Robin McKinley's Blog, page 115

Maths. Boo.

 

I have a double-ended geysering hellhound.  Sigh.  I missed both cup of tea with optional singing with Oisin this afternoon and home tower bell practise tonight, feeling that I will remain much more serene, given the circumstances, if the hellhound in question is immediately under my eye at all times.*  I'm Olympic-standard fast with the newspaper for the front end and I still had to do an unplanned floor-mat wash this morning**, and a hellhound that requests to go out in the given state of duress tends to mean NOW and while Peter could probably get the door open fast enough, the ensuing pick-up is not inspiriting*** and I don't entirely trust either hellhound not to set off immediately in quest of the absent hellgoddess, since you don't hang around putting harnesses on before you let the trembling hellhound out. 

            So after a slower-than-usual afternoon hurtle we retired to the sofa.†  I had liked Alex Bellos' ALEX'S ADVENTURES IN NUMBERLAND so much that I decided to look for some other maths-popularisation book, preferably one that would cover a few of the basics.††  One thing that did make me a little testy about NUMBERLAND is that while it genuinely is popular maths for ordinary readers, he still occasionally forgets what ordinary means to a lot of people, even people who might conceivably pick up a book about maths if it gets a good enough review†††.  So I made the mistake of buying 1089 AND ALL THAT by David Acheson.  Mathematicians.  Spare me.  I should have paid more attention to who was giving it all those glowing reviews:  'An instant classic . . . an inspiring little masterpiece' Mathematical Association of America.   'Highly accessible and entertaining' The Mathematical Association.   'Great fun' Mathematics Today. Boldface mine.  Please.  These bozos wouldn't know 'accessible' and 'fun' if it bit them on the ends of their pocket calculators.‡  Do literary nerds misunderstand average pizza-eating TV-watching ordinary people this badly?   Have I ever convinced someone whose major reading to date has been the ads on the walls of the subway/tube/metro/underground and the sports pages that they should start right in on MOBY DICK or BLEAK HOUSE?  Anyway.  1089 begins with the trick about twiddling two three-figure numbers around in a set pattern that means the final answer is always 1089.  Fine.  I'm with him so far.  But that's as far as I am with him.‡‡  I felt distinctly ill at ease with Konigsberg's seven bridges—there was no 'of course' about the solution to me—but I crashed off the rails for good with Euclid's proof that prime numbers are infinite‡‡‡.  That was on page twenty-five.  The next paragraph begins:  'But some problems in number theory are more tricky.'  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  As one of the celebratory reviews says 'David Acheson works his way up to chaos and catastrophe theory.'  Well, yes, I'd say so.  But probably not quite in the way the reviewer meant.  And . . . he does it in 169 small, heavily illustrated pages.  Can you say MASSIVE ASSUMPTIONS UNAVOIDABLY MADE HERE?§

            Maybe the hellhound has streamed enough to allow me to lie in a hot bath and reread some Georgette Heyer for a while. 

* * *

* I've taken hellhounds with me to my voice lesson twice, I think, in similar situations, but neither Oisin's house nor any bell tower I've ever met has a good driveway/window ratio for observation.^ 

^ And may I add that during the writing of this blog post the theory that the geysering hellhound needs to be kept under close and constant scrutiny has been borne out.  Plentifully.  Twice.   

** I know I've blithered about these people before:   http://www.turtlemat.co.uk/

The mats are not, in fact, supernatural, and you still have to both sweep your floor and put the mats through the washing machine occasionally.  They are nonetheless a great aid in the war against entropy and critter effluvia.  And they're pretty. 

http://www.turtlemat.co.uk/Maple-Leaf-doormat/

http://www.turtlemat.co.uk/Cup-Cake-mat/

They're also pretty expensive, but I'm not going to buy any more till MYSTERY NOVEL^ goes in.  At the end of January. 

^ Mwa hahahahaha 

*** AAAAAUGH.  It is very difficult to be a good citizen when the physical properties of viscous liquids are against you. 

† I am counting on hellhounds not being bright enough to figure out that geysering = hellgoddess staying home = more time on sofa.  

†† What the eff is effing algebra, for example.  Sure, I can recognise a wodge of squiggles containing letters and numbers and bizarre specialist symbols not found on any sane keyboard and  (probably) an equal sign in there somewhere as (probably) algebra or semi-algebra or once-having-had-something-to-do-with-algebra-before-it-became-the-answer-to-the-known-universe^, but what makes it algebra?  Wikipedia's answer just makes me cry:

Algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning the study of the rules of operations and relations, and the constructions and concepts arising from them, including terms, polynomials, equations and algebraic structures. Together with geometry, analysis, topology, combinatorics, and number theory, algebra is one of the main branches of pure mathematics. 

^ Wait, that was 42, wasn't it?  No algebra.    

††† This one:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/alex-bellos-adventures-numberland-maths I posted it when told you about finally getting the little sod-all downloaded onto Pooka.  

‡ I meant to say—I meant to fish this bit of the conversation out of the forum—I too had a slide rule.  Slide rules were cool.  As I recall it mostly took me more time lining up the tiny rows, hoarsely whispering prayers and genuflecting than it would have just to do the calculations on a piece of paper but there were one or two things I couldn't do on paper.  Square roots, maybe?  It's not an era of my life I remember at all clearly.  But I did like my slide rule.  I think it's sort of sad that slide rules have been so comprehensively eliminated.  If people are still driving horse-drawn carts, why couldn't a few nutters still be using slide rules?  I have similar feelings about abaci, but I think people do still use them.^ 

^ Alex Bellos talks about both slide rules and abaci.  Abacuses.  Whatever.    

‡‡ No, I liked the jigsaw puzzle proof of Pythagoras' theorem (about the frelling right-angle triangle) too.  

‡‡‡ I feel I'm doing well to know what a prime number is. 

§ What does a wavy equal sign mean?  So far as I can find, he never tells you—and gods forbid there should be a glossary of terms^—wavies just start showing up in equations.  Although by that time I'd pretty much lost the will to live so I may have missed something.  

^ There is however a list of books for further reading.  Mm hmm.  No Georgette Heyer, for some reason. 

 

Twin fiends: handbells and technology

 

I'm writing this under an additional sticky layer of Unnecessary Stress.  GO AWAY!  NOT WANTED!  ESPECIALLY NOT WANTED NOW!*  Over the last fortnight or so broadband in both houses** has become increasingly unreliable.  Archcomputerangel Raphael was here yesterday and, of course, couldn't find anything wrong although he says it's worth grzzzbmfing the triggable to improve the cangblither at the cottage.  Yes, sir.  The cottage has the permanent disadvantage of being located on its cul de sac, where the phone lines are made of masking tape and tin foil.  Basic service at the mews is not too bad, as this area goes, although where it's going is downhill fast as more people sign up and the available band doesn't get any broader. 

            Lately, however, I keep falling off line.  It's usually Outlook that goes first.  I have always had a little live performance art in the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen at the mews, which is where Outlook comes on in various guises (Oooh!  I'm sending and receiving!  Oooh!  I'm not sending and receiving!  Oooh!  The nasty mean whatever has disconnected me!  I am valiantly trying to reconnect!  Oooh!  I have reconnected!  Oooh!  No I haven't!, etc), but up till about a fortnight ago it would play by itself quietly and rarely ran with scissors.  But it has increasingly bombed off line and refused to come back on without a lot of restarts and faffing around, and lately the internet has started going with it.  Splat.  Arrrgh.  

            Raphael told me a couple of things to try and to keep him posted.  During business hours, of course, all was calm.  By the time I was attempting to write my blog post I was more off line than I was on and I finally just stopped trying.***  Then I had to get on line long enough to post the sucker.†  This degenerated into a series of increasingly hysterical texts to Raphael—well, I wasn't going to phone him at 1 or 2 a.m., just in case he forgot to turn his phone off, and email was not an option—to brighten his morning.††

            Well.  I did post, as you know.  But I was a shaken wreck of my former self.   Hellhounds and I then proceeded out to Wolfgang to discover . . . him blanketed in a thick layer of frost.  It was not supposed to freeze last night!  It was NOT!  So we raced home and I started bringing the frelling jungle indoors.  What a good thing I'd asked Atlas to set up the Winter Table††† this week.  Somebody tell me to stop putting prunings in water in case they root, because too many of them do.  I've got more happy tender little blasted rooted-cutting things in pots than a medium-sized garden centre.  And if they're happy, they don't stay little.  By the time I went to bed, with plants all over the Winter Table, the sitting room floor, the kitchen table, the half-height refrigerator, the kitchen stool and the counter, it was exactly one degree above freezing . . . and that's as far as it got, by the evidence of the dahlias this morning, which are still dahlias and not mushy black Halloween monsters.‡  The one thing that is super-tender-plus turns out to be my new vast maroon coleus‡‡ which came indoors all tip-curled and shivering.  Frell.  The thing is GIGANTIC.  If it wants to spend the winter on a windowsill it's going to have to undergo severe pruning.‡‡‡

            . . . So I fell into bed again at one of those even-later-than-later times and fortunately I had turned the phone off because Raphael rang at 9 a.m. sharp.  Uggh.  This is where it gets even cuter:  Raphael said that the thing to do was change the router at the mews, and see if that worked . . . and Peter's provider, the lovely so-charming AOL, won't allow this.  Oh, no, no, no, said the tech at the other end of the phone.  Before you touch that router you first must perform the following sixty-seven tests, forty-eight sub-tests and two hundred and thirteen sub-sub-sub tests, and don't forget the chanting and the burnt sacrifices.  So I've been doing that all day and playing ping pong or possibly hide and seek with both email and the internet.  Joy.

            And Thursday is standard handbell night.  After last night I might be forgiven for looking forward to this with some gloom.  Never mind, I thought, after Algernon, whatever it is it'll be a snap, comparatively speaking.  Which explains how frelling Niall managed to get us seated—in my sitting room, you realise—in such a manner that I was ringing the 5-6 to bob major.  5-6 is the pair I don't ring.  One of the basic dreadfulnesses about handbells is that every frelling pair is nearly learning a whole new method.  In the tower, since you're only ringing one bell at a time, while if you're low-level mediocre like me you'll want to stick to ringing a new method from the same bell for a while, once you've got the hang of it you can ring any bell—each bell merely starts at a different point in the pattern.  That of course is also the case ringing methods on handbells . . . but you're ringing two bells, which, since each of them starts in a different place, INTERRELATE in a different way from any of the other pairs.§  Inside pairs—so the 3-4 and 5-6 when you're ringing major, which is eight bells total—are harder, generally speaking.  The 3-4 have been my party piece for a while.  I don't ring the 5-6! I said.  Niall and Colin just stared at me in that blank immovable way that upper-level ringers have when they're about to make your life a misery.   Gemma would have sympathised if she had realised the enormity of my situation.  She, poor thing, confuses me with someone who knows what she's doing.

             And, since you ask . . . yes, I did it.  By the end of the evening I was ringing the 5-6 and, if you will forgive me, feeling a trifle smug.  Methods on handbells are still a process of carving out the granite rock face with your plastic teaspoon, but over the years you do, with a creeping, not to say leaden, progress, build up a sort of understanding of how the entire wretched method fits together, and how to find your way through it with two bells—how the new pattern of the two unfamiliar bells has to be this way rather than that way because of what the other bells are doing.  It was not a pretty sight/sound (I had help with this) but we were getting through to the end. 

            Although I made the mistake of admitting that I wasn't going to Muddlehampton practise tonight§§ with the result that we rang for almost three hours.  Jeez.

            Okay.  Now let's see if on line is a possibility. . . . 

* * *

 * Tessa Gratton http://tessagratton.com/ in response to my 'announcement' post helpfully pointed out on Twitter that January is only thirteen weeks away.  Thanks, Tessa!  Thanks a lot!  You're a real friend! 

** Third House remains phone-based-technology-free because British Telecom still wants me to spend several hundred pounds to get a phone line laid in to this tiny isolated house in the Outer Hebrides.  With the ornamental phone jack in the kitchen.  

*** This seriously limits my forays into silliness.  I spend a lot of time on google.  

† Yes, of course, if it had come to that, I'd've slapped it on the memory stick presently containing MYSTERY NOVEL and therefore never more than two inches from my heart at all times^  and taken it back to the cottage and posted there.  But waiting up to two minutes for a page to load GETS OLD REALLY, REALLY FAST even if the on-line-ness of the waiting is stable. 

 ^Which is to say it rides in the little pink leather bag that Pooka lives in. 

†† I just hope he didn't turn his business mobile on till he got to work.  I have this vision of him idly checking for messages while eating his oatmeal and chatting with his children, and—AAAAAAUGH. 

††† Which stands over the hellhound crate and basically makes the crate weight-bearing^.  It also means only one hellhound at a time can get through the crate-side of the kitchen to the front door, and I have to go sideways.  

^ It's true.  I have kind of a fixation about horizontal weight-bearing surfaces. 

‡ Peter lost all his dahlias.  This is the difference of maybe a quarter mile. 

‡‡  http://www.flowerspictures.org/pictures.asp?id=1463&Maroon-coleus  Mine's darker and the yellow edge is less prominent, but this looks more or less like it. 

‡‡‡ And cut-off bits root really easily.  I've already discovered this.  

§ This does EVENTUALLY even out somewhat, when you start ringing touches.  The calls tend to shift pairs of bells into other bells' patterns.  But that's later.  And not all the patterns are the same. 

§§ I'm still trying to shed the end of this frelling lurgy.  The only place it's still really noticeable is in my throat.  I daresay the necessity of a higher level of maintenance screaming at technology lately has not been much help to this endeavour.

 

 

 

Monday afternoon I got a phone call from Niall

 

In the first place . . . thank you all for your responses to last night's blog.  I'm a little overwhelmed.  Merrilee has kept saying to me, Why will they be angry?  You're telling them three books, not one.  An extra PEG and an extra extra.  What's not to like?  —But I couldn't hear it.  I have been so obsessed with PEG II that everything around it is a great barren ring of dust and ashes.  THANK YOU.  You're the best.  I'll deconstruct a bit more over the next few days, as I get used to not being shut up in a small dark cupboard.  Meanwhile . . . 

* * *

Monday afternoon I got a phone call from Niall.  We're going to be short one on Wednesday, he said.  Algernon can't come.  So it's just going to be Theophrastus and Thormond* and me.  So if you came you could ring major.  Niall always has a special little sparkly edge to his voice when he's talking about handbells.  Sensible people flee.  I am not sensible.

            Where is it? I said suspiciously.

            Fantootlington, Niall said off-handedly.  Thormon's flat.  You've been there before.

            Yes, I have, I said.  It's across two trackless deserts and a jungle full of giant person-eating anacondas.  It takes days.  I have a novel to write. **

            So bring a sandwich and keep your window rolled up, said Niall, who suffers from selective deafness.  I'll pick you up at 6:25.

            I was weak.***  I agreed to this madness.  The thing is, I would really like to ring bob major with a strong band.  It's not Gemma's fault she's a beginner, but she's going to go on being a beginner for a while and I need to be surrounded by people who know more than I do so I can improve too.†  Well, that was the plan.        

            As we're driving away from the mews Niall says, in that ominously casual voice, Algernon's coming after all.  We can ring royal [ten bells].

            I can't ring royal! I said.  I can only approximate the ringing of plain courses of plain bob major!††

            You'll be fine, said Niall.

            HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

            I should have remembered that the big boys ring at a hundred million miles an hour.†††  JEEZUM DANGBLATTING CROW.  We started with a little plain hunt royal.  I was on the trebles.  Any fool can ring plain hunt on the trebles to any frelling number.  You just keep counting.  Except when you can't count fast enough, even silently in your head.  I fell over the extra syllable in 'seven' every frelling row.  Sven.  Sn.  GAAAAAH.

            It wasn't much better when they took gentlemanly turns to sit out so I could practise my bob major.  I can ring plain courses!  But not at a hundred million miles an hour!  And when they started calling bobs and singles—which was what I was there for, to practise ringing touches—it was completely hopeless.  Except that a band that good will just chivvy you through the gaps you should be filling till you figure out which pattern the last frelling call dropped you into, and you pretend to ring for yourself for a while, till the next call.

            I'm twitchy anyway, and the more anxious and wound up I get, the twitchier I get.  Roger is always at me in the tower to relax.  If I could relax, trust me, I would.  Trying to keep up with hundred million mile an hour handbell ringing was making me very twitchy indeed.  Until Algernon declared that what I needed was some remedial ringing.  Still at a hundred million miles an hour, you understand.  What I had to do, he proclaimed, was to develop a sense of rhythm.  Well, no doubt.  But I'm not going to develop a sense of rhythm at a hundred million miles an hour, when I can't even say seven in my head fast enough to keep my place in the row.  So we rang plain hunt again while he told me how to hold my wrists and how not to hold my arms and to stop jerking the bells and to ring them gently, and I began to think longingly of cleaning bathrooms and boiling my head.  I was eventually permitted to ring a plain course of bob major again to demonstrate that I'd learned something.  Erm.  I hadn't learnt anything, and at a hundred million miles an hour . . . I couldn't even ring a plain course of bob major without falling over that seven.  Among other things.  You can only dodge when the treble leads if the treble is not a blur of speed so extreme you have no idea if it's leading or not.

            Sigh.

            Niall said on the drive home, You did really well.  Oh, and don't mind Algernon.  He has his little ways. 

* * *

* Who has appeared previously on these pages as 'Tom'.  How boring.  I can't imagine what I was thinking. 

** Again.  Finally.  Yaaay.  I'm trying not to think about the 'end of January' part too much.

*** A foolhardy person posted to the forum last night:  Maybe dial back a little (just a little!) on the other activities and let this new book flow and your year will get better. 

And Jodi answered: 

Robin and I have different processes, but personally, when I can write, I do. When I can't, I do other stuff (like yarn and music and things). Sometimes putting my other stuff away and sitting down to write or else works, but usually what comes out isn't the sort of thing anyone would want to read.

I can't speak for Robin, but I suspect that it's not so much a matter of dialing back other things to focus more on writing. It's a matter of the story muscling ahead of the other things because it's ready to be written. For some writers, it's more about writing when the story's working rather than it is about discipline. 

What she said.  If you're a writer, writing is your first priority.  Full stop.^  You're always sort of checking the temperature of story-in-progress as if it were a kind of complex, surreal sponge for what, if you're lucky, will become an immortal loaf of bread, after you've added the flour and the pearls and the denouement.  You can't help the constant checking.  You're built that way.  And if the story-sponge is ready for you, you will trample little old ladies, break appointments and the speed limit, and fail to go to the grocery store/pharmacy/dump again, even though you ran out of food/toothpaste/room weeks ago, to get back to your desk.^^

            There are not a lot of things worse, for a writer, than month after month after month of a story-sponge that refuses to rise.

            But there's another aspect to this.  I do try to remind you that I lie by omission a lot.  I write the blog about the stuff I feel like making public.  It's not about my life.  It's about certain carefully selected bits of my life, scrubbed up, costumed and professionally lit for dramatic excitement.  What are my two major preoccupations?  Peter's health and story-in-progress.  How much about either of them do you hear on the blog?  Uh-huh.  No one whose chief source of information about me is this blog has a clue about my lived reality.  Please remember this.           

^ There are writers sane and plugged into the real world enough to put their children and families first.  This is not something you want to count on however.  If you're thinking about becoming romantically involved with a writer, think very carefully. 

^^ Almost anything, in fact, but truncate the hurtling of hellhounds. 

† My ringing life.  I'd love to ring bob major in the tower with a strong band too.  And for those of you who don't—for some reason—keep close track of my schedule, by choosing to go with Niall tonight for handbells I missed Wednesday practise at Forzadeldestino. 

†† It's not only that major is eight bells.  It's also that plain bob anything—plain bob doubles, plain bob minor, plain bob major—is the first method you learn on that number of bells.  It's the baby method.  And a plain course is the baby version of the baby method.  I'm only ringing the baby version of the baby method on eight.  

††† There's also a slight but discernable weirdness not so much about being the only woman with a group of four guys, but being the only woman and the weakest espouser of the activity you're together to pursue.  I start kind of looking around for my crinoline.  At least I'm taller than three of them, even if they ring better than I do.

 

The Announcement You Don't Want to Hear

 

A few of you already know this, and I'm sure some of you have guessed.  That doesn't make the official announcement any more fun, for you or me. 

            PEG II is not coming out in 2012. 

            The reason I'm guessing a fair number of you have figured it out is because there has been a notable lack* of eager queries about how I'm getting on.  And while a lot of you don't know that it (usually) takes about a year for a book to grind through the publishing process and appear on shelves and e-screens near you, quite a few of you do know.  And is there any screaming red doolally chance that I wouldn't have told you that I'd turned PEG II in?

            No.  No chance, screaming red doolally or otherwise.  It's also true that I sent PEGASUS in several times, trying to hang onto the schedule of getting it out last year, so that my editor could keep an eye on its progress and warily hold space in the schedule open for it as I ran later and later and LATER over deadline.  I think the final version went in in December—occasionally having a fading memory is a comfort—I remember more than I want to of the heart-bursting race to finish.  Some authors produce a beautiful new book every year and never break a sweat.  Some of us develop hernias and sunspots** over every adjective . . . and don't produce a beautiful new book every year.

            The story thus far:  PEG II has been an indescribable, demon-infested nightmare pretty much from the minute I sat down to go on with the story after PEG I was accepted and passed into the publishing machine.  I had quite a lot of story left over from when I whacked PEG I in half—well, in two-thirds and one-third.  I knew a fair amount of the remaining one-third was going to need rewriting because PEG I had moved the goalposts around in some pretty significant ways.  But that was okay;  I was still ahead.  I wasn't starting from zero the way I usually am when I begin a new novel.  And it's true I wasn't starting at zero:  I was starting at minus forty-six bazillion, but it took me a while to figure this out.

            Anyway . . . writing PEG II has been gruesome.  It's been so gruesome that I've had a few of those dark nights of the soul when I wondered if I was, you know, broken somehow, and couldn't write.  These moments were very, very bad.

            Very, very, very, very bad.

            So.  It's August.  I have kind of given up, but I don't know what else to do except try to keep writing this thing that won't be written.  There's all kinds of stuff going wrong—I know where I should be headed but the plot line keeps twisting out my hands and slogging off somewhere else.  People and sub-plots emerge and disappear;  the landscape shifts and blurs;  the words won't come, and when they do they're the wrong ones;  it's bricks without straw, and there's a gritty, crumbly mess where there should be a story.  And then I'll hit some scene, some conversation, some development that is absolutely clean shining crystal clear . . . amid so much fog and muck I don't know what to do with it or how I got there or how I get on to the next thing.

            Despair.  I start thinking about alternate careers.  Ditch-digger or something.  Maybe Jenny can use a stall-mucker.  She's usually short on staff.

            I don't know when, if I weren't so adamantly set against any such idea, the truth would have occurred to me.  In hindsight I should have known pretty goddam soon, because of the way PEG II wouldn't let itself be written.  But hey, I never claimed to be intelligent, only imaginative.  But there was this sense, if I hadn't been too stubborn to see it, of cramming several gallons into a pint-pot. . . .

            PEGASUS is a trilogy.  That thing I said I would never write.  Arrrgh.  Also eeeeep.  And yaaaaah.

            Oh, and the second book ends even worse than the first.  The second one is called*** EBON, which should more or less answer the burning question all of you who have read the first one have, but having dealt with that little matter something even more appalling happens.  Well, slightly depending on your idea of more appalling, but . . . mmmrmmph.  You'll see.  But you won't see next autumn.

            The third book is—I think—called THE GOLDEN COUNTRY.  That's what it's called at the moment anyway:  that's what it introduced itself as.  And . . . um . . . I hope the frell that's the end.

            Meanwhile . . . my first reaction to this revelation of a third book (even if that did mean trilogy) was relief.  Gigantic, overwhelming relief.  I wasn't broken!  I was just—stupid!  I can live with stupid!

            It still took me about a month to tell Merrilee.  I was sure she and my editor would hate me forever, and who could blame them?  Schedules are schedules and publishing is a business.  Dither.  Haver.  Twitch.  So I did what any sensible having-found-out-she's-still-an-author-after-all writer would do.  I started another novel.

            Listen:  I can't face PEG right now.  Cannot.  It needs to relax out of the knots I made of it.  I'm going to have to go back to the beginning of PEG II and unpick the strands, thread by thread, and lay them out flat again and try to see what they are this time.  I'm going to have to rewrite it . . . pretty much as if this last year never happened.  (Siiiiiiiiigh.)  And first I have to get my breath—and my courage—back.  So does poor PEG, I suspect.  The Client Complaints department of the Story Council has probably heard a lot about my shortcomings this last year.  Well someone could have told me. 

            So, I started this new novel.  And it actually went, like a novel should.  My first drafts are always fairly painful, but they should accumulate, paragraph after paragraph.  Like this one seems to be doing.  Like PEG II never did.  After about a month I told Merrilee what had happened.  I knew something was up with you, she said.  I just didn't know what.   She promised to tell my editor while I hid under the bed.  And then my editor was wonderful about it.  Oh, a new novel, she said.  That's terrific.  When can you hand it in?

            Have I mentioned I'm running out of money?  I was supposed to turn PEG II in, oh, last month or so.  I need to get paid.

            Well, I said to my editor, I was kind of hoping to have it in for spring '13.

            Great, said my editor.  I'm looking forward to it.  I need it the end of January.

            It takes me a year in a good year to write a book.  A good year when I have some idea what I'm doing and where the story came from, and haven't spent the previous ten months believing I'm broken.  And I'm presently trying to write a book that I had barely spoken to before the middle of August . . . in less than six months.

            So, am I even more totally over the edge crazed than usual?  Yes, I am.

            To be continued. . . . 

* * *

* For which I am extremely grateful 

** Sic.  It's a very rough life, being this kind of writer. 

*** I think.  At the moment I'm trying not to be too categorical about anything.  My poor editor tried to announce this a while back and I said NO NO NO NO NO, which again in 20/20 hindsight, or possibly 751/751 hindsight, was a precursor to all the other eruptions and meltings down and chemical metamorphoses unknown to science and literature that were about to occur.  The second book has always been called EBON, since the moment I knew PEGASUS was going to be two (cough, cough) books.  The reason I lost my nerve, I think, was that I hadn't yet seen there was a third beyond it.

Fulmination

 

In the first place . . . as demonstrated by this blog, which in this case is not lying by omission very much*, I stay the hell away from politics, both the governmental and the literary.  Politics make me crazy.  People in groups make me crazy even when they're not trying to organise my life, real-world or book-world, for me.**  A good local council can get stuff done;  national government I think is a disaster almost by definition and I have no real idea what I would do if someone knocked on my door one morning and said, pardon me, madam, but you are now absolute monarch, what is your first decree?***

            But every now and then something breaches my defenses.  Anyone out there not know about the mind-boggling, eyeball-frying, credibility-demolishing, dog's-dinner muck-up the National Book Award admin has made of this year's YA shortlist?  Gibble gibble gibble gibble gibble.   I don't like awards much;   I think, like national government, they're kind of a disaster by definition and the one best mentality is so bogus.   Lists are helpful, good reviews—and by 'good' I include that the reviewer is careful to acknowledge his/her own subjectivity—are excellent;  that one book is the winner and everyone else is an also-ran is just silly.  Anyway.  I don't watch for the NBA—for the Booker, for the Orange, for the Newbery, for the Pulitzer, for anything else you care to name—but I did notice the tweets going past the last few days about . . . well . . . let's be polite.  That there was a sixth title added to the YA shortlist for this year's NBA, and that there was perhaps some confusion because that book's name is CHIME and there was already on the shortlist a book titled SHINE.  My original thought, casual half-attending naïve twit that I am, was that CHIME had been left off because it was so like SHINE that everybody saw both titles in the one, if you follow me, which you probably don't, because not everyone has the kind of brain that makes it a good idea to doublecheck that there are two hellhounds in the back of Wolfgang before she turns the ignition key.  Stupid and embarrassing but essentially harmless.

            But no.  Apparently SHINE was not supposed to be on the shortlist at all.  Shock horror.  Well, you know, it's really very likely that no one would have died if they'd (a) left it on the list and (b) had six titles this year.  They could just give the award to someone else, you know?

            So far, so grotesque.  But this is where my head explodes:  the NBA rang up the author of SHINE and asked her to withdraw her book from the list 'to maintain the integrity of the award.'†

            I'm not going to go through all of it again, I'm still throwing up.  But Libba Bray has done a magnificent job of telling the story.  I've already tweeted it—thank you, @radimilibrarian—but just in case not everyone who reads this blog is a mad internet junkie who has already seen it six times on their other web feeds:  http://libba-bray.livejournal.com/62266.html   Read it and weep.  Or throw up.  Yes, one of the things that the morons on the NBA seem entirely to have discounted is the wear and tear on poor Lauren Myracle—for pity's sake, she's a human being.  She may—and I hope she does—come out of this with a furious liberal-backlash best seller on her hands.  But one more thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet, although I'm sure someone has somewhere, is that there is now no way for any winner to win gracefully.  What is the winner going to do?  Say 'no thanks'?  The NBA is still a very shiny and generally admired and desirable thing.  So the NBA admin, in its infinite vainglorious obtuseness, is wrecking it for the winner too.  Way to go, guys!  When I'm queen, I'm going to bust you to liver flukes! 

* * *

Somehow my usual line of rabbiting-on doesn't follow very well.  But this is meant to be mostly a frivolous, hot-chocolate-and-fuzzy-slippers sort of blog.††  So let me tell you that Nadia says that I've come on really well this week.†††

            But here's the underlying ratbag.  My voice has been frayed to breaking by the mutant virus, like old stirrup leathers or the heels of hurtling socks.  At the same time what it can do, before it cracks and falls over, has taken another lurch forward.  I found another top-end note last Tuesday and even I'm aware that I'm making a bigger, rounder sound generally. ‡ I just (evidently) can't do it for long.  I suppose it's not unreasonable that someone who hasn't sung in a choir for (over) forty years would have vocal stamina problems—and the choirs I sang in as a teenager never had anything like Ravenel.  So I've been dubbing along, first with Blondel and now with Nadia, singing half an hour a day most days—and even the half an hour is broken up because I've found that two fifteen-minute squirts add up to a larger whole than one half an hour—and then suddenly I've self-propelled into a situation where I'm singing flat out and mostly at the edge of my range for two hours.  Plus warming up at home first, because Ravenel expects us to be ready to go. 

            And then I get an Upper Respiratory Lurgi which is being INCREDIBLY slow to clear.  So, I am a mature, sensible grown-up.  I get it.  I understand what's happening.  I still hate the frell out of it.  One of the reasons Nadia is pleased with me is that I've been working on those dratblatted open Italian vowels—but you can walk around going 'oooooooohhhhh' and 'eeeeeeehhhhhhh' without singing them, you know?  You just make funny mouths and blow through them.

            Whatever.  Improvement is improvement, right?  And I rang a proper touch of Stedman doubles tonight, which is to say I was in the way when Colin called a single, and had to climb through a jungle gym of coathangers‡‡ to get to the other side. 

* * *

 Maybe I'll go take a long hot bath and read a book. 

* * *

* There is the odd non-family-friendly outburst from time to time. 

** My upper limit is my home tower's AGM.  I generally manage to miss the district AGM. 

*** The book I have just downloaded^ is 23 THINGS THEY DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT CAPITALISM^^ which may give me some ideas.  I bought it because of this interview:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/29/my-bright-idea-ha-joon-chang in which he says (among other things, although this is everyone's favourite quote) the washing machine was more transformative than the internet has yet proved because the washing machine allowed women to enter the work force.  Okay.  My attention is caught. 

^ maybe 

^^ http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/browse/book/isbn/9780141047973

 † And . . . just by the way . . . can anyone think of any reason for this disgusting display except that the NBA judges think that their pure holy status would be fatally besmirched if a book that wasn't supposed to be on their shortlist!!!!! was allowed to put 'NBA finalist' on future editions?   Can any mortal get any farther up themselves than this? 

†† Okay, cranky hot chocolate and fuzzy slippers. 

††† I'll leave out the part about Wolfgang not starting and getting a last-minute ride to Colin's tower practise with Roger.

‡ Don't forget we're still talking mouse squeakings, not Janet Baker.  I'm a larger mouse with better breath control is all.      

‡‡Bellspeak.  The trickier of the two positions for a Stedman single is familiarly known as a coathanger.

 

 

Long thirds at 8:50 a.m.

 

I did notice, as I flew down the street at eight-forty-five this morning, that it was a beautiful day.  Blue sky.  Fresh crisp autumn air.  Good hurtling weather.  Later.  I should live so long.  Pant, pant, pant.  At the top of the ladder there were four other ringers, and none of them Monty our beginner.*  Groan.  Doubles, then, and doubles without a cover.**  And we set off on Grandsire.  And the very first full lead frelling Roger called a single.

 

[image error]

Nooooooo

Guess who was on the three.  Guess who got to ring long thirds for that first single.***
Roger was calling from the five.
The sixth bell, with no one to ring it.  The curly thing a third down from the top is the sally, and you're right, I omitted it on the other five ropes.  I'm trying to practise drawing small since for postage reasons I decreed from the outset that doodles were going to go on A6 paper.  (This is not A6.  It's A5.  I cannot get five ringers on A6 paper, let alone a sixth bell rope.­)  But the more I doodle the larger I keep trying to get.  Arrgh.  Oh, and the tomahawk thing two-thirds of the way down is the Up Knot.  You tie your bell rope so it doesn't trail on the floor—if an up bell rope got trodden on and the bell yanked off its perch the results could be disastrous.†

[Note that darling adorable WordPress has DECREED that a list shall be designated by NUMBERS not letters even if the list was WRITTEN AS LETTERS and the doodle displays them as such. {Blogmom fix} Have I mentioned lately HOW MUCH I LOVE WORDPRESS?  NOT?]

But you know . . . we got through.  Ah the glories of auto-pilot.  I may not be able to ring a touch of Grandsire Triples at frelling Forzadeldestino but I can (probably) ring a touch of Grandsire doubles on a Sunday morning on too little sleep†† without a tenor, even when a frelling single is called first frelling full lead and I'm the one making (frelling) long thirds.  What's more, as if this were not infamy enough, Niall asked me to call a touch of bob doubles next.  Can't I rest on my laurels here a minute?†††  And even that went okay.  I remembered where it ended.‡

The rest of the day has paled following such magnificence.  Although it was an excellent hurtling day. . . . OH GODS I'm near the end of ALEX IN NUMBERLAND.  I'm going to have to download another book.  ::pre-emptive swearing::

* * *

* Although Monty is learning to ring inside.  It's not going to be much longer that the presence of Monty is any help at all on a Sunday morning when one is feeling less than optimum.  He can already ring tenor-behind, so when there are five supposedly real ringers like there were today we are still forced to ring doubles methods, although the sixth bell does help stabilise the situation.

** See previous footnote.  The sixth bell also slows the row down (ie six bells ringing not five) to a noticeable—and desirable—degree.  When you're the walking narcoleptic every little helps.

*** Horrible Long Grandsire Thirds are not as dire as the Dreaded Three-Four Down Single in bob minor, but it's next in line of ordinary mid-level-mediocre bell-ringing diabolicalness.

† You also tie your rope up when the bell is down.  Because you do.  But the knot is different so in theory even if you're only one-quarter awake and have staggered up to the ringing chamber for obscure reasons and have managed to miss all the three-foot-tall red-lettered signs, if the bells are up, that say THE BELLS ARE UP.  DO NOT TOUCH THE ROPES, you will know immediately by looking at the knot if a bell is up or down.

PamAdams:  This is why people are not allowed in belfries when the bells are up, that is, mouth up, balanced precariously on their narrow ends, ready to be pulled off and rung.

Plus The Nine Tailors problem.

But you know, we rarely, even despite extreme provocation, tie people up in our belfries and leave them there.

†† But what else is new

††† Us mediocre ringers have an inflated—or possibly deflated—notion of what earns laurels.^

^ I'm not actually sure I want to rest on laurels.  May I have a nice sofa instead?  And maybe some hellhounds.

‡ My standard failure.  I'm so thrilled at having got through without a mistake I forget to call 'that's all' and except that Roger usually does it for me we might have to ring a whole extra plain course.

Life, With Cheese (guest post by HorsehairBraider)

 

It's a beautiful fall afternoon so I decide to take a short break from counting horsehair and go wander the forest (conveniently located right across the street) searching for any wild mushrooms that may be lurking. There isn't much but I do find some Coprinus comatus (also known as the shaggy mane) so that makes me happy. Then it's time to do the chores.

This starts with milking the goats. Everything starts with milking the goats. First thing in the morning, I go out and milk the goats. First thing I do for evening chores is milk the goats. The horses are shouting, "ME! he he he he he!" but they know what comes first as well as I do: if you have dairy goats, they must be milked twice a day, and the goats get milked before the other chores are done. Despite the horses grumping about it, the chores finally get done.

Once inside I start eyeing my basket of mushrooms. What to do with them? As it happens, I also have several gallons of milk, as usual. Well, mozzarella would be nice – then I could have pizza. An hour later, I'm indulging in the pure yummy goodness of a pizza with fresh mozzarella and wild mushrooms. What would pizza, or life, be if there were no cheese? I can't say. Luckily for me, I live life with cheese.

*****

When I tell people that I have goats and that I make cheese, they immediately assume that I only make a type of soft or cream cheese called chevre. This is French for "goat". Well. There are more types of cheese than chevre, although I do make that too.

Cheese ("milk's leap towards immortality", Clifton Fadiman) describes a lot of different things. There are cheeses that are soaked in brine like feta, cheeses that are "stretched curd"  like mozzarella, cheeses that are made from whey like ricotta, cheeses that use a bacteria that likes lower temperatures like cheddar, cheeses that use a bacteria that likes higher temperatures like parmesan, cheeses that use a blue mold like Stilton and cheeses that use a white mold like brie.

I get hungry just thinking about it.

There are some really good points about making your own cheese. You can go from milk to mozzarella in 30 minutes – nice fresh warm mozzarella. There are also some bad points. For example, cheesecake. With blueberries. Anytime you want it. I have to work on not wanting it very often.

It all starts with milk, of course. You can make cheese from pretty much any milk you can get your hands on. It does not make much difference if it came from a yak or a ewe, milk is milk. Oh sure, there are some subtle differences in amounts of protein, butterfat, casein or lactose, but it's all milk and it will all make cheese.

A lot of cheese-makers believe that the only good milk is raw milk, right from the animal. It's hard for me to argue with this; I have goats, I've had goats for 35 years, so I've always made cheese from my own raw goat's milk. There is currently a big debate in the USA about raw milk versus pasteurized, but frankly I don't find that debate very interesting. I'm far more interested in goats.

I just can not resist a goat's nature. Goats are willful, playful, obstreperous, charming, obstinate, friendly and intelligent. I think they all secretly want to overthrow the government. I can sympathize. Mine are all purebred Nubians, a handsome breed with long pendulous ears and a sweet expression that makes up (somewhat) for their sometimes stubborn behavior.

A good dairy goat will produce up to two gallons/7.58 liters of milk a day for 10 months out of the year. Most goats love to be milked, mostly because there is a big bucket for grain on the milk stand. Every time I open the gate to the goat pen there is a mad rush to try and get past me and out, and if one manages it she will race over and jump on the milk stand and then turn to look at me in wonder. I know just what she's thinking: "There's supposed to be food in this bucket, you MORON". Goats can never get over their astonishment at how incredibly dense I am.

*****

If you are going to make cheese, the first thing you must do is thoroughly and completely clean everything that will come in contact with your cheese. A lot of cheese making is about helping the good bacteria, which makes the cheese tasty, and stopping the activity of the bad bacteria which would cause spoilage. Like an old western, it's about the good guys winning and the bad guys losing, so don't let the bad guys win! Keep everything VERY clean. I use all stainless steel equipment, scrub it out completely, and use bleach (which is rinsed out very well). It's also a good idea to really follow the directions; if it says, "stirring constantly for  2 hours" well by gum, you better stir constantly for 2 hours. I'm not just guessing here; my first cheddar was very nearly a disaster through not enough stirring.

Some cheese making takes a long time; some cheeses are aged for years. Some cheese making requires special equipment, like a cheese press, although I've done things like balance my jeweler's anvil on a plate for weight. The anvil tends to crash over in the middle of the night just as you are falling asleep; cheese presses are a lot easier and quieter, so I go that route now. Sometimes you also need some special ingredients: lipase powder, for instance, or different types of bacteria or mold to inoculate your cheese. There are several places to get these various things but I like New England Cheese Supply and usually order from them. Here is their website: http://www.cheesemaking.com/

As it happens, the lady who runs New England Cheese Supply, Ricki Carroll, wrote a book about cheese making that includes something like 75 recipes for various cheeses. It's called "Home Cheese Making". I have this book and recommend it; you can get it on her site.

But how about YOU making cheese? Oh yes, you can. You CAN. I promise, this is really easy. You don't even need anything special to do this.

Equipment:

pot that will hold a little over 1 gallon/3.78 liters

slotted spoon for stirring and scooping

either a piece of cheese cloth or a large cotton handkerchief

large bowl

colander

thermometer

Ingredients:

1 gallon/3.78 liters of milk (whole milk is best if you can get it)

¼ cup/59.15 ml of apple cider vinegar or some other type of vinegar

½ teaspoon/2.5 ml baking soda

non-iodized salt, if you like salt (about ½ teaspoon/2.5 ml should do it)

Method:

Put the milk in a big pot, preferably stainless steel or enamel but use what you have. Put the pot directly on the heat. Heat the milk to 195F/90.5C, stirring frequently to prevent scorching. When it reaches this temperature slowly pour in the vinegar while stirring… you are watching for the separation of the curd and the whey. The curd will look like tiny little white particles like miniature clouds and the whey will look clear. I keep the pot on the heat, because if you do not get this separation after a few minutes you can continue heating to 205F/96.1C but no higher, you do not want it to boil. Keep stirring! It should separate by now. Take it off the heat. Now get a slotted spoon and scoop the curds out onto a piece of cheesecloth (or a big cotton handkerchief, a very clean one of course) in a colander over a bowl. Scoop out all the curds from the whey, tie the 4 corners of your cloth in a knot and hang the curds in your cloth for a bit – anywhere from 5 minutes to maybe 20 minutes; I usually wait until they are not dripping very much. Place the curds in a bowl, and sprinkle on ½ teaspoon/2.5 ml baking soda and stir in well. Add in some salt if desired but taste your cheese first to see if you like it as is – and perhaps add some fresh herbs from your garden. Chives? Rosemary? Dill? Garlic? Well, I will leave that up to you.  It's all a matter of taste and what you like.

Put your cheese in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. It will keep for one to two weeks. That is, if there is any left by then. The whey can be used to water the garden, or simply poured down the sink.

*****

I am quite childishly proud of my latest cheese. The recipe comes from the "Home Cheese Making" book and in there it's called Guido's cheese but since this man's home region is Tuscany, I like to think of it as Tuscany cheese. It's a hard cheese that is pressed, soaked in brine and then aged, but is extremely tasty after only two weeks. However, the truth is I've gone on a little long here, maybe even too long, so I'll stop writing and just end with a picture of the cheese. Cheese, fresh focaccia bread and wine – a fine ending, in my opinion.

 

 

Oooh. Shiny.

 

Hammacher Schlemmer has come to the UK.  I don't know how long it's been here—it certainly wasn't twenty years ago when I moved over here—but a catalogue fell through my door today saying 'now serving the United Kingdom'.  I have missed its insanity.*  Who wouldn't want to spend several million dollars on a scale replica of the Chrysler Building, at least vicariously?  Or a 14-karat gold pogo stick?** 

            It's still full of some pretty great stuff.  How about a glow in the dark jigsaw puzzle of Washington DC?  And it doesn't only glow in the dark—it's in FOUR dimensions!  No, really.  I admit I'm not quite grasping the historical aspect—yes, DC has a lot of old buildings.  Are there the 1792 jigsaw pieces and the 1901 pieces?  Do you accumulate your miniature plastic White House in suitably historic increments?  Is there a charred version for 1814?  Are there peel-off stickers for when countryside became urban sprawl?  But the best is that it's advertised as the Only Luminescent 4-D Washington DC Skyline Puzzle.  The only one.  Gosh.  http://www.hammacher.co.uk/the-only-luminescent-4d-washington-d-c-skyline-puzzle.html

            For the person who has everything, and has tired of the Chrysler Building*** there is The Authentic New York Hot Dog Vendor Cart for a mere £4400.  You'd better read this one for yourself.  http://www.hammacher.co.uk/the-authentic-new-york-hot-dog-vendor-cart.html  I'm totally on board with wanting to continue New York City's robust street food tradition.  Never mind the hot dogs though.  Bring on the hot pretzels.

            I can imagine few things I want less than The Wellness Monitor however.  I keep thinking I will buy a pedometer some day, and see how close I come to the notorious 10,000 steps mean†, but this ' . . . fits in the included wristband while you sleep and tracks tiny tremors . . . to determine how long it took you to fall asleep, how often you woke up, and how long you were actually asleep, not just lying in bed. . . .'  I DON'T WANT TO KNOW.  I KNOW MORE NOW THAN I WANT TO KNOW.   Not to mention the fact that the wristband would help keep me awake.  http://www.hammacher.co.uk/the-wellness-monitor.html

            . . . No, since you ask, I did not have a good night last night.††  And I'm croaky today, frell it, so no, I didn't sing for Oisin:  indeed after an hour's mere conversation my voice was starting to drop out again.†††  I was thinking irritably that both Griselda and Ravenel were head-cold-hoarse last night and Griselda even has a cough—but they can sing.  Why can't I have their mutant virus instead of the one I've got?   And we had six at tower practise tonight—which is still one more than we had on Monday‡, let's look on the dranglefabbing bright side. 

            At least the hellhounds are eating. ‡‡ And, speaking of . . . watch this.  Just click on through.  It was sent by an old friend of Peter's and had me literally crying with laughter.  http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=EVwlMVYqMu4&vq=medium#t=125

 * * *

* I learned to take out my frustrations reading gardening catalogues instead.  Who knows, a lack of Hammacher Schlemmer catalogues may be partly responsible for the 500+ rose bushes I planted in the garden at the old house.  Of course I'm still taking my frustrations out reading gardening catalogues.  Yes, a 100-foot magnolia campbellii would be terrific.  Where am I going to put it?^

^ Actually . . . if I were going to go for a magnolia tree I'd go for one of the scented ones.  They tend to run only about thirty feet . . . and it probably takes them a few years to get that big . . . MCKINLEY.  GET A GRIP.+ 

+ Meanwhile I lost my third magnolia stellata this year.  Siiiiiiiiigh.  Maybe I'll try some other little shrub magnolia.# 

# But not until I've got the frelling auction/sale stuff over with.  My poor garden . . . all I've been doing with it lately is going out to pick apples.  One of my roses could have sported blue and I wouldn't know. 

** Originally they were 18 karat.  But 18 karat gold is too soft, and the pogo sticks got shorter and shorter and there were complaints. . . .

*** And took a credit rather than a replacement on the pogo stick 

† http://www.thewalkingsite.com/10000steps.html  Although between hellhounds and pathological fidgets, if I don't come pretty frelling near 10000 steps there's something wrong with the pedometer. 

†† I'm not sure I'd know a good night if I saw one.  Hi, cutie, what are you?

            Last night I turned the light back on and started folding more paper.^  Siiiigh.  Thanks to all of you who recommended origami books:  most of the frellers are out of print.  I've got a couple on order however and . . . I really don't want to add another Abe Books quest to my life. 

            But I was afraid someone was going to say 'find someone to show you'.  Yes.  I was introduced to origami fifty years ago in Japan, so before it took off in the west.  I had major culture shock even as an insulated American military brat and most of the 'Japanese culture' classes we were obliged to attend were too, well, foreign for me—they didn't really give us a starting place, you know?  It was like putting someone who'd never been on a horse before in the three-day event at Badminton.  And I was and am terrible at languages.  Japanese script fascinated me—it was the first time I'd really absorbed the idea of other working alphabets:  hieroglyphs were history—but since I was failing to pick up any of the words this didn't take me too far.  My attention was finally caught by some of the folklore and fairy tales (in translation), and I'm pretty sure I've told you that after I got 'home' again I discovered that Japanese culture had crept under my skin without my realising it. 

            But origami:  you didn't have to start anywhere but with a piece of paper to begin with origami.  We were given a few origami lessons, and a lot of the kids who were Japanese or had some Japanese family knew it already, and helped the rest of us.  I was pretty terrible at origami too—but I liked it.  I haven't got a lot of decades left for catching up on stuff that I dropped for stupid reasons and, well, hmm, lack of talent, I've decided, is a stupid reason.  I want to fold critters.  So I've ordered a Montroll critter-folding book. 

^ This is not ideal in bed.  I am somehow resisting taking a lap desk to bed with me too.  There's barely room left in the bed for me now. 

††† It wasn't the talking.  It was all the dramatic gestures. 

‡ Niall is back from the wilds of Canterbury or Chicago or Calcutta or wherever they went. 

‡‡ Mostly.  Only someone with hellhounds would call Chaos' current approach to food 'eating'.

So I overslept

 

So I overslept*, our organic food delivery messed up our order and we're going to run out of broccoli**, I've spent more time crashed off the internet today than on it, and I'm wearing out the carpet between the kitchen, where my laptop lives, and Peter's office, which is where the Magic Wireless Internet Box lives***, I missed half of handbells due to circumstances beyond my control, and tonight at Muddlehampton practise my voice cut out.†  One bar I was singing, next bar I was making mouth movements like a fish.  What?  This is sooooooo booooooring.  The mutant virus is still with me, in its incredibly wearisome and unwelcome way, sticking up my sinuses, my throat, and a few alveoli, and punching my energy level around.  Also in the great scheme of my life I haven't been singing all that long since I started up again.  Blondel got me to the starting line, so to speak††, and Nadia has been trying to get me over it.†††  These things take time, especially when I'm clinging to large boulders and heavy furniture and moaning no, no, no, no.‡  But I still haven't got the stamina to spend two hours belting it flat out with Ravenel whipping us on, and I'm especially not ready for such immoderacy when I have a mutant virus getting in the way.  I was hoarse after the wedding and I had a few laryngitic moments last week and I didn't even go to practise.  Lessons with Nadia are only forty-five minutes and there's usually a fair amount of talk.  The Muddlehamptons are a whole different sport:  like running a marathon when your fitness level is derived from walking five miles a day with your hellhounds.

            This probably means I don't dare sing for Oisin tomorrow either.

            Frell.  Frellfrellfrellfrellfrellfrellfrellfrell.

Catlady:  . . . and a wombat doing the polka . . .

Wombat. Doing the polka. Of course.

 

 This is so typical.  As I'm reading through the doodle orders Blogmom sends me I keep whinging, oh, I don't know how to dooooooo that, why did they ask me to do thaaaaaaaaat?  But someone says something daft on the forum and I'm all over it.

And because you usually do the polka with a partner, here are two wombats doing the polka.

* Because I couldn't sleep last night, of course.  

** This is serious.  I can only support this much tea and chocolate because of the amount of broccoli I eat.  Green beans are nice but broccoli rules.^ 

^ The cabbage family are all pretty domineering.    

*** I have emailed Archangel Rafael pleading for succour.  I have no idea if the email went out, of course.^  Nor how much faffing around it's going to take to get this post hung.  I am of course assuming I will manage to hang it . . . whimper. 

^ I did finally get the rest of NUMBERLAND downloaded however, you will be delighted to hear.+  To whoever it was asked if I use the iPhone audible ap:  Yes.  I'm very simple-minded about technology.  I didn't know there was any other way to get audible to run on Pooka.  And to the someone who recommended TEACHING PHYSICS TO YOUR DOG:  I'll have to try it again.  The problem with popular science is the popular part.  I'm not bright enough to read the heavy-duty, can-I-see-your-PhD-from-MIT-please books, but the stuff written for people like me sometimes feels like it's trying to be your grandmother or your best friend, the goofy one that your grandmother always liked.  I wasn't entirely persuaded by the dog shtick. 

 + But I can't imagine anyone but a maths whizz being able to listen to it without cracking some hard copy, on paper or your iPad screen—although that may just be my lack of excellence in maths.  But there are bits that make my brain hurt even when I can keep the page open as long as I want to and keep staring at it.  Any other weenies out there, consider yourselves warned. 

† It must have been frelling chatting with my frelling internet rangtangtangleflapping service provider. 

†† . . . or sing.  It still flashes before my eyes at undesirable moments, getting to that place in He Was Despised for the first time in a lesson with Blondel, where I had to come in without the piano and I couldn't do it.  Speaking (or singing) of making fish mouths. 

††† Bulldozer . . . flamethrower . . . tank. 

 ‡ You would be forgiven for wondering why I decided to take voice lessons.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

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