words of the novel you're two months into your five months to write.
Practise your Cambridge.
I practised my Cambridge.
There is of course history to this decision.††† I was a trifle indiscernible this weekend due to hellhound pressure‡ but Niall told me Monday night that we weren't going to have Gemma today for handbells, which meant just the three of us, Colin, Niall and me, like in the bad old days. Only the three of us. Oh blood, gods and death‡‡ that means Cambridge. I had said feebly that I would look at my Cambridge. Last night Niall did his Buddha-smile thing about handbells and I did not bash him with a blunt instrument and run away because we were in his car at the time, speeding through the Hampshire dark toward one of Wild Robert's occasional special practises, last night at Sagging Dormouse, which is another of these back-of-beyond villages that only exist in the natives' imaginations.‡‡‡
However these are very imaginative villagers because there is a church with six bells in it as well as the other standard quaint appurtenances. And we rang frelling Cambridge pretty much all night because almost everyone who came wanted practise treble bobbing—the problem being that Wild Robert had to weld who was left into a Cambridge band. Erm. The only people who knew what they were doing were Wild Robert himself and Niall. It was not a pretty sight. And I never did get through a plain course—I was dragged, harried, chivvied and belaboured through portions of plain courses, and granted I had lots of help going off the rails, but I was still going off the rails harder than anyone else.§ Cambridge. My doom. Whiiiiiiiine.
Access to the Sagging Dormouse church tower has been less well imagined than other aspects and involves some very interesting twists through hyperspace, and as a result I was one of the last out and Niall had gone on ahead of me. I half expected to find that he had shot off and left me so I wouldn't contaminate his car. Don't be gloomy, he said. —xlkashdgfggg!!!!!!!!!!
So today I was going to have to face the beastly thing §§ on handbells. I do not want to think about how many novel-writing and doodle-drawing hours I have spent on Pooka, last night and this morning, bashing at Cambridge: dingdingdingCRASHding, dingCRASHCRASHdingding, CRASHdingCRASHdingCRASHFRELLding, etc. You get, when you're trying to learn something that is basically beyond you, into a peculiar sort of light-headed haze, where the world all seems sort of soft and infinitely malleable §§§ —and the world of course includes the thing you're trying to learn. Ding. Crash.
Well I'm not going to say that this afternoon was a Scintillating Victory, because it wasn't. Weeell . . . I'm not sure it wasn't, but it depends on where you're coming from. I was getting through to the end of a plain course of the freller for the first time on handbells. HANDBELLS. WHERE YOU HAVE TO RING TWO WRETCHED BELLS THAT ARE PURSUING TWO DIFFERENT FRELLING LINES THROUGH A FRELLING PATTERN THAT HAS TOO MANY ZIGGY BITS IN IT ANYWAY.#
Okay, I take it back. It was a scintillating victory. It will of course be more of a scintillating victory when we get to the end oftener than about one attempt in three, but after last night I'll take what I can get.##
. . . And now, I can hardly wait to find out what kind of nonsense I have to go through to get this posted.###
* * *
* I've been to the city twice. The first time as a deranged, Anglophile ohmigods-I'm-in-England tourist, and the second time with my Kings-College-graduate husband. There was no way I wasn't going to like it, barring zombie hordes. We didn't see any zombie hordes.
** Or possibly zombies. I wonder if Schrodinger considered the zombie possibilities of his cat?
*** Windows Task Manager only works when it works.
† Clearly the email was eventually successful. But I was getting on toward thinking I was going to have to write my emergency dispatch on Pooka and then go outside and stand in the pouring rain to inspire my 3G—do I mean 3G?—to send it. The whatever-it-is that's supposed to pick up when you're not within a WiFi zone that your gizmo can climb into. Although it's hard to tell exactly what the hell is and is not working. There seem to be levels of turmoil. Sometimes Astarte goes on serenely beeping the arrivals of emails when the laptop has swallowed its own tail and is rolling around on the floor choking and flailing madly. If the laptop falls off the cliff excitingly enough, and lands with a loud enough crash, however, Astarte usually withdraws into self-contained silence. I still haven't got her 3G option sorted partly because I object to paying for a package which I'm only going to use rarely—well I hope rarely—and partly because Pooka's 3G is a little moody and I even more object to paying for a monthly service I'm not going to use and doesn't work anyway.^
There's also the perhaps not insubstantial thought that if you're going to be standing in the pouring rain with your flashy device, smaller is easier to protect from the elements.
^ There was the to-me-infamous occasion of sitting in a gone-phut train outside Bristol for an hour on my way to visit Diana about this time last year, I think, with everyone around me having whipped out their phones and rung their friends and colleagues to say they'd be late and . . . I couldn't get a signal.
Siiiiiigh
†† It's not like I would sleep, you know?
††† After all I could have read a good book. I'd better finish THESE OLD SHADES for the eleventy-mmlmph time, because these are on their way:
‡ Hellhound appears to be fine. I continue to have palpitations every time he squats.
‡‡ And zombies, no doubt. Me ringing Cambridge involves lots of lurches and moaning. And I'm pretty sure my skin goes a funny colour.
‡‡‡ Note that we went through Broceliande to get there.
§ The villagers may have had serious second thoughts about the church-with-bells feature last night.
§§ Cambridge, I mean, not Niall.
§§§ Although that could be SHADOWS. Either whacking the crap out of myself writing it in too much of a hurry, or the weird spaces my heroine gets herself into.
# During our tea break Niall was saying, we should have had you learn Oxford treble bob first. NOW YOU *&^%%$£!!!! TELL ME??!? Niall blinked at me mildly. You could learn it now, he said. You'd find it really useful.
. . . Words fail. Which is just as well.
## As I was moaning to Niall last night, I know the ratbagging line. I know it, among other things, from struggling to ring it on handbells. I pretty much know the line like I know how to make a cup of tea or put a harness on a hellhound.^ But you can practise handbells pretty efficiently on a computer, or an iPhone. There's nothing like pulling on a rope with hundreds of pounds of bell on the end of it except pulling on a rope with hundreds of pounds of bell on the end of it. Sigh.
^ Although I not infrequently get the harness on inside out and then don't have anywhere to clip the lead.
### We're back to square one about what's causing it. I'll tell you about the wonderful fun I'm having pursuing knotted lines of wireless iniquity, I mean inquiry, no I mean iniquity . . . some other night.^
^ . . . and tonight? AARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGH
October 26, 2011
technology 1, robin 0
No blog post tonight due to technical difficulties. — Blogmom
Here's a gratuitous foo dog to cheer you up.
Mama foo and her pup.
October 25, 2011
ANOTHER FRELLING DAY
ARRRRRGH. I HAVE A BOOK DUE IN THREE MONTHS. I DON'T NEED TO BE DRIVEN ROUND THE TWIST BY TECHNOLOGY.* I have wasted an EXTRAORDINARY amount of time today . . . trying to get Feynman's SIX EASY PIECES to download onto Pooka. I have already referred to the possibility of a small unassuming fringe of supporting background maths** in SHADOWS, except that maybe I mean physics***, and if it's the latter, the obvious person to start with is Richard Feynman.†
Every time†† I have tried to download something from frelling www.audible.co.uk except that by now I'm fairly sure it's not audible's fault, everything blocks up like a kitchen sink drain full of tea leaves. This time . . . when I'm downloading something I really need to be listening to NOW . . . I'm completely stymied. Every time I jump through these downloading hoops there's at least one more hoop than there was last time, but I've eventually toiled through to the last. Not this time. The audible ap on Pooka just sits there saying 'connect to WiFi or iTunes'. YOU ARE CONNECTED TO WIFI AND ITUNES, YOU MORON. YOU'RE SITTING THERE WITH A CABLE COMING OUT OF YOUR BUTT AND STUCK INTO THE LAPTOP'S SIDE. The wretched book is on the laptop—it'll play on the laptop—but it won't travel down the wire into Pooka, who is clearly manifesting her Apocalypse side. I even swapped cables, thinking it might be a cable problem. . . .
I emailed Archcomputerangel Raphael at about 10 o'clock tonight and . . . because Raphael is both angelic and mad, he answered. He's on holiday. He's on holiday and he's still checking—and answering!—business emails at ten p.m.††† He's going to rouse poor Gabriel tomorrow morning, who is busy holding down the fort by himself, and try to get him here to scrape me off the ceiling (again) and (possibly) do something about the situation. It's not like it's just the downloading problem—it's my ongoing broadband nightmare. I'm not crashing off the internet as often, I just frequently go to a page and find the 'page not found' squatting there like a toad. Refreshing 1,265,928 times will usually bring whatever it is back again . . . eventually . . . although meanwhile I've read two more chapters in a book I'm not enjoying nearly as much as I should be due to reading it under adverse conditions. The blog is particularly prone to these Cheshire cat fits when only a fiendish grin is visible. And having got so far, it's all very well copying from Word and then hitting 'save draft' before I hit 'publish', in case of accidents, but the 'save draft' takes another minute or two and I have no reason to think it's any more stable that just hitting 'publish' in the first place.
And the TIME WASTED. Gazum frelling argleblargle FRELL. At a moment—or rather at a three months—when I absolutely cannot afford to be wasting time—I am WASTING TIME. STRESS. STRESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
Now let me tell you one more story of straightforwardness and efficiency, although taking place in a different dimension, out here in the reality of bruises and . . . rain. You will remember that the auction/sale did rather better than Blogmom or I were expecting.‡ I hastily ordered some backlist books which have been infuriatingly slow to arrive, not least because once they did arrive on these shores, the frelling carrier (a) kept putting cards through my door saying SORRY TO HAVE MISSED YOU, we'll be BACK some day in the next MONTH, some TIME between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m., but we're not going to tell you WHEN and (b) ignoring my emails saying WILL YOU PLEASE JUST LEAVE IT?
I wrote them again over the weekend saying, I have no particular reason to believe you'll pay attention to this email when you've ignored the last three, but this is my LAST try before I attempt to fight my way through your possessed-by-automated-demons phone labyrinth again this coming week. Of course they didn't answer. But today hellhounds and I went back to the cottage on an extra hurtle because I wanted to fetch Pooka's other cable, in case the downloading problem was the cable. It's been tipping down rain most of the day, and I hadn't been planning to go as far as the cottage again because the rain's got heavier as the day's gone on. But I wanted that cable. So we plunged through the door, streaming, and found . . . another card on the floor from the carrier. They'd delivered the box. They'd left it as requested. YAAAAAAAAY.
Um. Modified yaaay. When I tell anyone to leave a parcel, I am very specific about where. Beside the dustbins there's a little roof, provided by the fair and clever hands of Atlas. Also, it's a roof, you know? You can see it's a roof. Roofs are good for keeping rain off, right? So . . . whoever this driver is had left it between the dustbins—opposite the roof, not under it—so not only was it sitting in the torrential rain, it was receiving additional drenching from the run off from the dustbin lids.
But because I had come home for the frelling cable, the box had not yet soaked through. I guess I have to count this as a win. . . .‡‡
* * *
*Which is further yanking me around at this moment. I'm listening to Ruddigore on Radio Three via their 'listen again' programme—or let's say I'm trying to listen to it—and it's just dropped off the frelling airwaves again. 'Low bandwidth' the pop-up box says, primly. The story of my frelling life, lately. Low. Bandwidth.^ Arrrrrrrgh. When the frelling government does all these useless frelling studies of where they can shoehorn in more people—and the whole 'build more houses!' thing makes me nuts anyway, when we've got a colossal empty house problem already, at least in Hampshire—when they are passing over the whole infrastructure question because it doesn't suit them to recognise that there is more to be considered than merely plot size for houses, do they even have internet access and broadband feasibility as an item on their list to be passed over? Or is that a dumb question? Don't answer that.
^ It's presently not saying anything. It's not playing either.
** And have therefore terrified most of you into silence, apparently. I did tell you that you have nothing to fear: you'll only notice it as a lack of polar bears in the desert. Or as I said in the afterword to OUTLAWS: I wanted to make the story historically unembarrassing— I'm aiming to make SHADOWS scientifically unembarrassing—at least up to the point where I jump off the deep end clutching my solemn textbooks and laughing maniacally. At the moment the magic, and the gruuaa, are winning. Which is fine. As long as it's a fair fight.
*** My ignorance knows very few bounds.
†† Except not every time. That very first book—DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT [American] HISTORY—the first two of its four parts downloaded fine. Nothing like setting the frelling hook before you start fishing in earnest.
††† Angelic. Mad.
‡ And in case you're wondering why I've never given you a final absolute total, that's because I don't know what the final absolute total is. It's not so much the postage and envelopes and pads of A6 paper and things, I've got books that were donated by the publishers and books that I paid for—at author's rate, mind, but still, paid for, and since there are more than two or three of these I need to reimburse myself, which I hadn't originally expected to be an issue—and I'm going to have to take the whole show to the Tax Man and find out how to present it, and what goes in column A and what goes in column B, because I'm going to have to pay tax on it and then wait till the lovely IRS grudgingly disburses at least some of it back again. This has been a steep learning curve and no mistake. I have every intention of doing a little tiny charity auction again some day, because it's a perfectly good idea and when you're not thinking 'eeep' it's also fun, but there's an emphasis on little tiny. And Blogmom hasn't forgotten the doodle window, it's just that all the stuff she didn't do while she was running the unexpectedly-successful Days in the Life sale/auction, has kind of fallen on her and she's still catching up.
However, it is safe to say that I will be, thanks to your enthusiasm, writing a Very Attractive Cheque for the bell fund.
‡‡ The continuing saga: when I went to copy and paste into the blog admin window . . . it took six and a half minutes for the thing to open, an additional minute while it thought about accepting the copy and paste I had just (as I thought) inserted . . . and when the words finally appeared on the blank white screen all the formatting had disappeared. No punctuation. No paragraphs. Isn't life with modern technology fun?
October 24, 2011
Hee hee hee hee hee
Niall and I stopped at our—this entire section of Hampshire's—favourite pub on the way home from Glaciation. We do occasionally stop at a pub after ringing, usually when we're deep into a conversation about—for example—exactly where the ordinary plain-bob bobs dump you back into the pattern when you're ringing (say) St Clements College Bob or Double Oxford Bob or Little Bob as opposed to Plain Bob. All very well that you negotiate the interstices of the call itself* if you don't know where to go once you're out the other end. If you're leaping from one escalator to the next, I don't care how beautiful your leap was, you'd better know in advance which way the one you're now on is going.** Now imagine an escalator that behaves like the road in Grand Prix Legends 4,928: The Terminator, and you have to have memorised the twists and turns before you begin.***
So we were just settling down to our (half) pints and I had got Pooka out to check method details† when I realised that Niall was nearly bursting with his Hidden Agenda. We weren't sitting around having a companionable half pint and a bell chat. Niall wanted to make sure Algernon hadn't put me off ringing handbells. It's true we'd rung handbells the very next day with Colin and Gemma—and that I'd had my 5-6 epiphany—but I could have still been in shock at that point. And then I hadn't seen Niall Friday or Sunday in the tower due to blood on the kitchen floor. I could have been having all kinds of deleterious thoughts without constant haras—I mean nag—I mean input from Niall. Well, I might. But as I tell him at regular intervals, clenched teeth optional, I've got waay too many hours in this handbell madness to give it up now. I was tempted—briefly—to string him along a little tonight but . . . oh well. I didn't.
Niall had seen Thormond again on Sunday when they rang (handbells) with Titus and Thormond, apparently, was a little anxious about my mental health also††. He told Niall that he had even warned Algernon that I hadn't ever rung touches of bob major before, and that that's what I wanted to practise—and to be gentle. All I can say is if that was Algernon's idea of gentle I don't want to see him in a peevish mood.
* * *
Voice lesson today was less awful than anticipated.††† I'd been getting along pretty well last week and then . . . Darkness happened.‡ Saturday I had no voice at all and Sunday I had a range of about three and a half notes.‡‡ Frelling frell this 'your instrument is your body' thing. This morning though my wandering and capricious voice was more or less back ‡‡‡ which was absurd in another direction because it was as if I didn't know what to do with it—like someone handing me a (squealing) greased piglet. Whoa! Wait! What is this thing! And of course what I'd been practising had crashed big time but hey. I went in today not expecting anything, just wanting to sing.§
And it wasn't too bad. This is largely due to the fact that Nadia is brilliant with the consequences of emotional adversity and just takes you as you are, all three notes or three octaves as may be. Every singer I've ever known says that you sing with the voice you've got, that day or that hour, and while of course the boundaries change about what you have to be able to winkle out of yourself if you're a professional, the basic fact remains.
At the end of torturing the Italian of and hacking out a facsimile of the tune of Non lo diro col labbro (again), Nadia said, you've done a lot and learned a lot with that song. Go home and sing it for fun for a few weeks, and meanwhile . . . here, have a new song.
::Beams::
* * *
* If I understand it correctly, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if I don't, the entire family of plain bob methods use the same calls^—the same means by which to mix the bells up further—which involves the conductor shouting Bob! or Single! at the moment the treble is leading, in a given series of courses.
^ The really attractive thing about the plain bob methods is that the calls only involve the front few bells. This means that by the time you get to royal, say—ten bells—the majority of you don't have to do anything when the conductor shouts. If you're lucky you can just go on ringing plain courses, with the other poor frellers around you shimmying back and forth.
This is also a teaching method, of course. When you ring your first touches of plain bob anything, the conductor will call when you're at the back and unaffected, so you can get used gradually to the other bells shifting their path through the course before you have to do it too.
** I said some time recently—the memorable Sunday service ring when the very first call of the very first method involved me having to ring the diabolical Grandsire Long Third Single, which, I said, was second only in horror to the Dreaded Three-four Down Plain Bob Single.^ CathyR on the forum begged to differ, saying that Grandsire Long Thirds are four blows^^ in the same place before you are allowed to escape, and the Dreaded Three-four Down Single is only two.
I don't care. It's a whole lot easier to turn around and go down again than it is to turn around and go up. When you're going up—'out to the back'—you're having to pull harder on the rope to get the bell 'higher'—not in its frame, obviously, but relative to the pattern you're ringing. I know the good ringers are always going on (and on) about letting the bell do the work, but even a good ringer may admit after a second pint at the pub that 'turning' a big bell—ringing it in the pattern, not ringing last every row, as tenor-behind—requires some physical effort.^^^ And they're good ringers. I am not a good ringer, and the more anxious I am the more I over-ring—which is to say pull on the rope too hard so I'm having to catch and yank like a madwoman every stroke to keep the poor thing under some kind of control and where I should be in the frelling pattern. There's nothing like the sound of 'SINGLE' as I'm approaching my three-four down dodge in plain bob to make me panic.
Inertia is your friend as you trundle down to the front. It is not your friend as you toil up to the back. Also the four blows in long Grandsire thirds give you a couple of seconds to wrench your brain onto its new track: okay, I'm going back down to the front again. I can do that. Two blows in thirds is not enough time to get your pitons back on to reclimb that frelling cliff.
Okay. Sorry, all you glazed-over non-ringers. Stopping now.
^ and at 8:50 in the morning on an emotional par to waking up and seeing Freddy Krueger bending over you.
^^ It has always kind of fascinated me that pulling on the rope to make the bell go 'dong' is called a blow. Who's whacking who here?
^^^ There are also fabulous ringers who can ring gigantic bells in spite of looking like they would blow over in a strong breeze. Wild Robert is one of these. I've seen a few others, including one tiny little old lady who made me look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking of the Terminator. That level of skill is just . . . gah.
*** Method bell ringing. Whose idea of fun was this?
† The post-Saturday-morning blood-on-the-kitchen-floor adrenaline-spike backlash is still making me stupid two days later, and I managed to forget to bring my method books to practise tonight. So when Colin called for St Clements I got Pooka out: Mobel, the iPhone ringing ap, has forty-six million methods on it, way more than any book I own. I thought a few of our senior members—all of them, let me add, better tower ringers than I am—were going to kill themselves laughing. A bell-ringing programme on a smartphone! I considered challenging them to handbell bob major at dawn but I decided this would be counterproductive. We're already short of good ringers in this area as it is.
†† Hey. I ring handbells.
††† Expect the worst? Me?
‡ Darkness who is crashed out happily in a tangle of tails and limbs with Chaos in the dog bed. He seems to be good as new—although I've got a week's worth of pills for him, so the vet is obviously taking it seriously. I could use some good-as-new pills for me. Probably not the same ones however.
‡‡ Leonard Cohen time.
‡‡‡ Possibly as a result of Darkness' first normal looking evacuation since It All Happened. You wanted to know this, right?
§ Although I'd brought hellhounds along, and backed up Nadia's drive so I could see the car from her window. I wasn't expecting trouble but I was still sufficiently freaked out I wasn't happy about leaving them alone at home in the kitchen that long. After the initial horror of, You mean we can't come with you?, you mean you're leaving us in the car?, no little faces in the back window means all is well.
October 23, 2011
MYSTERY NOVEL
Both Darkness and I are feeling a trifle thin on the ground. Darkness is monumentally better, I hasten to add, but he's clearly not right yet and from the severity of this, er, outburst, I know it's going to take a little while to calm down completely. But I'm not sure what I should be expecting and I worry easily.* I did not make it to service ring this morning and have pretty much felt like a flag at half mast all day. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes the ME come back full bore—sudden crisis followed by clean-up and worry. In theory I have a voice lesson tomorrow. And tower practise at Glaciation. Not to mention a novel to write in five months.
Mrs Redboots wrote: No, don't tell us anything about the not-Pegasus novel you're doing just now! Tease us by referring to it as NOT-PEGASUS and tell us absolutely nothing else until it is set in stone and the editors have given you the proof. We will all plead and beg – myself included – but it would be such fun not knowing what, or who, to expect!
This really made me laugh. I think the readers who want to know something about MYSTERY NOVEL outnumber those of you who don't—and I had been planning on telling you enough to be annoying. I've pretty much had this conversation with both Merrilee and my editor—how much is enough** for various audiences—blog readers as opposed to marketing departments, for example. Because nobody knows anything at all about this book yet (except me) I had to write some copy for my editor's presentation at her big autumn sales meeting.*** Aaaaaugh. Writing any kind of advertising copy is a unique and exacting skill, and being able to write novels and semi-truthful blog entries is no indication of success in this demanding area. And the short and snappy is not my forte. You also do find yourself thinking, what is there new and original to say about pegasi-dragons-vampires-fairies-goddesses-magic in a paragraph or two? Merrilee and I sweated over this for a while and I believe the ultimate outcome was something along the lines of: New Robin McKinley fantasy novel!!! No, not PEG II! That's later! To be followed by PEG III even later yet! New!
. . . Tick the box and move on to the next item.†
So here are a few random facts about MYSTERY NOVEL:
(a) It is not a mystery novel.†
(b) It's modern-alternate-this-world. Contemporary fantasy.
(c) There are no vampires. Just to get that out of the way. ††
(d) There is origami. This is why I was trying to drag what little I used to know of it, dusty and creaking, out of the back cupboard. Which is fine.
(e) There may be trying to be some . . . maths.††† I am resisting this. This is also why I pulled ALEX IN NUMBERLAND off the shelf where it's been sitting for over a year, and when I discovered www.audible.co.uk had it, bought,‡ downloaded and listened to it. ‡‡ I haven't decided yet if this was a good idea or a bad one. It doesn't seem to have had any influence on the story, but then my futile attempts at research rarely do. These attempts do, however, occasionally allow me to keep up.
(f) I'm going to get this random fact over quickly: If all goes as planned‡‡‡ this will come out the year I'm sixty. It will also be my first official YA novel, with a heroine in her senior year in high school. Feh.
(g) Its working title is SHADOWS. And I'd rather call it SHADOWS than NOT PEGASUS or MYSTERY NOVEL, if you don't mind. Well, even if you do mind. Author's prerogative. I have to write the thing.
Audrey Falconer: Mind you, I do also want that one that featured bells….
If I'd had any sense, I'd've got that one out and had a run at it; there's a lot of it already on paper.§ Although SHADOWS isn't totally a bolt from the blue, just almost. The initial idea drifted past about eighteen months ago, and I wrote a few pages of it to check the, um, storyness of it, but I had PEGASUS to be getting on with,§§ and put it (nameless at the time) in a folder and forgot about it. But it's SHADOWS that came boiling out of the . . . shadows . . . when I knew I had to put PEG II aside, and said meeeeeeeeeeee.
But THE BELLS OF MAZAHAN is still on the list. It's just 'list' in my language is probably not what it is in anyone else's language. §§§ Like 'sanity' or 'organisation'.
* * *
*Yes, I'm going to ring the vet tomorrow and ask.
** . . . to be annoying
*** And I'm certainly not going to tell you that much.
† Eeep, I said. It'll be fine, Merrilee said. Eeep, I said. But I've been reminded that she was right the last time. . . .
jmeadows: See? Merrilee told you it [the announcement] wouldn't be bad AND IT WASN'T. You should listen to your agent more. *g* (*may have just experienced something like this and should take her own advice*)
††When I was younger, and also thought I would write 'straight' fiction some day, I also wanted to write at least one mystery. Even then I knew I wasn't going to be good at the plotting and the deviousness but I thought I might manage one.
You never know. I wasn't going to write a trilogy either.^ As several of you have pointed out, however, PEG is not really a trilogy, it's a Novel in Three Volumes.^^ Like Tolkien's LOTR, as one or two people further helpfully suggested.^^^ I appreciate your faith in me, but this is not a reassuring thought.
LRK:
PEGASUS is a trilogy.
Oddly – and I mean oddly as I have no idea why – I'm not surprised. It just feels like one of those things that, when you find out about them, had to be.
Sigh. Yes. I should have known. . . .
^ anef: OMG you're having triplets! Many congratulations!
Snork. Thank you.
^^ Diane in MN: Oh, Robin—not a trilogy, a three-volume novel, right?
Right. Think of all those Charles Dickens novels that were published serially in volumes.
^^^ Whom I will not quote here, for fear of bursting into tears. I can deal with Charles Dickens' three-decker novels. I can't deal with even remote and superficial similarities to the author who probably made me a fantasy writer, even if a significant part of how he made me a fantasy writer is by inspiring a burning ambition to have some girls involved in the story.
†† Although I think it is in SUNSHINE's . . . continuum, as you might say. It's not the same world, but I think it's the same universe. I'm pretty sure all my 'high' fantasies join up somewhere; it wouldn't surprise me if all my alt-moderns do too.
††† No, no, no, you maths phobics. Stop screaming. It's not like that. It's like . . . if there's going to be a desert, there'd better not be a pine forest and polar bears. This is the writer's problem. You the reader are only going to see the desert. Relax.
‡ Again. As a study aid, this two-media thing is a very good deal. From a financial standpoint . . . not so much.
‡‡ Not without difficulty.
‡‡‡ Erm. Better to say hoped for.
§ And on a floppy disc somewhere. Although you probably need an Antique Tech Translating Device to extract it any more. The floppy is not hugely crucial since when I go back to it I'll start on page one of the hard copy and write a fresh draft.
§§ Hollow laughter.
§§§ "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – - that's all."
October 22, 2011
Very Not A Good Day, with Veterinarians
Darkness didn't get better yesterday. He got worse. He couldn't possibly have anything left to put through . . . but he went on trying, with distressing results. I finally went to bed at about . . . six, believing or at any rate hoping that he had finally settled down and was over the worst. Darkness has these episodes oftener than Chaos first because his gut is more sensitive—or more damaged, take your pick—and also because he's a more determined scavenger. I'm pretty sure he found something in the dark Thursday night, and I wasn't fast enough seeing, to tell him to drop it. Hellhound honour: they both will drop if I tell them to, but I have to see what they're doing in time, before they bolt it.
But these unwelcome melodramas usually only last a day. They usually begin with a Morning Cataract and have subsided by evening. Even though this one was clearly more severe than usual I assumed we were working to more or less the same pattern. I also went to bed believing that if Darkness was still in trouble he would call me to let him out. This is one of the reasons I have gone on crating them: to ensure that if someone is in trouble he will howl.
Wrong on both counts. I got downstairs at about noon to a Terrible Smell . . . and when I let them out of the extremely nasty crate Darkness squirted all over the floor. Twice. There was bright red blood involved. Quite a lot of it.* I opened the kitchen door to the hellhound courtyard while I dove for the phone and yelped at the vets' receptionist**—IhaveadogcrappingbrightredbloodalloverthefloormayIbringhimin? I did remember to get dressed. . . .
The good news: it probably is 'only' colitis, which is to say inflammation of the lower intestine, duuuuh. To give my vet credit he expects you to know that 'colitis' is just a fancy Greek word for inflamed bowel, and that it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know. But Darkness actually still looks fine, if you don't know him well enough to see otherwise***: his eyes are still bright and his coat is still shiny. And there's no bloating, and his gut area is no sorer than you'd expect. So we came home again, somewhat reassured, and with drugs.†
I had been planning on putting up a guest post tonight, but then I had also planned on using blog-writing time to do some auction doodles. But I'm exhausted. I've been in a post-adrenaline haze all day, to the extent that I was fairly ill with it myself for a few hours, the way it can go, when the world is an alien unknowable place, reality is a theory, and my head hurts. I needed something grounding†† and so very reasonably I turned to . . . knitting patterns. Deramores http://www.deramores.com/ on whose mailing list I am sorry to say I am on, is having a 10% off all books sale and, well, um, I haven't actually bought anything yet but there does seem to be stuff in my virtual shopping basket.†††
I've rung Niall to say that I may not make it to service ring tomorrow, but I'm planning that that should be because I sleep about twelve hours tonight‡, not because there are any more dramas. ‡‡ Can I go to bed yet?
* * *
* Although bright red blood is extremely eye catching. Even in my state of frantic alarm I recognised the quantities as 'inflammation' not 'haemorrhage'.
** I'd forgotten they were open on Saturdays. I had assumed that one of the reasons this was happening was because it was a weekend. Although Rowan, my first whippet, was the queen of out-of-hours disasters. She was accident-prone, but only late at night and on weekends. Yes, I'm sure this was deliberate. She was that kind of dog.
*** Or it's not your kitchen floor.
† It makes me sad that I'm not a good enough homeopath to cope with a bad bout of the Hellhound Disease. Ars Alb, the standard food-poisoning remedy, usually immediately cheers a streaming hellhound up—which is an indication that it's working—even if the streaming goes on a bit longer, and I assume is why these events usually don't last more than eight to twelve hours. There are a few other standard remedies I will try—Pulsatilla for changeable Chaos, Lycopodium for Darkness' noisy colic for example—but yesterday nothing touched it. One of the reasons I was up till six was that I had most of my homeopathic books off the shelves and on the floor, looking for what I'd missed. The answer was in there somewhere. I just couldn't find it.
I'd been meaning to tell you my latest Magical Arnica^ story. I was wrestling with my frelling dustbin in the dark. They've changed our garbage-collection day and I'd forgotten, although the truth is I frequently wrestle with my dustbin(s) in the dark because I forget even when they haven't changed collection day recently. I managed to jam my left thumb between the bin and the opening gate—and there isn't quite enough room for the dustbin to get through the gate even when there isn't a thumb in the way, and you have to force it through. I was already in mid-force when my thumb misaligned itself. *&^%$£"!!!!! that hurt. I did not drop everything and rush indoors for my Arnica bottle because I was rather involved with the standard developing situation of dustbin falling down stairs.^^ By the time I did come indoors again my thumb would no longer bend and was going THROB THROB THROB in an extremely unpleasant way. It was a shock when I saw it too: it had swollen about half again its normal size and the site of the jam had turned black, while the rest of the thumb was purple. Yeeep. Arnica. I was thinking, this is going to take a while, should I take another pill every five minutes or every fifteen minutes (frequency allowable in an acute)? By the end of the first five minutes my thumb still looked appalling, but the worst of the pain was blunted, so I didn't take another pill. By the end of fifteen minutes the black had reduced to a pinprick and the joint would bend again, although there was still a fair amount of purple. At this point I took hellhounds for their hurtle, being perhaps a little cautious with my left thumb. Today—less than two days later—the purple is gone, and the black pinprick has turned red. It's a little tender to the touch. That's all.
But I couldn't fix my hellhound.
^ Which is also to be thought of when you have vomiting and diarrhoea together.
^^ I hate dustbin collection day. It is nonetheless to be preferred to no dustbin collection day.
†† Something furthermore that can be done while keeping one eye on the hellhound bed at all times.
††† We also spent about two hours on the sofa during which I read, with increasing bewilderment, one of these frelling dystopian novels that everyone but me loves. It's very well written and I started off thinking, hey! This is a good one! . . . but it's all these horrible dysfunctional people doing horrible dysfunctional things, and going on and on doing them—get out, you morons! Why are you putting up with this nonsense?—and I have the heart-sinking feeling that this is the beginning of a series and will therefore end somewhere calculated to make you buy the next one.^ However the hellhounds liked it.
^ Not that I would ever stoop to doing such a thing. Especially not twice in a row.
‡ Chance would be a fine thing.
‡‡ I consider it a good sign that Darkness was outraged by being given a shallow bowl of chicken broth for supper.
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